Forum - View topicNEWS: Uncertain State of the Anime Industry Profiled
|
Goto page Previous Next Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
| Author | Message | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
babbo
Posts: 274 |
|
|||||||||||||
Like I said before. Jesus mcChrist! You've been saying the same things over and to everyone that doesn't agree with you o,o;; Learn how to actually respond to the posts you're quoting. I have not once disputed the fact that fansubs are illegal. Learn how to read -,-;;
Ironically enough it's this kind of mentality that allows American fans to pay reasonable prices for anime. Niche industries have to be customer driven, whiny fans are actually a good thing believe it or not.
The moment borders or Barnes and noble make it part of the policy to not allow potential consumers the ability to read their shelf product is the moment that you are right. For now though they provide chairs for people who want to do that >.> Last edited by babbo on Wed Mar 04, 2009 5:38 pm; edited 2 times in total |
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
|
Kit-Tsukasa
Posts: 930 |
|
|||||||||||||
They are good to a very certain extent, which Dante80 addressed. Obviously not all leechers are good, but there are a decent handful. Think of it this way, and I'm sure we've had this discussion before....if leechers didn't download anime, or heck if fansubs didn't even exist, who would've bought ANY of these DVDs, especially completely obscure/less mainstream series like Baccano, Shakugan no Shana, and even Code Geass was in the same boat at one point. In essence, every licensing company would be pulling a Geneon right about now and basically fall apart because they licensed series that no one has ever heard of before or series that US audience don't like but were popular in Japan i.e moe, loli, series like Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha, Jigoku Shoujo, Da Capo, Strike Witches, Rozen Maiden, KGNE, Haruhi (not mainstream here), Lucky Star, etc... basically titles that caused Geneon (I know not a lot of these are Geneon titles, they are just examples) to sink because no one would buy these titles unless they knew what they were, and when they did, they wouldn't buy it because of the genre/content. Of course some titles like Geass, Bleach, Naruto, FMA, GitS would eventually be licensed since they became mainstream. Otherwise, you would have a whole bunch of stuff just piling up that no one wants to buy except that really small fraction. Look at ADV now, originally the big company before Funimation and the last big title that appealed to US fans was 5 cm per Second I believe. Clannad, AIR, and Kanon clearly didn't do so well here even though they were extremely popular in Japan. These "leechers" and fansubbers are what help drive the companies like Funimation to license the "right titles" that appeal to audiences outside of Japan...for example Soul Eater, Slayers, and Eva 1.0 recently followed by Seto no Hanayome, Mnemosyne, and El Cazador, and I guess to some extent the Gonzo titles (mainly Druaga). Without "leechers and fansubbers" to provide those in the US and the rest of the world these titles, licensing may very well have never occurred, and even if they did, chances are the only titles that would have been bought are Eva 1.0 and Slayers. Duraga and Soul Eater are toss ups.
^this and I'm sure the store owners know that the mangas won't sell then because people have no idea what they are buying. You don't just go around buying random crap for the heck of it unless you are a complete snob or really rich upper class like your parents are hedge fund managers or something along that line. |
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
luffypirate
 Posts: 3187 |
|
|||||||||||||
i want that for my birthday 
|
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
pparker
 Posts: 1185 Location: Florida |
|
|||||||||||||
|
Wow, you all type fast.
QFT.
Again, here's an example of effective action being taken by the industry. If you make it difficult enough to obtain, some people will have no recourse other than legal means to watch the series and will seek it out.
