So, its a friend of mine's birthday soon, and as she is a Alita fan too (and as my spy assistant informs me - does not have any Last Order volumes) - I thought of getting her the first four volumes.
Its a bargain on amazon. Most Last Order volumes are 4-for-3 deal.
So, I type in B... and amazon now already knows that I am looking for Battle Angle Alita. Or BAA Last Order.
So, I browse through the list and there are bunch of LOs but no volumes 2, 3 and 5. WTF?
Amazon should have those. So I dig around and find that they DO have volume 2, but still no 3 and 5.
OK... now I am getting nervous. What is wrong here? Is someone buying off all early volumes?
I mean.. I could understand not enough volumes 2 but there should be a bunch of volume 5s, right?
Its newer and besides, there is no logic in someone hoarding them and buying every last one while leaving all 3s and 4s, right?
So... I go to viz.com to check THEIR stock.
Guess what?
They don't have a SINGLE Alita manga in stock. Nothing! Zip! Zilch! Nada! Null!
Not any Last Orders, not any Battle Angles - nothing.
They don't even have it listed in their online shop.
Not being known to be easy on a keyboard - I decide to write them an e-mail.
You know... to ask WTF is going on. Where are all the Alitas? Both on VIZ and Amazon.
I mean... I KNOW that they did a reprint of the whole BAA line, and that they are still printing LO line (and changing the motherfuckin' logos 3 fuckin' times during that) - and yet there are none in their
manga store.
They have Banana Fish but no Alita.
I click "send" and go back to amazon to dig around some more.
AAAND... to my relief - I find someone's list with accurate links to all the Alita mangas.
Amazon DOES have them all - only their search algorithm apparently sucks.
Can't find them through a search, can't find them in "related products" list, but they ARE there. Strange.
So, I send volumes 1-4 to my friends address and file the whole thing under "weird".
BUT...
5 days later - I got an email from VIZ.
To several paragraphs of my questions and inquiries for explanation I got this:
WOW!
Not only did they NOT answer my questions, or godforbid restocked their personal online shop where every penny stays "in house" - they send me to a competitor's site.
You know - like some other company that also licenses, prints and distributes manga and anime.
Someone who might also sell me something else, or inform me of some other product that I might consider giving my hard earned ca$h for...
You know... sucke... I mean customer relations.
Also, note that they don't know (or care about) the correct name of their own licensed title. (Battle AliLta)
Idjits.
