Every so often, the anime community goes through a period of collective gnashing of teeth over the state of the industry, often triggered by the comments of some insider or commentator describing how the industry has one foot in the grave and [insert target du jour] is entirely to blame. Eventually, the ruckus dies down and everyone goes back to doing things the way they’ve always done them, fans and industry alike, patiently waiting for the next crisis to come along and whip the community into a frenzy yet again.
Honestly, it’s getting old. I think we all generally accept the idea that things to need to change. There’s plenty of disagreement with regard to how and why, of course, but I think most serious fans and industry insiders recognize that there’s trouble on the horizon and wish to do something about it. Very little changes, though. The trouble draws nearer, the teeth gnashing repeats itself, and we’re left waiting for a “come to Jesus” moment that may never arrive.
In a lot of ways, the tempest currently building within in the anime community in response to these comments from GDH International President Arthur Smith is more of the same old story and routine. However, unlike before, industry insiders are opening up and speaking candidly about both the troubled state of the industry and what needs to be done to ensure its survival. In fact, ever since the collapse of Geneon Entertainment, the conversation between fans and the industry has become increasingly intimate. At first blush, this may seem like a positive development. However, I think it’s more an indication of how dire a situation the industry has found itself in that it’s laying itself bare in front of fans in a death bed appeal for mercy.
I’m not surprised, really. For some time now, I’ve worked to suppress the gut feeling that things were only going to get worse before they got better. Even more troubling is the knowledge that we’re all culpable in some way. Clueless distributors, selfish fans, deluded fansubbers: we’ve all been happily shooting ourselves in the foot for years now, and we’re finally on the verge of bleeding to death. But it’s because we’re all responsible that pointing fingers is a fool’s errand. It’s posturing, at best, for an industry representative to blame fansubbers for its pain and suffering without expressing a willingness to pursue legal and financial recourse in response. And for fansubbers to lay the responsibility for poor sales at the feet of the industry alone conveys ignorance in the fundamental role they themselves played in bringing about that situation. Nor can I and many other fans caught in the middle point fingers, for we’ve played both sides to our own benefit for years now.
So, what to do? I don’t know. I agree with the idea that change needs to first occur within Japan if the anime industry wishes to avoid wholesale collapse. It’s far too late to avoid a correction, I think; the damage has long been done, and only a correction can save the industry from collapsing entirely. Time is running out, however. And, unfortunately, that’s cause for great concern. Firsthand experience has taught me that reluctance to change is deeply ingrained in Japanese business culture, and statements emanating from the Japanese anime industry with regard to fansubbing and the American market clearly illustrate that they don’t yet realize how broken their international business model is. Or perhaps they do realize, and they’re not yet willing to admit to it. Either way, I have little reason to be optimistic.
Of course, a correction, even if ugly, doesn’t mean the end of anime as we know it. Studios will go under and people will lose their jobs, of course. That’s regrettable, no doubt, and the negative impact such an offloading of talent will have on the quality and diversity of anime we’ve come to enjoy in recent years will be keenly felt. However, the market for anime will continue to exist, as will the means of production. In the end, a correction may simply mean less anime. It’s up to every individual anime fan to decide if that’s a positive outcome or not.
It’s reasonable, I think, to see a correction as inevitable. In discussing the state of the industry with a friend far less sympathetic to its plight recently, I heard the argument that, “If they’re so bad off, why are they producing so much anime?” My response, of course, was that “they’re so bad off” precisely because they’ve been producing so much anime. The promise of funding from overseas led to an increase in the number of projects, and when that funding didn’t materialize as anticipated, the chickens came home to roost. A number of Japanese studios and distributors have mortgaged their futures on lofty expectations for the international market. In fact, I’d argue none moreso than the aforementioned GDH International. If I were Arthur Smith, I’d be sweating bullets right now, too.
When all is said and done, however, I’m just one of many anime fans who, despite seeing the trouble on the horizon, can’t do much to effect change. I can write a thousand words on the subject, as I have today, but the reality is: I don’t have the answer. Like most everyone reading, I’m just along for the ride, hairpin curves and all. However, I have an incredible passion for anime, so watching as a spectator as the industry races downhill toward the edge of a cliff is frustrating, to say the least.
Perhaps gnashing of teeth is all we can do, after all.
The ever deepening hole Japanese animation is falling into has some other problems which are compounding the issue as well. Japanese studios can no longer rely on the low price of heiring a Korean animation studio to complete the bulk of their work, which was fairly common not so long ago. Korean studios are now in higher demand now than ever, working on variety of projects from inhouse to European productions, driving the price of Korean animation up to prices comparable to Japanese domestic studios.
Anime is typically animated on 3s (i.e. every third frame) as opposed to the North American and European heavy use of 2s or 1s. This has historically been due to tight deadlines and a lack of funding. Even when animating just on 3s, the monetary worth of anime has fallen so far that many studios are having a hard time funding significant animated sequences. I’m sure you’ve noticed those not so pleasant animation tricks slowly becoming more and more prevalent in anime, and the decreasing funding in the cause.
This has left the anime industry in quite the bind. Decreasing budgets with increasing production costs: not a good place to be. If you’ve attended the last few SIGGRAPHs you’ll notice that there has been a lot of Japanese development in cell shading technologies, not particularly because they’re anywhere close to being able to replicate traditional techniques, but because the Japanese animation industry needs a cheap way to animate. Certainly cell shading does have advantages over traditional techniques, since it quite possible to produce very dynamic scenes that would be otherwise impossible, but the trade off is loosing the almost all of the traditional techniques of distorting and emphasizing appearances and movements. An example of this would be the recent SOS! Tokyo Metro Explorers which served as a test bed for a new cell shading system.
I think you’re fooling yourself if you believe it’s impossible for the Japanese animation industry to implode. There is a very distinct possibility that traditional animation will take a nose dive in Japan due to production costs. It was not so long ago that the North America went from making feature length traditionally animated pieces animated on every single frame, to having no traditional animation capacity at all with the closure of Disney’s last animation studio in Australia. Think about that for a second. This is the company that practically invented traditional animation and they became the last North American traditional animation studio. Layoffs began in 2000, the closure of Orlando and Paris followed in 2003 and 2004, then the last remnants of Walt Disney Feature Animation were canned in 2005 with the closure of DisneyToon in Australia, which was Disney’s low budget direct to video studio. It’s only now with the return of Lasseter to Disney that North American traditional animation has a chance once again.