You browbeating me isn't going to change the way I have always approached buying things. I don't buy vehicles that I haven't thoroughly test driven, and even rented and driven for a couple of days if I'm still in doubt. I've spent some time in marketing. It's designed to avoid any negative truths. Read the company-created descriptions for any product on the market. It's the greatest product ever made. Anime is cheaper by the unit, but I have spent the equivalent of a entry model Kia on my collection, and there's maybe 5% of it that I will end up selling off someday. I rent, I stream, I fansub. Then I decide whether to buy or not. Reviews are, as Zac has made thoroughly clear, the personal opinions of the reviewers. The few times I buy from reviews are based on a long, long track record of them having personal opinions close to my own, and those 2 or 3 don't review every title--even then their percentage is probably 70%. But the number of steps from advertisement to review is one story in comparison to the top of the skyscraper, which is my watching the series and forming my own opinion. An example? Eureka 7. Universally lauded, and I wanted to throw the entire $300 investment in the trash at episode 37 all the way through 48, if not literally crush it into little pieces and send it to the nearest positive reviewer. But that feeling doesn't last long, because I am the one responsible for acting on other's opinions and spending the money. Being responsible, I spend it as wisely as possible.
Statistics are available on fansubs, more so than DVD sales statistics are for consumers. If someone wants to know the percentage of viewers/buyers, they can come close to calculating it and determine "support" amongst fansub watchers. On Japanese vs. R1 markets, I understand. Many of my favorites aren't licensed yet, and I've noticed that I generally prefer anime that hasn't been overly localized or skewed toward a foreign audience. My tastes seem to coincide with the Japanese, so having all of it available is important to me. That's all I have to say on those subjects. The last word on that is, I do not care how you decide to buy anime. It has literally, absolutely, nothing to do with how I make my decisions. On a general note, I support your right and your efforts to crusade against fansubs as being illegal. From a practical viewpoint, fansubs have significantly increased the amount of money the R1 industry has received from me. I can't join you without being hypocritical, because I only avoid them when legal alternatives are available, i.e., when those shows are licensed and delivered in my region by some means. I do not accept that fansubs are de facto the primary reason, or even a significant reason, for the decline in anime industry revenue. Just because two events occur at once, in a highly complex system, one can't assume a direct correlation. In my case, the one I can be certain about, it's the opposite of what you claim. The solution is the industry responding to the actual demand that exists, not trying to turn demand into a form that they wish it was. You may not desire to watch any anime that hasn't been filtered through the decision process of the R1 industry. Hundreds of thousands, likely millions, disagree with you. That alone should signal that it's time for change in the business model. Sure, take viable actions to curb illegal usage--take down unauthorized streams of licensed shows and C&D the fansubbers. But if that's all they did, it wouldn't save the industry. Last edited by pparker on Wed Mar 04, 2009 5:45 pm; edited 1 time in total |
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
LordRedhand
 Posts: 1472 Location: Middle of Nowhere, Indiana |
|
|||||||||||||
|
I'm not rich in the slightest, however I would like my books to be in a decent condition, especially if I'm buying from a bookstore a new book. The same can be said about comics and manga as well. So in some cases (as others have said before) they don't buy manga in the bookstore because they find it to damaged to buy. And if no ones buying a retail store isn't going to have a lot of motivation to supply it in store (they may move most of their titles to their online store, kinda like Best Buy with anime.)
One can infer that now fansubs and scanlations are doing something similar, they're "damaging the goods" to the point that some distributors can't see how to make a profit off them. Thus we see fewer releases.
