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The question everyone wants to know is: Where the HECK can I get my hands on BeruBara?
Fear not! I have come to the rescue ;) This page is divided into sections with resources where you can purchase the various versions of BeruBara.
Official Berubara goods
Power Ambitious -- it's got a funny name, but it is THE official shop for Berubara, and they are adding new merchandise on a monthly basis (or faster!) They even have an international storefront and accept orders from overseas (hurrah!) so you can grab almost anything you see there. They even sell the recently-released BeruBara DVDs!
Manga
BeruBara manga, although now more than 30 years old, is suprisingly easy to acquire. While it might not be in-stock at your favorite store, I have had no problems getting it special-request, as new versions of the manga have been recently printed. My personal suggestion is for the Aizouban set--it's the entire manga story in two volumes. The pages are more than twice the size of normal manga, so the pictures are larger (yay!) You also get some color extras at the beginning of each volume, as well as the "Gaiden", which is the 10th manga book, at the end of the 2nd volume. If you want the manga in traditional size and format, the Shuueisha Bunko set are also very easy to order (they are 5 manga in all).
You can order any of the manga through Power Ambitious, but if you want to order outside of Japan, try:
Sasuga Books I ordered the BeruBara Aizouban set from here, and while they didn't have it in-stock at the store they were able to get it for me within a WEEK!
Anime
Power Ambitious is the only place I know of thus far where you can order the two DVD box sets of BeruBara (see link at the top of the page). They're not cheap at $230 per box set (40 episodes comes to $460... hmm). And as BeruBara was never licensed in the United States, there is no region-1 release on DVD for purchase. So, assuming you want to see the anime with subtitles, you have to rely on fansubs.
Anime-Urchins was the first group to release the BeruBara fansubs in electronic format for download. They ripped the SVHS fansubs, so the picture is not DVD-clear and the files are huge, but the series is released in its entiretly as of 1/2004, so they were *my* source and I thank them heartily.
Live-Evil has recently begun releasing their OWN fansub of BeruBara with the video ripped from the DVDs! This is very exciting news for BeruBara fans as the picture is amazingly clear and the files are much smaller. As of May 2004, they are about half way done releasing the episodes.
If you have a slow connection or are not computer savvy and want to get BeruBara fansubs on VHS, here is a list of places I've found that say they provide all the episodes on VHS:
Anime-Jin
Hikari's Anime Distribution
A list (I'm not sure how up to date it is) of ALL fansubbers offering BeruBara at various stages of completion (as in, not all of them have all 40 episodes).
If you have a laser-disc player (!!), CDJapan is still offering the laserdisc release of BeruBara here (scroll down).
Music
If you want the BeruBara soundtrack (which I recommend!), the CD can be easily purchased from CD Japan.
There are TONS of bootleg versions of the soundtrack available, but as they are illegal I'm not going to promote their websites (sorry!)
Live-Action Movie (Lady Oscar)
Before 2003, the only way to see Lady Oscar was on a bad black and white VHS copy, dubbed in Italian with English subtitles. Yuck! The movie was done IN English, so that's how I wanted to see it. In 2003 Yamato Video (in Italy) actually made a DVD release of Lady Oscar with cleanly mastered video (color!) and audio (stereo Dolby in English!). As this is an Italian DVD, that means it's region 2, so make sure your player is compatible. This DVD is pretty easy to find in online Italian stores, but here's the store I used:
Muscara.com takes PayPal and I got the movie within a week of purchase, and I recommend them. They also offer the Italian release of BeruBara (it's licensed in Italy but not in the US!!) so if you know Italian, you can get the DVDs with Japanese dialogue with Italian subtitles. No English though (here's a petition to get the series released in English and in region 1!!)
Versailles no Bara and all associated intellectual property are © Riyoko Ikeda.
Everything on this website was legally procured by the site author, CCS, for the sake of sharing the fandom on the internet. Please do not take anything here as it was a lot of work and money to gather.
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