Look at the working conditions at Japanese studios. We have people working an average of around 10 hours a day for mostly less than $20,000 a year — that’s less than the starting salary of animator in North America, and less than half of the average North American animator. All this in a nation that has one of the highest costs of living, and holds the dubious honour of having the single most expensive region to live in on Earth. Productions like Blood+ were made with a staff paid so little that the entire staff, including voice actors had day jobs. Now we have the makers of Steamboy looking at replacing traditional animation with cell shading techniques. Steamboy, the most expensive and longest animation production in Japanese history ($26 million and over a decade of work). Things are not bad in the Japanese animation industry, they’re a complete mess.
It was either Lasseter or Catmull who commented that it was sad to think that their work at Pixar contributed to the death of traditional animation in North America, and I think it might very well be fans of anime who will be echoing this sentiment in the future.
From the article you link to:
5. Foreign fans think that watching fansubs is not hurting the industry. What do you think about this?
Let me give a very clear message to each and every fan who thinks that: You are totally WRONG. Fan subs are DEFINITELY hurting the industry A LOT because they are part of the illegal file sharing activities going on everywhere on the web – how else can anyone explain why the overall DVD market in US is down 15% and anime DVD market, even though interest in anime is GROWING much faster than other types of programming, is down 30%!! How can that be, if not through the impact of file sharing!?!
I dunno, maybe because 80% of the anime released over here is crap, or is aired on CN, or whatever? I don’t doubt for a minute that fansubs hurt Naruto sales, but I can honestly say there wouldn’t've been a chance in hell I’d've spent ~$170 for the Haruhi limited-edition without fansubs.
Nor would I be preparing myself to shell out whatever ADV asks for their release of Kanon ‘06, and gladly, without having seen the ’subs.
Youtube can (and probably should, legally) DIAF for allowing whole anime episodes to be posted, but I think Mr Smith above knows the problem isn’t entirely (or even mostly) fansubbing: it’s that the material licensed stinks on ice, mostly.
Thanks for the insightful comment, David. Indeed, the problems facing the industry are many; fansubbing is just part of the whole.
I don’t think it’s impossible that the Japanese animation industry could implode, but I also don’t think established industries implode as a matter of course minus some sort of external stimulus: for example, obsolescence resulting from the development of new technology, major political upheaval or natural disaster, or a fundamental change in the marketplace. Clearly, certain distributors and studios are overextended and on tenuous footing, but I don’t believe all are in the same boat. That’s why I feel a correction in the market is more likely to occur in the near term, with some companies going under and others surviving. Essentially, I see a smaller industry before I see no industry at all. Whether or not it’ll be a smarter industry, I don’t know.
But beyond that, your guess is as good as mine.
Part of the defensiveness I feel whenever I read a “FANSUBS ARE RUINING THE INDUSTRY” editorial is that I look at my collection of fansubs, then I look at my collection of anime bought due to those fansubs, and I have a hard time trying to establish how the Fall Of The Anime Industry is my fault, as the editorials like to claim.
I suppose I just want to have my cake and eat it too. I probably wouldn’t buy as much anime as I do without fansubs. In fact, without fansubs or raws released on the Internet, I definitely wouldn’t buy as much anime as I do, because so many anime blogs I trust with their episode summaries rely on these. So I’m downloading these fansubs, or encouraging the downloads by visiting the sites of people who download fansubs, and then I buy the anime.
And because of this, I’m apparently guilty of causing the death of the anime industry.
There really isn’t anything else I can do other than the wailing and gnashing of teeth.
And of course there’s those like me who don’t even know what issue your talking about while likely blindly adding to the problem XD
Everybody hates talking about this topic, probably because it means a lot of things will change in the future. But the worse part about this topic is that neither side is wrong: the fansubbers have got some perfectly good reasons, as do the studios:
A typical fansub these days might approach or exceed DVD quality, due to HDTV raws. At least in the US, Blu-ray and high-res copies are rare, if not non-existent. The actual subtitles on a fansub can also approach or exceed professional quality: this is particularly true in niche situations, where there’s dedicated fans who might check the animation subs and script to the original source material, if an adaptation. (Read: NNL and perfection insanity)
It’s pretty hard to accept, as an animation studio/US importer, that some lackeys are doing your job as well. Or better, even. For free.
The easy answer to the dilemma would be to render the fansubbers’ warrants for piracy useless.
In order to do that, a company could offer faster downloads from a high-bandwidth source, with standard ASS subs, on or within a week of the original Japanese broadcast. Levy a couple of cents per kilobyte—or the minimum to keep the budget in the black. After the reputation’s been established, the fees can slowly creep up, and you’ve restablished market value and payment options.
Do it faster and better. Then people might pay.
What happened to all the previous revenue?
Part of the problem is (or was) the dependence on advertisements–at least when it comes to the Japanese market. Cut out the ads, and you cut out a lot of the revenue, since the folks buying the ad slots won’t be happy with you for poor viewership.
Similarly, if a company relies on after-air sales of a show on DVD/Blu-ray/whatever, piracy can easily snip their revenue to zero.
The Anime News Network piece is pretty much spot on about the assessment of market worth. It doesn’t exist these days.
It’s not only the anime industry’s problem, though. There’s all sorts of media companies that are worrying around the world over the Internet and the advent of digital. The market’s become nearly impossible to control in any traditional sense. Sure, there have been a couple of shots at it, e.g., the iTunes video store. Piracy still runs rampant nonetheless, and Hollywood is resorting to lawsuits left and right to combat their decreasing revenue.
Hollywood is dealing with this issue right now, in a different way. They’ve resorted to scare tactics and lawsuits. Their revenue is falling due to piracy, and the content that they’re producing has tended towards lower production and writing values. While not quite in the end stages like the anime industry, they’re getting there. All the signs point toward some breaking point.
If the anime industry can solve this problem, it’d be a pretty large landmark case in marketing, business, and how to deal with the new digital “economy.”
I’d have to say that, at least in my books, fansubs aren’t nearly the whole story. The problem is an age-old one, and something that’s not easily corrected… or for that matter, I’m not sure if it’s one we CAN correct. As you noted, there’s a LOT of stuff out there - of which much, if not most, will end up as a money-hole because it either won’t fit the tastes of the target market… or else there’s too much OTHER stuff out there for everyone to keep up with. Licensors over here have picked up a bunch of series over the years, expecting the market to expand in a way which it hasn’t - I’m not saying that the market’s not bigger than it was maybe 5-10 years ago, but it’s not ‘movie purchasing public’ size which drives DVD sales for companies like Disney and Universal and WB.
To whoever says fansubs are hurting the industry - I will say this; at least in Japan, they get to SEE the fucking things on TV before buying them. So, if you want me to buy Mai-Otome… let me see it somewhere. Oh, it’s not on Cartoon Network or an anime channel? Well, it looks like I won’t be buying it then. I need to see what I’m buying - which means seeing it at a con (which I go to once a year, and I wonder how many anime DVD purchases are made by people who head to conventions versus ones who may have seen them elsewhere first) or at a friend’s (who has more money than I probably do - cost of living is going up).