Fansub views to determine marketability is false, simply because, as a company, I wouldn't know if each view was a unique user, so while it is unlikely say for 1 person to view or download something 10,000 times, it's also unlikely that each of the 10,000 views or downloads are unique user. As to support among the fans see One Piece, Case Closed, or The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. All are series that have/had huge fansub following that were released and have either struggled or have done mediocre. Last edited by LordRedhand on Wed Mar 04, 2009 5:55 pm; edited 1 time in total |
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
DomFortress
 Posts: 751 Location: Richmond BC, Canada |
|
|||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
|
babbo
Posts: 274 |
|
|||||||||||||
Do you honestly think the big chains care about that? They've at least another two shelves to the manga in the borders I go to since I started buying manga there. It's a business model and it's working for them, the last line of your first paragraph is silly. People obviously are still going to the retail stores, and in any case you can always just order a copy for the next time you visit. If anything scanslation would avert the problems you're listing here. That's probably why viz and tokyopop have been putting up free manga on their websites >.> |
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
|
pparker
Posts: 1185 Location: Florida |
|
|||||||||||||
Believe me, as we type, more than one somebody is working right now to perfect digital "delivery" of 3D objects. Want the latest Haruhi figure? Order it, download the instructions into your printer, push Print, and five minutes later... there she is! Your children as adults, or maybe your grandchildren, will see it as routine. |
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
|
LordRedhand
Posts: 1472 Location: Middle of Nowhere, Indiana |
|
|||||||||||||
If it doesn't sell yes they do, look at what Best Buy has been doing as an example with DVDs in general. So if not enough people are buying manga a bookstore will not be motivated to continue the supply. As to why my last line not making sense, taking the scanlation aspect, why would a company license a title if it's available in ready to print PDF format for free online already? Some titles have not been picked up by Viz and Tokyopop because of that, they don't see a profit to be made from that title. So it's easy to infer that the anime industry would operate in a similar way, why move quickly to release Kodocha for example, if the audience your selling to has already fulfilled their need for it? Take that with any series. |
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
|
DomFortress
Posts: 751 Location: Richmond BC, Canada |
|
|||||||||||||
Last edited by DomFortress on Wed Mar 04, 2009 6:07 pm; edited 1 time in total |
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
|
krelyan
Posts: 173 Location: Utah |
|
|||||||||||||
A lot of 80's era productions had ridiculous production values and studios were more willing to let new-name directors test the waters. This seems to be completely the opposite.
This is completely fallacious and you know it. R2 Blu-ray boxsets are incredibly expensive and aren't even in the same realm of economics as R1 releases. Not too mention this whole "merchandising supports the industry more than non-R2 DVDs" angle is also ridiculous, elitist and ignorant.
And on the flip side, they're driving up licensing costs by creating artificial demand for a product that was never there. While hardly a disaster, I doubt Haruhi sold nearly as well as Bandai expected. Also, a lot of these popular-with-the-fansub-crowd shows, such as Princess Tutu, have been financial flops. So this argument seems disingenuous at best. (PS: Code Geass is hardly "less mainstream"). |
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
|
pparker
Posts: 1185 Location: Florida |
|
|||||||||||||
You're on a different point now. You said determining support (as opposed to "interest"). That means analyzing the numbers after sales statistics are gathered, not looking at download volumes before licensing. It might have worked, and they tried it, but it didn't. In any case, they were only looking at half the data. To determine support, you compare the number of downloads to the number of purchases. Thorough and meticulous collection of numbers over a significant period of time might reveal patterns which could then support sales predictions within a reliable plus-minus range of error. Again, it's a highly complex "ecosystem" that would require a lot of effort to analyze properly. But forget that. Save time and just give the people what they want in a format they will pay for. |
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
|
babbo
Posts: 274 |
|
|||||||||||||
Prove it. I've only seen increasing shelf space in most stores. And stop trying to use dvd sales in an discussion on print media. They're far too different.
PDF? At least take a peek at the thing you are demonizing. Scanslations are a) rarely anywhere near the quality that you see in an official release, and b) are even more rarely (I've never seen one to date) in pdf format. Name me one title.
Lies. You wouldn't be asking that question if you had bothered to read.
Did I say that they weren't? The point is that they don't do anything that unrestricted in store browsing doesn't already do. |
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
|
DomFortress
Posts: 751 Location: Richmond BC, Canada |
|
|||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
|
Jaice
Posts: 27 |
|
|||||||||||||
|
i pay for good shows that i will watch over and over again. i wont pay for the run of the mill crap that makes up the majority of the shows coming out now days.
also i be much more willing to pay for anime if all the money went to the studio that created it. im not too keen on supporting parasitic import companies that import the shows and charge a higher price than needed because of the time they spent dubbing a show. best way for the anime industry to help itself would be for studios to deal directly with foreign sales and have in-house subtitle groups. dubs are a waste of time. this would also cut DVD prices drastically. im sorry but i am not paying $200.00 for a 26 episode series box set. |
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group