Japanese audio commentary alert for ultimate weeaboos:
So, another package of animu came in and I decided to briefly check out some of the features that I was looking forward to.
So
Arakawa and
Arakawa 2 both have audio commentaries on over half of the episodes on each set... so it's clear that NISA can do these if they want to. So I figure that it's a problem with whoever owns these properties more than any translation or licensing costs. Omigawa makes an appearance in the season 2 commentaries, but strangely, she doesn't have her bleeding ear voice. It seems like she just has a generic high pitched Japanese seiyuu voice like everyone else, so the weird squeaky-scratchy thing is an affectation. Go figure. The commentaries also include one of the producers and the mangaka, so I assume there's a bit more in depth talk about the production of the anime than you would get with a pure seiyuu commentary.
I was half scammed into buying
Maria Holic/Maria Holic Alive (Sentai releases) by SDBurton who pointed out that they were on sale and as promised by the interwebs, there are audio commentaries on every single episode of
Maria Holic Alive. Episode 2 has the insane combination of Kobayashi + Sugita... it's too bad they couldn't be doing a commentary of one of the various episodes where Sa-chan stalks Gintoki instead.

Of course, as I started listening to the commentary, I also realized that I was also watching Maria Holic Alive and that even having Kobayashi and Sugita talking about the episode wasn't enough to get me to actually watch it again. At least it was on sale. lol
This just gets me thinking though... the licensors really need to work harder on getting features and supplemental materials to make their releases more attractive to would be pirates. I've seen commentaries get subbed in releases of "real" films, so I'm glad that this is beginning to be a trend in anime - it's a pretty great value add for someone like me anyhow. At least it's more interesting than the standard Funimation release, which is usually just a dub with a commentary by the dub actors... two things that I have no interest in listening to at all.