So, how do you fix the problem? You cut down on your licenses first - there’s too much junk out there I wouldn’t have bought anyways that got licensed (Ergo Proxy), and some stuff which I would’ve bought but wasn’t or which is being sat on by a company (Keroro Gunso/Sgt Frog) for quite a while… often long enough that I may have forgotten about the show, or don’t feel as compelled to buy it because you shipped it out four years after it aired. Geneon, whatever its faults, did a good job getting product out there in a reasonable timeframe - Black Lagoon showed up in the US about a half-year after it aired in Japan, and Strawberry Marshmallow rolled onto the scene not quite a year after its initial Japanese airing. Even Mai-OTOME didn’t take 3 years to go out… whereas some series seem to take literally ages to swing onto store shelves, by which time everyone’s either forgoten about it or else is looking for the next hot product (Haruhi, et al).
Maybe Internet distribution is the wave of the future, or at least a way to publicize your license before it hits the stores, to see if it’s worth pressing onto DVD’s. Streaming official ‘fansub-like’ broadcasts, perhaps? Let the buyer view it before you spend the however many million dollars dubbing the title, to gauge interest?
This is a great piece of work by Jeff, and great comments. Unfortunately I have an exam in approximately 20 minutes. Bookmarked for later reading.
You know, it blows my mind that there’s no legal way for me to obtain and watch an episode of anime within a day of it airing in Japan. The technology exists, of course. And fansubbers have proven that you can translate and subtitle an episode in a matter of days for added value. So, it’s not like an effective internet distribution model is some sort of “pie in the sky” scheme. Fansubbers have already figured out the production and distribution aspect.
There are DRM issues to consider, of course. How do you protect your content without being overly restrictive? And there remains the issue of fansubs. I’m of the general opinion that most fansub viewers are unwilling to pay money for anime, regardless of the format or distribution method, so even if the industry were to find a way to commercialize the fansub model, non-commercial fansubbing would still continue to exist. If the model is to succeed, licenseholders are going to have to exercise their legal rights and start going after fansubbers.
I would gladly pay for official “fansub-like” releases, assuming the price is reasonable, the video quality is similar to current fansub releases (if not better), the format isn’t overly restrictive, I can keep a local copy, and I don’t have to buy a bunch of expensive hardware in order to watch it. When I buy anime on DVD, I’m essentially paying around $5 per episode. I would assume these “fansub-like” releases would be cheaper; $3 per episode, for example. At the moment, I watch about 35 episodes of fansubbed anime in a month. So, at $3 per episode, that’s about $105 per month. I could easily live with that.
But I’m also aware of the fact that I have more expendable income than the average anime fan, so whether or not enough people can live with $105 per month (or whatever) to make such a distribution scheme profitable, I can’t say. I have my doubts.
I wanted to put my 2penith worth in prior to reading everything in full.
I feel that im borderline when it comes to exploiting the free side of the internet, this isnt because im tight but as has already been said it’s as much a problem with whats on offer. The market from shops like HMV/Virgin in the UK are rather lacking and with things like Fruits Basket to Gantz its just lagging behind.
Although not really comparable, Valve and Steam seem to be working great, its a nice easy and cost effective way of downloading games for a good ~£5 less than normal. Downloading a game as opposed to having a hard copy is a nice convenience. More importantly i think that the download/pay for anime system would work, i for one wouldnt mind paying for something i indulge in so much.
Really interesting read though! If only some of these ideas came into fluition… I feel like im only really starting to get into anime so i dont feel like i could let it end now. As is it feels like i have too many bare shelves that should be packed with the latest boxsets and collectables.
When I say implosion, I don’t mean that there will be no animation left in Japan, but rather that there is a distinct possibility that traditional animation will become virtually extinct like it did in both North America and Europe. Traditional animation is no longer cheap, and Japanese studios are feeling the squeeze more than most because of their very tight budgets.
Right now there is external pressure on the Japanese animation industry: their source of cheap animation labour has suddenly become expensive, while the market’s expansion rate is fairly poor at best. The end result is lower budgets and more expensive production costs. You will not see another Steamboy made in the foreseeable future, hence why Sunrise and Bandai Visual are investing so heavily in alternative techniques.
I’m certain that there will be a smaller industry in future, and this does not particularly concern me. What concerns me is that what we know as anime in terms of look and feel might become rare.
On another subject, a lot of people here are talking as though making a complete commercial digital distribution system is as simple as cobbling together existing systems. This won’t fly, period. If such were the case, the music and movie industry would be all rainbows and sunshine right now and Apple wouldn’t be making money hand over fist via iTunes. I’ve actually worked on systems there service millions of users with dozens if not hundreds of transactions per a day. It takes a lot more effort than most people realize to develop and support such a system. When a company commercializes and deploys such a system, the expectations for quality of service and breadth of features are far higher than when a similar service is provided non-commercially.
What I would like to make absolutely clear is that systems like iTunes, Steam, Xbox Live, etc. are serious undertakings requiring more than a few man years of work. You can’t just slap everything on Bittorrent and call it a day.
The crux of the matter is that Japanese budgets are being stretched thin right now. Very thin. How can you expect these companies, with very little to no expertise in software, to heavily invest in the very costly development of a digital distribution system when they aren’t even willing to pay their animators enough to reasonably live off of? If anything, someone needs to come up with a reasonable digital distribution system for videos (something that does not exist right now btw), the the Japanese industry needs to standardize on such a system.
I do agree with you that license holders need to start clamping down on fansubs, and fast.
Correction:
was:
“I’ve actually worked on systems there service millions of users with dozens if not hundreds of transactions per a day.”
should be:
“I’ve actually worked on systems that service millions of users with dozens if not hundreds of transactions per a user per a day.”
I’ve been thinking about this alot lately and I’ve done some soul searching to figure out exactly where I stand on this. On one hand I definitely want to support the industry but on the other hand there is very little anime worth $5+ an episode. On one hand I know downloading is technically stealing but I really think downloading fansubbed anime has increased the amount of dvd’s I have bought. (And exactly how is downloading licensed anime different from a money standpoint than checking it out from the local library?)
