My rule of thumb for estimating $-to-¥ is "100¥ is about 1$."

Also, why is this so expensive?

I know. I mistook 20k Yen for 2k Yen. Like a dumbass :lol

Blu-Ray sets are always extremely expensive in Japan so that's actually not that surprising a price.

If you go to CDJapan for the first time and see the DVD prices, you could get the shock of your life. Think the toys are expensive? A DVD volume of Fourze costs about $62 and comes with a whopping number of FOUR EPISODES.

Some of us here can afford it, though, like Dr Kain. :D

That's Japan for you. Their media is amazingly expensive. And for the life of me, I don't know why. We are able to release box sets of new shows for $60 or so bucks, and our film industry doesn't collapse in on it's self. But in Japan they apparently HAVE TO sell them at those high prices or else. It's not like the stuff is even being manufactured differently. I can't imagine DVD authoring being in China/Korea/Taiwan being that more expensive than it is USA/Mexico.
They even keep anime from being released on Blu-Ray over here in a timely manner to prevent "reverse importation".
I just gotta wonder... If they can have something like this sell a bunch of copies at that price, couldn't they expect even greater sells if they just lowered their price by a couple thousand yen?

at $207 I have never been able to understand how dvds are a viable source of revenue in japan, heck when I was over there a few years ago I bought a random dvd vol. of JAKQ containing 4 episodes. cost me $40.
(And I'm not getting into that exchange rate BS again, a Dollar is a Dollar is a Dollar no matter what you call it.)

Look, I love W but this is just not worth the price.

One argument I've read online is that Japan has a very established DVD rental system, so the vast majority of people rent instead of buy DVDs. As such, DVDs are a niche market so they don't have to sell as cheaply as they do in the rest of the world.

At least that's how the argument goes. I still say it's a lousy business decision to ever sell home entertainment for so much, but then again, I'm an outsider so I probably don't know the full situation.

Well technically it is the same price as 4 volumes.

Anyway, Amazon has listed three box sets containing 1-16, 17-32, and 33-49.

If I get a full time job for the new school year, where I'll be making 3 times the amount I am now, I'll probably pick them up.

That's normal price in Japan. First off, everything costs more in Japan. I have a friend who lives out there and movie tickets are like $19. Secondly, from my understanding, DVDs/BDs are only bought by collectors, everyone else just rents them because of how little space they actually have in their homes. As such, they have to charge more to make up for the lower demand.

I don't get it either, but Japan seems to run on the exact opposite of what we learned in Economics.

lol

When I was working full time I could.

In Australia movie tickets are $19 - $23. :D However, luckily our DVDs are still $20-30 at full price so they're still affordable (they drop in price drastically after a short period).