This tweet of an e-mail from CDJapan has been floating around this morning, stating that they’ve been asked to stop sending Avex Pictures-related material to their foreign customers. I got this e-mail as well, for what it’s worth.

This isn’t actually entirely new a situation – Amazon JP have actually been quietly cancelling a number of Avex pre-orders for the last few weeks. I know a few who have had their copies of the surprisingly great Scorching Ping Pong Girls recently cancelled out from under them, for example. This kind of just makes the situation here rather more clear, given that Amazon used to have a habit of over-reaching some of their shipping exclusions whenever someone published game-soft out-of-character in the past. This is actually deliberate rather than an accident for once.

As a part-time WUGner, and someone who has a habit of import PriPara CDs, it’s rather a frustrating situation, with both of those properties being under the Avex umbrella. It’s also pretty weird given that they’ve been things like WUG events in Taiwan in recent months.

Avex have a lot of pokers in a lot of fires, though, which makes speculation as to what exactly is going on here somewhat fruitless. The price disparity between Japan and the rest of the world when it comes to the video media does tend to make me wonder if it’s something to do with near-neighbour territory music licensing moves, though it could just as well be about foreign market exploitation of PriPara or other children’s cartoon properties.

It’s kind of an annoying situation all around, though.