This is what I’ve come up:
I’d being willing to pay $3 to download a DRM-free episode (at the same resolution as the tv broadcast) of anime the same day it’s first shown in Japan as long as the sub quality is at least that of the fansubs. If I have to wait to be able to download or it has any sort of DRM than it’s worth is much less and I’d probably wouldn’t pay more than dollar an episode. There really is no point to add DRM since free fansubs will always be available to those who want them. This would be enticing to fansubbers because the newness of anime is definitely worth something and being able to trust a weekly release of their favorite new series (and not having to worry about a fansub group dropping or not releasing for weeks/months) is worth something. Also, If the companies use bittorrent and reward people who share in great amounts by giving them free or discounted anime then they would be minimize how much bandwidth they need to buy and keep costs down.
Also I’d be willing to pay $30-$40 a month for a channel on tv that shows subbed anime the same day it’s shown in japan as well as older anime. This satisfies the fans saying how anime is shown on tv in Japan and people can watch before they buy the dvd’s.
As a reader of science fiction, I’m constantly bombarded with how print science fiction is dying and within only a few years it will be dead and yet it still kicking. My dad works at a steel mill in America and they can pay people $20/hour and still make a profit against steel made in countries paying their workers
It takes 6-9-12+ months to get a show over partly because of licensing and the business end of it. Even if a lot of shows are licensed ahead of their JP air debut, the red tape is a large part of the delay.
On the actual topic, I think there are already adjustments that are being made. Kadokawa expanding their red tape empire over to the US along with Geneon’s so-called collapse are both new means to combat these issues. Even Koei’s experimental releases a few years back. But changes take time and it will get worse first before it gets better. (Tip: it ends in -zation. And it is indirectly one way to combat the problem with expensive animation production. And Korean in-betweening is slowly being squeezed out by the Vietnamese and Chinese, as an aside.)
And hey, we have things like bosttv. (What the hell is that?) Or the ability to see Death Note just… 6 months after it airs? I think things are starting to change already since some time ago.
Jeff: The problem HERE is that the solutions you and others have proposed are too simplistic, as David Ma points out; there’s an underlying assumption that the companies can and will have the infrastructure in place quickly, and have ways to deploy it that will be acceptable to the people who are currently watching free fansubs.
And you know what? I can almost guarantee you that they won’t go the rational route - they’ll DRM it to hell and back, downgrade the video quality to 320×240 or something similar, and then expect us to pay $10-20 per episode, the way American TV broadcasters are trying to charge viewers by moving off of iTunes onto their own networks. And the end result will probably be killing the goose laying the golden eggs… as those who won’t buy anime will keep on not buying it, and those who DID buy anime when they were able to see it first end up moving onto video games or other hobbies which they can get into without serious investments in technology which may end up abandoned, like Virgin UK did to a bunch of people when they closed up a music shop… which left the DRM’d songs without a way to authenticate, and thus became no more than useless files clogging up hard drives everywhere.
Just suing the hell out of fansubbers won’t fix a damned thing, and that’s the easy route that they’re all going to take. They WILL clamp down on the distribution to the point where their meagre sales will drop even further, with the end result that we’ll see 50 iterations of Naruto, DBZ, and Yu-Gi-Oh, and not one Minami-ke over here, not one Lucky Star, no Haruhi’s, and the newest title will be Keroro Gunso… which itself has been rolling for over three years now over there.
You know what the worst part of this whole mess is? Those people who see those videos somewhere and buy the anime when it hits stores will be the ones affected most by any of these changes proposed in the open letter… and without any replacement method to distribute, or even keep their interest in the material (knowing they’re going to get sued will pretty much mean they’re likely to give up on anime entirely… especially since the licensors here insist on having the dubbed versions ready before releasing the product, which is part of the delay for shipping ‘new’ series a year or so after they came out overseas). And those who would never buy a show, who are the crux of the problem? They won’t be affected at all - they’ll find ways around the restrictions, or else go back to their Halo 3 and Metal Gear Solid 4… or pirate the hell out of Naruto DVD’s.
Personally, I think everyone’s messed up, and they’re too intent on blaming everyone else (fansubbers are evil, downloaders are evil, other bloggers are evil, the anime companies are putting out crap, the in-betweeners are too expensive) to fix the damned problem… or even to recognize it. Here’s how I see it: there’s a lot of shit out there, it costs money to animate series well, there’s a lot of competition now for entertainment dollars both here and in Japan (games are taking an increasingly big bite out of entertainment budgets for individuals and families), and the costs of everything are rising dramatically due to energy costs as well as a shift in the way the economies of the First World countries work (moving from manufacturing physical products to purely service or information-based industries, and the resulting dislocations of workforces, changes to business, etc).
(and it got cut off)
What can we do? For animators… well, the easy solution would be to put out fewer titles, which would cut down on the variety of things they’ve been producing the past twenty years, which is a shame. CG can only do so much - the infamous ‘dragon’ scene from Fate/Stay night shows how badly such things can be done. Will technological changes help? Software like Vocaloid 2 can already do a credible job recreating human song and voices in general; does this mean that in five years we’ll have no seiyuu, just computers reading scenes out? I doubt it, but the possibility that some parts of future shows will be different as the computers take over part of the animation duties (which again means the Koreans will be seeing some of their industries collapse, ditto the Vietnamese and Chinese), among other things.
For licensors, I really am torn by the idea that they will HAVE to license fewer titles, either because there’s fewer to be had, or because they want to get in a title that’ll have a good ROI. But how do you figure this out? Surveys? Surreptitiously monitoring downloads to see what shows get the most hits? Stick with Gundam, Naruto, and the shows which have manga licensed by TokyoPop, Viz, and Del Rey Manga? What’s the solution here? Technology won’t really help, except perhaps in reducing costs of production or distribution - streaming videos? Cable channels (which exclude the viewers who may not have access to that package, as it’s either not offered by their company or not available due to price considerations)? There are no good solutions for them that aren’t based on a change of attitude, IMO - either they have to recognize that illegal distribution is going to happen and find ways to combat it with ‘value-add’ (I think I mentioned something along these lines in a similar post on another blog) that gives people incentives for buying the show in a physical format. Bandai has had part of the answer here; Limited Editions which have bonus goods besides soundtracks - the ‘Japanese TV airing version’ was THE reason I bought the LE set. The other thing that might work, besides value-add, is ‘instant gratification’ - steelbound’s suggestion of a channel which shows ‘fairly current’ stuff is one I’ve advocated elsewhere, and it’d be one way of gauging interest in shows. Haruhi would NOT have made it over here without the brouhahaha it was generating on blogs and in channels; Bandai noticed this, and acted on it. Whoever it was who decided to ask Kadokawa to allow them to release TV-broadcast edition DVD’s was onto something…. and deserves some reward. I don’t know what the sales figures are for the regular-versus-LE Haruhi DVD’s, but mostly I saw the LE’s selling out while the ‘regular’ ones stayed in the stores, which suggests some people knew about the difference and decided to jump for the extra markup to get that DVD. Hell, Bandai had a website to promote the show along with the ASOSBrigade site and their MySpace profiles, and hidden text in the ASOSBrigade.com website. This, IMO, was a promotion of the series which was handled correctly, and with enough savvy to get people into the mindset to buy the show - community interaction is underrated as a way to hook people into obtaining a series.
