The Anime SKUs series takes a look at anime publishers and the formats of their stock-keeping unit numbers, or SKUs. Join us as we applaud consistency and complain about things nobody ever cared about.
Today on Anime SKUs we’re looking at the defunct American publisher Urban Vision. Between 1996 and 2005, they released about 30 titles on VHS and DVD. They used a very simple SKU format, and are a great place to start.
All Urban Vision titles feature both a UPC-A and an ISBN-10, both printed on the back of the release.
All UPCs are in the block:
6-38652-xxxxx-c
And all ISBNs are in the block:
1-890603-xx-c
There does not appear to be a direct relation between the UPC and ISBN.
UPC reuse is rare, only occurring with the Best Buy Exclusive editions of Ninja Scroll: The Series volumes 1, 2, and 3, all of which share both UPC and SKU with the respective standard editions.
All Urban Vision titles, without exception, took the following format:
UVαααα
Where αααα is digits 7-10 of the UPC code.
All titles released on VHS were released both subbed and dubbed with the exceptions of Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust and Ninja Scroll: The Series, which were dub-only.
For all VHS, the SKU of the subtitled version of each volume is the dubbed SKU plus one (i.e. Dubbed: UV1003, Subbed: UV1004). VHS box sets, always released after the singles, were always dub only.
All anime DVDs except Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust are dub/sub.
Urban Vision benefited from a simple SKU scheme, and a very small number of titles but as we’ll see in later episodes, most distributors are far more complex, with multiple patterns and tons of exceptions.
As always, if I made a mistake, or you feel I interpreted something incorrectly, let me know down below! I want this article to serve as a reference source, and I will attempt to keep it updated with any needed changes.
Title Image Source: Animerica Magazine Vol. 6, No. 1 (Jan 1998) [via AnimeNostalgiaBomb]
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