Arrow Booklets: An International Tragedy

[fdm]

Kind of surprised me that Shogun's Joy of Torture from Arrow came without a booklet. No idea if there was a slip.

[swo17]

Kind of surprised me that Shogun's Joy of Torture from Arrow came without a booklet. No idea if there was a slip.

I bought the US edition early on. It had a booklet but no slip

[Ribs]

No booklet in US edition of Invisible Man Appears from BN.

[swo17]

Really? I just ordered it from there a month ago and it still had one

[Telstar]

Any suggestions on the best way to locate a couple of missing Arrow booklets? Are there sites where people sell or trade them?

[swo17]

Search eBay for listings with pictures that physically verify inclusion of a booklet

[Ovader]

Received Bicycle Thieves and Bloody Spear at Mount Fuji from a late August Zavvi purchase and both have booklets.

[DeprongMori]

FWIW, I just received Nightfall through Rarewaves, and no booklet. Not too surprised as it’s been out a while.

I really wish Arrow would follow the Indicator model and issue the initial pressing under a different SKU.

[Telstar]

Am I missing something or has the re-vamped Arrow website eliminated booklet downloads?

[Glowingwabbit]

FWIW, I just received Nightfall through Rarewaves, and no booklet. Not too surprised as it’s been out a while.

I really wish Arrow would follow the Indicator model and issue the initial pressing under a different SKU.

Agreed. it's why I skip their sales. If I don't buy it early on I tend to just wait for a used copy on eBay so I can confirm a booklet is included.

Since I see someone mentioned it in August I actually grabbed The Invisible Man Appears the other day from Amazon and got a booklet. So random.

[fdm]

Didn't open it, but it looked like there was no booklet in Over the Edge, just a card of some sort.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

Has anyone bought recently A Tale of Two Sisters with a slipcover but no booklet? (This happened to me a few years back with A Fish Called Wanda.) DiabolikDvd just re-stocked Sisters told me there was a slipcover but weren't completely certain of the booklet.

[Glowingwabbit]

Has anyone bought recently A Tale of Two Sisters with a slipcover but no booklet? (This happened to me a few years back with A Fish Called Wanda.) DiabolikDvd just re-stocked Sisters told me there was a slipcover but weren't completely certain of the booklet.

Doesn't the slipcover usually mean it will still have a booklet? I've never run into a release that still had the slipcover but no booklet.

[ryannichols7]

impressively Masumura's Black Test Car came from the Arrow sale with a booklet. let's see if Giants and Toys and Irezumi do too, but they're inexplicably backordered

[Adam X]

So it turns out the ability to dowload OOP booklets from Arrow's website is still there, it's just buried in your account page rather than on each individual title listing. I guess this might let them keep titles that go out of print further down the line, should it be maintained.

You'll find the listing under My Account/View My Points & Rewards/View all PDF's. No idea if anything's been added in the meantime.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

Is this the UK site? On the USA site you get "HTTP Error 404. The requested resource is not found." when you click on the title.

[Adam X]

Yeah, the UK site.

[Charles]

Just wondering if anyone has gone to the trouble of printing these, trimming to size, and storing with the discs.

I'm grateful they provide them, even while despising the need for it in the first place. What's mystifying to me, though, is the limited selection of PDFs. Especially when, of the three or four releases I'm missing the booklet for, there's a PDF available for only one of those titles.

[MichaelB]

Depending on what was in the original booklet, there may be copyright complications.

[tenia]

I also suspect there is a certain latency for the PDF to be put online. Most of the ones available at the moment are from 2019 and older, it seems the most recent is from Edge of the Axe, which was released in January 2020.

[Charles]

I don't see release dates on their pages, but no matter -- that does make sense in regard to those I ordered "just a little bit late".

[therewillbeblus]

Irezumi - no booklet

[DeprongMori]

At this point, unless I’m pre-ordering something, I’ve pretty much given up on Arrow releases. The “first run with booklets” is apparently so small these days as to disappoint regularly. I needed an excuse to cut down on my disc purchases anyway, and this constant disappointment with Arrow upon opening their mystery packages has finally pushed me to drop Arrow in general. JSA, which only came out last January, arrived sans booklet this week.

If they ever start following the model of BFI (where the first run with booklets is large enough not to sell out immediately) or Indicator (where the second printing is a different SKU, so you always know exactly what you are getting), I’ll reconsider.

[dwk]

I've gotten to the point that unless an Arrow limited edition has an extra film I'll usually wait for the standard edition. I'm fine will missing their booklets because I have found the majority range from worthless to passable. Very few contain content that seems vital. (Of course this could just be me, as there is not much film writing that I am finding worth my time.)

[rapta]

At this point, unless I’m pre-ordering something, I’ve pretty much given up on Arrow releases. The “first run with booklets” is apparently so small these days as to disappoint regularly. I needed an excuse to cut down on my disc purchases anyway, and this constant disappointment with Arrow upon opening their mystery packages has finally pushed me to drop Arrow in general. JSA, which only came out last January, arrived sans booklet this week.

If they ever start following the model of BFI (where the first run with booklets is large enough not to sell out immediately) or Indicator (where the second printing is a different SKU, so you always know exactly what you are getting), I’ll reconsider.

BFI titles with booklets are occasionally running out spectacularly fast though. Bait was one example, and the limited edition It Couldn't Happen Here is long gone (and no booklet in the reissue), to give another. Bait actually ran out on pre-order, which was a surprise.

I know what you mean though, I've given up chasing them and just aim to get a booklet if I can. If it's a title I care more about (or am interested in more than the average person), I usually go for the LE which guarantees a booklet, and otherwise just buy the title as soon as possible when it's on sale (so a few months after release). Don't mind paying £2 more for a title than it would be 3-6 months later if it guarantees I get the full package. I've done that with the Matsumoto titles, for example, and have booklets for all of them. JSA is a film I love so I did pre-order that, but I think that was one of the last titles I actually pre-ordered from Arrow (and I think I just had some reward points to use anyway).

It's a complete gamble buying online though. I've had better luck with booklets from retailers rather than Arrow direct, but it completely depends which warehouse your order comes from and you could get newer stock which doesn't have booklets. That's happened to me a few times, so wherever I can I actually go to HMV and physically check on certain titles there and then rather than gamble (if they have said titles in stock of course).