For the viewers; well, it’s up to you to buy or not buy. It’s your decision, and if you don’t buy it… so be it. Maybe it’s time to move onto some other hobby besides anime; may I suggest manga? It’s a good value for someone like me, at least, and I’ve been turned to the manga for some of the shows which I’ve seen elsewhere (Ouran Host Club and Keroro Gunso come to mind). What other solution is there, outside of hoping it shows up on an anime channel (and paying money for that), or else supporting the companies which are shovelling the crap that you’d never buy down your throats? It’s time for the lot of you to put up or shut up… preferably by buying the stuff you like, and leaving the rest of it to rot on the shelves - but making sure to fill in those little cards they include int he DVD boxes to tell Bandai or whoever what series you like, so the licensors know it’s time to stop shipping more volumes of Gundam Wing.
Fansubbers USED to pull their titles once they were licensed, which at least showed a sense of honor. Fewer are doing this now, and some (I won’t name names) are pulling the stuff off DVD’s and resubbing it. And these are for titles which are LICENSED here… but they pulled off the raw feed and just put in their subs anyways. Look, guys and girls, you used to stop distribution once a title showed up on the license list; yes, it annoyed people to have you stop at Episode 5 of 13, but maybe it’s time to go back to that model. I know some of you are honorable folk who do it anyways, but please… maybe you could draw the line at pulling the raws off the DVDs for series which are licensed and already being sold in stores? “Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex - Solid State Society” is one such title that’s floating around the net.. and I think I was one of maybe ten people who waited for it to show up here to buy the DVD to watch it, rather than getting it through other means. I mean, they already told it us when it’d be out, and they didn’t wait two years like Viz did with some series to put them out. C’mon, maybe it’s time to take a step back from that.
And to the rest of you: bugger off - you’re all wrong, and none of you acknowledge that fact. It’s too late to do much at the moment except to brace ourselves for the collapse, then start blaming ANN or whatever blog you want for shitty reporting or something once the hammer falls.
As for the “the infrastructure is hard” issue, well, there is iTunes, it’s already selling video (including dubbed Funimation anime). All it would take is a studio agreeing to let Apple distribute their content (though I imagine there’d be some concern over the legibility of subtitles on an iPod’s tiny screen — I’ve seen it done, they were remarkably readable).
Another approach might be to work with Youtube — Youtube already shares ad revenues with some of the people who create content on it — change the basic Youtube page to one that’s maybe a little heavier on advertising.
Yes, the infrastructure is hard, but there’s infrastructure that you could leverage already in place. One problem might be that the anime industry are just too small to matter much to Apple or Youtube.
*omo:* On Korean animation outsourcing being squeezed out by Vietnamese and Chinese: they aren’t being squeezed out per se, but rather they have had much better offers to do non-Japanese projects; so why get paid less to do the same work? I wouldn’t include China as a country taking the place of Korea in Japanese animation at this point. Most Japanese studios are very reluctant to work with the Chinese right now due to non-economic reasons that are probably best not to touch on here. I’m sure the bottoming out of budgets will force Japanese studios to give Chinese animation houses a chance in as a whole, but not today.
*Haesslich:* DRM is hard subject. I think most of the problems with DRM stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of what product various industries are attempting to sell. Should be movies and music be treated as entirely intellectual property you purchase a license to use or should it be treated as a physical product? Right now the music and movie industry is trying to claim that it should be treated as both, and as such they should get the advantages of both without having to provide the consumer the advantages of either.
In the case of treating it as a perpetual licensed product, new resolutions of the same material, which has fundamentally not changed, should not be a chargeable product in a similar way software licenses typically are supported for sometime including major changes to the software. There should be no limitations on how many times you can download the material, nor restrictions on distribution of material — just restrictions on who can use the material (i.e. listen and read it).
In the case of treating it as a physical product, the ability to listen or watch the material should be transferable with the product but usage should be as a singleton. There should be no ability to restrict usage of the product as long as this condition is met.
Right now the situation is that the music and movie industry are trying to tell everyone that it’s both so the consumer should have none of the benefits of either, but all of the disadvantages of both. I don’t think everyone in a position in power is naive to these notions, but I think they’ll take the easy way out if presented with such a possibility (i.e. as long as people support such a model economically).
I don’t view the DRM issues as a problem with prices, those reflect the equilibrium points of the open market, but rather just one of logical feature sets and restrictions. As economics profs always love pointing out, no one is forcing you to purchase product X at price Y. If you don’t want to purchase it, then don’t.
I don’t think you’re right about exerting their legal rights having no affect on the situation. They need to exercise their claim on their own intellectual property if their DRM schemes and what not will have any impact at all. A right not exercised is no right at all. Piracy should not, and cannot be the norm if any of these commercialization ideas are going to survive. From a legal standpoint they are ceding their rights to their intellectual property into the public domain, and from a pragmatic standpoint they are allowing free distribution of their material outside of their own control undercutting their profits and ability to exert power over their own material.
Haesslich, I appended your additional thoughts to your previous comment.
Also, I’m about to call it a night, and since a contingent from Tokyo is arriving tomorrow, I’ll be pretty busy at the office. So, the discussion here will no doubt continue without me. I apologize for not being able to respond to each and every one of you individually.
But, by all means, please carry on.
David Ma: Yes, DRM’s main disadvantages are glaringly obvious to most people… usually when they try to do something with it. I’ve always leaned towards ‘DRM product should be like physical product - if I want to view it on a friend’s DVD player, I can do it. If I want to rip it to a memory card to view it on a PDA, a PMP, a PSP or even an iPod, I SHOULD be able to do that. That’s part of the iTunes problem - it’s a ‘one size fits all’ solution which means if you use Linux, if you want to view it on something other than an iPod’s 320×240 resolution, or if you want to view it on a friend’s PC… you’re hooped. And the general awareness level regarding DRM is changing - it used to be it didn’t matter too much to people, since they viewed it on their iPods or whatever. Now, they’ve got all those OTHER gadgets.. and either have to break the DRM on the file (troublesome, annoying) or else find themselves going to other sources (read: piracy) to get the files they want. The new attempts with “portable files on the DVD so you don’t have to rip it’ like on the new Die hard DVD are promising steps in that direction… but again, if you don’t have a device which supports the DRM (a non-WMP capable device), you’re stuck.
