Urusei Yatsura in English: 1992 to 2011

I suppose it had to happen one day. AnimEigo has announced that their Urusei Yatsura licence is to expire in September 2011. Mind you the discs have been out of print since 2006 or so. I went through some of the old anime magazines and found this advert;
(Click on image for larger version)

Yes, for the extraordinarily low price of $39.95 per tape (and you kids have the gall to whinge about anime prices today! Get off my lawn!) and they'd have the whole thing out by late 1996! OK, so they managed to barely get half the series out by that time, and the final batch of episodes were eventually released in 2006. The point is they managed to release the lot and the company never gave up on it. It is the end of an era though. I really doubt we'll see this series in English in any format ever again. With AnimEigo giving up on "Yawara!", it's also the end of another era in anime. It's doubtful they'll license anymore anime.