And it’s not as simple as ‘if you don’t like it, you don’t buy it’ - I’ve already indicated that as an option above. It’s getting more and more to the point that, for quite a few users, it’s becoming ‘if you don’t like it, you don’t buy it and instead pirate the hell out of it and damn the consequences’… which means everyone’s a loser in that scenario. With anime, the major issue here is that we don’t get to see the son-of-a-bitch until it’s dubbed and packaged… a year or two later with many places. Or, to pull out an example from my personal experience, I can’t GET the damned DVD.
Ever heard of Muteki Kanban Musume (Ramen Fighter Miki is the licensed name for the show, Noodle Fighter Miki for the manga)? It was blogged about by some people at some length about two years ago; nothing special, but funny as hell. Media Blasters got their hands on it in late 2006; and since then, I’ve been unable to buy the DVD’s, because their distribution channels are shit, and they don’t apparently ship through Diamond Comics who handle the bulk of manga and anime distribution for Bandai, ADV, Funimation, and a few smaller companies. So… what’s the solution here? Pirate, or hope that a con-dealer in the next year MIGHT have a copy available for me? Order over the Internet and hope the dealer’s honest? Go through Amazon? The only reasonable option is to order online… but at the same time, that doesn’t do much for the ‘instant gratification’ thing that buying it in store does for me, plus prices for shipping can be a pain in the rear.
As far as suing FANSUBBERS, I don’t see that being a solution because the material’ll get out there somehow - all you’re doing at that point is killing publicity, which is a bad thing unless you’ve got an official channel somewhere that people can obtain the same or similar material for a price they consider reasonable. If they expect me to shell out $30 per DVD for a show two years old that I never watched… well, I’m sorry to have to disappoint them by having spent that $30-50 on Disgaea for PS3 which came out a year before the show did, which I’ve never heard about and probably have no interest in. There’s no easy, once-size-fits-all solution… and just suing people won’t help things. Bandai got away with it for GITS:SAC SSS because they’d announced it was pre-licensed when news of it was first released, and it was also showing on the satellite channels only at first in Japan, which undercut any excuse that it was a ‘free’ viewing. Plus, they also eventually had it on Sci-Fi Channel, so they had the proper exposure there too.
Of all the big companies, only Bandai and Geneon have really hit the mark as far as the value-add or instant-gratification scores for anime releases are concerned, IMO. ADV tries hard, but they’ve been tapped pretty bad by overlicensing the past few years, to the point where their manga division apparently stopped publishing for over 18 months and annoyed the hell out of me in doing so, since I’d been following Yotsuba and Noodle Fighter Miki from them at the time. Funimation made a big mistake in licensing Negima given the way it was panned by even the MANGA creator in Japan, and how they changed the director three times… and given the cast size for the show (32 girls, which means you either get 32 people or else try to go on the cheap and use 8 people for all the roles) probably made for an interesting budget sheet when it came to the dubs.
I think the hardest part of this issue is that there are so many different facets to it. So forgive me as my comment will seem pretty disjointed as I touch on a few different topics.
I would really like to know just how much, on average, the Japanese studios make from international DVD sales. My point is, who exactly are fansubs hurting? Is it the studios that actually produce the shows? The TV stations that broadcast the shows? Or the American distributor that adds the dubbing and translation? I honestly don’t know how the money works out, but I think it would be a lot easier to understand these complaints about fansubs if some hard numbers were given.
If you look at the DVD shelves of any store, you’ll see that anime is usually much more expensive per episode than a US primetime drama series. So, it costs more to watch a show never aired in the states than to buy the DVD of a show that I’ve watched already.
After reading Justin’s editorial, I finally realized something. I watch anime shows; I collect anime DVDs. Other than certain satellite broadcast, the Japanese do not have to pay anything to simply watch anime. They watch commercials and occasionally buy DVDs and merchandise. Some companies have even resorted to censorship to promote DVD sales (i.e. Gurren Laggan 6, School Days, KnJ, etc.). I know it’s not entirely correct, but in Japan, the television broadcast of a show acts as advertisement for the DVDs. In the States, most shows generate revenue on DVD sales alone. Without this form of promotion and arguably lesser quality DVD product, is it any wonder US anime companies are suffering? Blame fansubs all you want, but the truth is, there just isn’t any other existing motivation for me or the average consumer to purchase US anime DVDs.
It might be too late for it now, but a real push to get the newest anime shows on US TV beyond CN and AN might alleviate a lot of the falling DVD sales. I think that eventually some studio, distributor, or some random programmer, is going to find a way to distribute anime in a manner that competes with fansubs and is profitable to all parties involved. At that point, it’ll be up to the companies, both US and JP, to seriously rethink their business models and capitalize on a huge market.
> Mercurius
Like most people looking at the Japan industry from the outside, you are making some very wrong assumptions.
In Japan, everyone pays a ~5000yen (US$50) monthly TV tax. Free-to-air TV broadcast is most definitely not “free” in Japan.
Also censorship has nothing to do with spiking DVD sales domestically in Japan. The TV stations has the final say on what gets aired and censored due to Japan’s self-censorship laws, if the TV stations shows something questionable or causes discomfort in the viewers, the TV station gets hit with the law hammer - not the people who produce the show. In Gurren Lagaan’s case - it was too much nudity for a Sunday morning show, School Days was due to the high school girl axe murdered her father case, KnJ was due to a primary school principle engaging in pedophilia acts etc. TV stations don’t want to be responsible for promoting such acts thus they request the anime companies to censor it, or in some cases to pull it off air completely, such as the case of Higurashi and KnJ.
I don’t think the industry will collapse entirely because some company will want the business, even if they have to change their model. Losing the US market when anime is really starting to be publicized on TV and to a generation of children that can grow with it? To me, the casual user, that seems to be a worse business concept than what they have already.
However, like the rest of the media industries struggling with digital media, they do need to change. The hows and whens will have to be left up to people in the industry but I think they’ll wake up and see that soon. If the pay-per-download and subscription series plans start to work, do you think that Japanese companies might also support that model?
>houkoholic
I already knew about the TV tax. Japanese people don’t pay the tax to watch anime, they pay the tax to watch TV. I equate that with the monthly subscription fees people in the US pay for cable/satellite (which is pretty much the only legal way to get CN and other anime showing channels, and sometimes just TV in general). For School Days, I was referring to the nudity that showed up on the DVDs. So the studios may not be using the censorship directly, but they use it as an opportunity to put in a few “extras” that they know will be censored to help sales.
My point still stands. If an industry is relying on DVD sales as their primary source of income, it is doomed. The US companies really need to look at some serious alternatives. I really don’t see any company overcoming the hurdle of the red tape to get shows out here faster than they already are. Perhaps putting money into real professional talent (and production) for the dubs to attract more from the mainstream audience. Or moving to a hi-def format, which would attract the hardcore audience with its higher quality. I’m kinda sad that the debate is about falling DVD sales and not whether anime should be released in HD or Blu-Ray. In any case, the DVD boat is sinking, and companies have to decide to either abandon ship or go down firing its cannons at others.
I for one would welcome change to the current business model, if it means that the shows I want to watch are more accessible legally and I’m treated as a customer, not a criminal. Perhaps I’m being idealistic, but I firmly believe that whoever figures out how to do this will make profits to moon.
I thought the “TV tax” was to fund NHK only? I mean, obviously you have to pay it anyway like the UK license fee because every telly in the country gets NHK, but the money raised only goes towards a limited amount of programming (in an anime-specific case, shows like Dennou Coil and Seirei no Moribito, in which case everyone should damn well pay!). That said, I understand it’s very very easy to hide from the NHK collectors when they come a-calling so I suspect a fair number of people aren’t paying…
John Sirabella, CEO of Media Blasters, has put forth some very frank discussion on the AnimeonDVD forums regarding his stance on the whole thing. MB’s business model tends to revolve around licensing yaoi/yuri/obscure stuff, doing sub only releases, and releasing it in a collection dirt-cheap. The turn-around’s not that long for R1 releases, the sales are pretty damn good (I believe Loveless has exceeded expectations significantly, for instance) and they fund some of it through a couple of massive licenses here and there (Voltron and Invader Zim, for instance, were very successful) and TV deals. This is far from the “internet distribution of relatively cheap fansubs” model that many seem to be proposing, but he seems to be getting by relatively well for the moment with some pretty out-there licenses.
I don’t think I can really add a lot to the discussion that hasn’t been said more eloquently (or, indeed, vitriolically) in other places. I think the ideal legal solution would be cheap, fast fansub-esque releases to tide over those who watch fansubs now, but the minute a price goes on something you’ll get a drastic reduction in audience unless you market the hell out of it first. I gladly paid 500 yen to watch Noein episode 1 a week before it was broadcast because I was excited about it from press coverage etc. - I don’t think a lot of fansub watchers would, though, unless it’s Manga Adaptation X or Gundam Y.
BluWacky - yes, they’re licensing stuff that I do want to watch (the aforementioned Muteki Kanban Musume - aka Ramen Fighter Miki), but I can’t find a Media Blasters title where I am… and I’m not stuck out in Hicksville, Ala. The distribution channels they have, if they’re not going through Diamond, are awful… or else Diamond isn’t pushing their material either, which means those ’speciality’ licenses aren’t hitting everyone. If they co uld hit even some big-box place like Best Buy, HMV, etc, then we’d probably be seeing more sales on their side than they’re already getting.
And if you read my post there, you’ll see I’ve already suggested that as a solution. Mentioned here as well by yours truly. The reason that fansubs seem to be doing ‘well’ does break down, or seems to break down, into two rough categories: “instant gratification” is one (it’s available a few days after the initial episode has aired, versus the 1-2 years an average DVD seems to take to show up Stateside) or “variety” - which means it’s not Naruto or Gundam, so people have an interest in a title which is different. If you could hit the audience up outside of Japan with a show a week or two after it is released in Japan… well, you’ll probably be able to hook an audience into buying it, at least in a sub-only format, with the possibility that you could spend more money for a dub later, or wait for one to show up if the company thinks it’ll sell well en ough to do one of those.
I do find it amazing how much the anime industry in North America has changed over time. Without fansubs, I’m sure that it wouldn’t be as much of a cultural phenomena as it is today. And it still has room to grow around the world.
That being said, I’m honestly buying less than I used to. I’m an old school fellow, who was in those anime club meetings trading and subbing VHS tapes. When DVDs started to appear, I started to buy anything anime related, regardless of quality. Looking back at it, along with how many unopened DVDs are still on my shelves years later, I eventually learned and I’m only buying a few quality titles a year. I simply got flooded, and I don’t have enough time or interest to watch everything.
Fansubs are a two edged sword for companies. One the one hand, because there are no TV broadcasts and media campaigns as in Japan, its a great way to build steam for a release. The first time I was surprised at the high DVD sales was Love Hina, which was one of the greater distributed fansubs out there. In recent memory Haruhi followed the same trail. On the other side however, now that there’s so much pure quantity of stuff out there, if you aren’t great or too niche, fansubs can slaughter you since too many people can try before they buy. It doesn’t help that the fansubs can actually be better than DVD releases to boot.
Here’s the hard way I see the industry going: there’s going to be less anime produced. We’ve reached market saturation, and we have a large and very discounted back catalog of anime out there.
Status Quo can work as long as companies don’t plan to flood the market even further than they do today. Treat fansubs like a TV broadcast around the world, don’t wait too long to license, release DVDs with bonuses and cleaned up content (they need to be better than fansubs), ask fansubbers to stop subbing when a title is licensed, and continue to mail nasty letters to blatant pirates.
The internet taketh away, and the internet giveth: Haesslich, for niche anything you have to go on-line. The big box stores will not carry sub-only releases of anime (they may have sub-only foreign films, I don’t know. The big box stores will not carry anything they don’t expect to sell in the hundreds of thousands nationwide, and that means you’re not going to find many Media Blasters titles there.
I’ve got a lot of Media Blasters titles — they’re a company I think who knows the value of fansubs (every Media Blasters title I have, I have due to fansub “promotion”). They put the Simoun trailer up on Youtube. If anyone figures out how to make a go of it in the internet age, I think it will be them.
The fundamental problem is one of basic capitalism. If someone can provide a product faster and better than you can, the market will go that direction, regardless of legality. Legality is worth something, but not one year later, lower quality, and $5 an episode. If I look at the DVD’s I’ve purchased recently it’s been out of sense of moral obligation for the shows I’ve enjoyed. But the $55 I paid for 13 episodes of Genshiken is outrageous and that’s on my short list of favorite Anime.
The iTunes model is perfect IMHO. I’d wait a week, or even a month, for a decent quality, decently subbed episode for $2. Methods of delivery already exist, and are proven to be desirable for consumers, so use them!
Regarding dubbing, does anyone actually want dubbing? If I can’t have access to the original Japense audio and subtitles, you won’t get my business.
dm: I’m talking not just about big box (which are REQUIRED for the bigger companies to make any profit - if you’re selling just at the anime store, you’re probably not going to get much exposure; there’s a reason Bandai and Geneon had such friendly relationships with distributors) chains. I can’t even find Media Blasters stuff at the smaller specialty anime stores. Not big box, not anime, not even bookstores; that’s pretty goddamned hard to find locally, which means it may be more trouble than it’s worth to get a certain series as a result. I want to get Simoun as well… but guess what? Media Blasters again, and they apparently dont’ have any good relationships with distributors who service anything north of the American border… gee, I wonder why some people are sticking with just pirating series…
I -want- to pay Media Blasters money. I was hoping someone would license it (as posted on Jason’s blog ages ago), and someone did. Now if only I could get my hands on it… ‘instant gratification’ is something which may be driving fansub downloads as much as anything else - as others have pointed out, why wait 2 years for a show when you can theoretically get it a week after release?
s4dfish: I can get Genshiken for $40 for the complete collection, including the OVA’s (IIRC). You may officially hate me now. :P
Haesslich’s a little too tl;dr so I’ll just address a couple things:
Re: Chinese in-betweening–you are right but I mention it only because I’ve seen more and more of it lately. Obviously some companies just have to do it because of financial limits or whatever.
Re: DRM: I think this is much ado over nothing. Put it this way: DRM is like a lock. You put a lock on something to deter people from stealing it because that thing is valuable. It also cost a fair amount of money to deploy a good DRM, and it comes with some additional legal liability and cost for support. So why go through all that when what you’re protecting is being stolen on a regular basis already? In this instance any kind of internet distribution system is fighting for market share from zero. There’s nothing to lose. I imagine any DRM anime has would be fairly nonexistant, or just some industry standard kind of thing (like downloading a song from iTunes music store).
Re: Create value: It’s been tried, and I think it works to some extent but it can backfire like how many people are jaded about cheap collector edition boxes and stuff like that. On the flip side everyone loves cheap thin packs but it’s not the most profitable. I agree it’s part of the answer but it’s already something companies do. You may perceive “value” differently than others (and I am pretty sure companies do research this) but I think it’s been tried with varying success, and less success over time.
Puhlease. Geneon died for reasons not related to fansubbers, or the “dying” of the anime industry. They died from poor business models, misappropriated budgets, and by the other companies doing better business than they did. But forget about them, they never really mattered much. The anime they offered was what mattered. Never forget that.
Hell, they ain’t even gone, they just stopped selling it here. They’re doing fine, and when they reorganize their business model to not suck, they’ll be back.
I could bring up the fact that many anime will never make it to these shores, or will never be buyable no matter how much you want it due to horrible distribution channels. But hey, others have done it, and pretty much got the point across.
I will instead point out, that despite our enjoyment of the medium, their target is mostly children, then teens, then creepy middle aged men in about that order. We just like it ’cause it’s not American/Canadian. Proof? Ever seen our cartoons lately? Avatar, Teen Titans, Totally Spies, the whatzit with the spiders, hell, all the dubbed anime?
We liked it ’cause it wasn’t common. We were special then, we liked something unique and foreign. Now it’s comprising a fairly large chunk of our “cartoon” section. We are making our own “anime” now, and dubbing the rest, and only now is it “dying”. Dying for you elitists maybe, but just hitting it’s stride for the rest of us.
I leave you now, to watch good shows, more this year than last, which was greater than the year before it. Sure more suck, that’s the law of volume, most of our stuff is crap too.
Don’t worry about anime, it’s doing just fine. Instead, consider this; the entertainment we like oh so much happens to have a French name, thought up by the Japanese, and is drawn mostly by the Koreans (and the Chinese, Vietnamese, and anyone willing to do it cheap enough). If Japan was nuked into a molten glass art piece for whatever reason, would we even notice?
“Offensive or abusive comments will be deleted.”
Looks like your definition of “abusive” doesn’t cover nuclear mass-murder.
RE: Haesslich
That’s what I get for trying to shop local…
Kurisu, the rule exists to protect other commenters from personal attacks. I don’t tolerate that.
I didn’t appreciate the final sentence in Michael’s comment, but I’m not going to censor people for saying something stupid. I figure it’s better to let the comment speak for itself. You had the option of expressing your displeasure with that comment in a reasonable fashion.
I’d advise not pushing this issue any further, if I were you.
s4ffish: That’s what I get for shopping local too. HMV has it for that price at the moment - look around.
Michael: I probably would, given that would probably provoke a bit of a firestorm on North American shores too (I doubt the nuclear exchange would stay that limited). A lot of Geneon’s titles weren’t aimed at children - teens certainly (Black Lagoon, Rozen Maiden, etc), but not children. And personally, I’ve tried watchign some of the stuff on Cartoon Network… and the voice acting is STILL crap, and the stories are pretty bland outside of a few attempts to be different. A lot of it feels more like Naruto than Akira.
omo: I’ll try to make this short, since I’m going to avoid ranting (again). The problem with current electronic distribution models is that they’re too much into making you buy specific hardware to play back their goods in, and that there’s no real ‘one main standard’ that everyone agrees to use or make their devices work with to promote interoperability. Not everyone’s going to be watching their anime from their Windows or Mac-based computers, or on the small screen of an iPod or Zune; some people will be using their PSP’s, others will use their tablet PC’s, some will view with their PDA’s or Blackberries, while others will probably find it convenient to use their portable DVD players. Given that Windows Media DRM is incompatible with even some of their own devices (Zunes will not play Plays-For-Sure-DRM’d stuff), then the guy who buys a whole season of a show and tries to put it on their PSP… well, they’re going to be disappointed. It’ll be easier to download fansubs or rip their own DVD’s, if they’re available, than to buy online… which futzes up the whole ‘convenience’ factor.
As far as creating value goes, that’s one way to sell DVD’s or shows - the other is to make it easy to get (the factor I called ‘instant gratification’) - either to get the whole series at once (which saves me 3-4 month wiats between releases), or else to get it episode-by-episode on a timeframe which keeps me from being tempted by the faster releases of illegal fansubs. Otherwise, wait too long and I’ll either not buy it when it FINALLY comes out, or else I’ll have gotten the show through other sources and decided it wasn’t worth the money. Or else I get sick of spending $30 per disk and wait for the thinpak or complete collection… and then proceed to sit on the desire to buy it until it’s on clearance or something, because it’s been that long. I used the Haruhi DVD’s as an example of ‘value’ because they had something that made them worth getting (the LE ‘Kyon-broadcast version DVD’s) for people who may not have bought the DVD’s otherwise. Just throwing in an oversized box or a CD of music that I probably have purchased elsewhere (or just may not be interested in) is not an incentive to buy the DVD.
Haesslich: I live in NE Wyoming, my only selection is price gouging big box.
s4dfish: HMV is a price-gouging music chain. See if you can get someoen to run down one for you.
Lawson, if you are only able to notice the final sentence then you are missing the whole picture.