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Hey, Answerman! - Futile Devices

kakoishii wrote:

Charred Knight wrote: kakoishii wrote: It was things like itunes and music subscription services that brought on the forward advancement, and although the anime industry has new streaming services in place there is still more that they could do with a little imagination. It almost feels as though they've given up, thrown their hands up in frustration and while watching the industry shrink to nothing decided they might as well try and make a few bucks on the side by sewing a few kids for downloading one piece, but seriously is this the future? Is this the end all be all save all for anime? I don't think so, but what's scary is that I think a lot of fans do. What other options? You can already download digitally, you can watch it streaming for free, or you could buy the DVDs. What fansubbers want is for Funimation to give away the product for free which isn't feasible. Would I love to watch every anime series I can? Of course, but I don't have that right nor could anyone make money in that type of situation. what other options indeed, but just because you can't think of any doesn't mean they don't exist. I personally would like to see more subscription services like crunchyroll offers giving fans an option to purchase a monthly or yearly fee to watch all the anime they want comercial free. Or even if it was with commercials but giving the viewer the option to fastforward through ala tivo or dvr or if they pay. Thinking outside the box even more it would be nice to see funi go on some of their own original ventures that is to say original anime of their own in addition to what they license from overseas. I don't think there's anything wrong with funi incorporating a little more imagination in how to keep their business growing. It's a lot more forward thinking than suing people.

Here's the thing, people in America still illegally download anime they could watch through Crunchyroll, you can't defeat a group of people who don't have any cost associated to it.

Preface: I live in Canada, so I'm not able to get Funimation Streams. I have a premium Crunchyroll account (which I pay for monthly, and am happy to do). I purchase DVDs of Anime that I already have downloaded, because I want to own it. (I finally Bought Initial D just yesterday.)

Alright, cool, I stand corrected. It might have been a coincidence that every video I wanted to watch was hosted by Hulu. I tried watching Fractale a while back only to find it wasn't available in my Area. I'll use the ANN one next time then.

Thanks for the tip. =D

That said, I think the primary issue is the piracy of series like One Piece that ARE easily available through legal streaming sites. I don't take issue with someone pirating a series that hasn't been released in the U.S., but I can't fathom why someone would still watch pirated subs when the legal route is free and easy now. Due to this, the streaming and simulcasting has made a significant impact on Bittorrent numbers.

I actually like Vexille more than Appleseed. Go figure. Never seen Cat Shit One.

Damn it Covnam now I want to try a bunch of new cakes.

I think Funimation does a decent job on it's subs; though, if you're not fluent in Japanese, how're you going to know the difference? Just a question......

What other avenues are available? Television is the golden solution to this problem, but broadcasters don't want to air anime right now. That's not the industry's fault. Plus, attempts to create their own TV channels have basically failed since they were buried in deep cable or available only in limited markets. The only other option is for Funimation and others to allow users to download episodes from their site. Problem is, how do you monetize that? With streaming, they at least get some form of return on ad revenue, as little as that is. Even if Funimation included ads in their downloads, there's no way to test their efficacy without violating user privacy. Without some hard data about how often they're viewed, advertisers might not be willing to buy the space (and no, advertisers won't use simple download data, they want something more concrete than that).

Still, like I said, they doa great job translating, and I'd rather have to squint once in a while then put up with CR's insistence on leaving "baka" untranslated in Level E. Wtf is up with that?

Answerman wrote:

And even today, there is so much anime that gets released in Japan that could never be released in English or other languages. It's impossible. But One Piece? Naruto? Bleach? Seriously? I don't care that Funimation or Viz doesn't translate the attack names the "correct" way that you "like," and you feel like you need to resort to fansubs for that. You get no sympathy from me. Deal with it.

This sort of struck a chord in me. Considering that most people buying this stuff probably don't know Japanese, the translation's pretty important. Being "correct," is well, uhm, the bare minimum in what they should be doing, at least to me. That's not to say the series you used as examples are guilty of such; I am speaking generally. Money is hard to come by these days, and what I choose purchase better meet every criteria I have for it. I don't owe any company anything.

As for the Answerfans segment, it'd be nice if official subtitles didn't try to localize honorifics. That is what the dub is for. I am completely taken out of the moment if I am hearing the characters say "Kurosaki-kun" or "Inoue-san," yet I'm reading "Ichigo" and "Orihime." Even worse when it's inconsistent from episode to episode; proving they don't even have someone spot-checking these things. There's a line between adapting the material to flow and make sense in another language and just changing things.

spoiler[I didn't want to get too specific into Bleach, but there's a certain subtlety lost if you modify how the characters speak to each other. Ichigo refers to his schoolmates by their surnames with no honorifics, and Soul Reaper folk even less formally; just their first names.]

I am not trying to defend the fansubbers, far from it. What gets me annoyed is watching a company come down like the hammer of god on some inscrupulous nerds when they spend the rest of the time dragging their feet and clinging to outdated business models.

If Funimation could get the revenue from advertisers then it wouldn't have a problem, but it takes effort to do that. It's easy to be lazy and expect the customers to pay your way.

But the North American TV market is based upon ad-supported free-first viewing. People are use to seeing a show for free and then deciding to buy it. Developing any sort of Pay-Per-View system for anime has that problem working against it.

Funimation and the others need to develop a world-wide online system that supports itself through advertising and other sources rather than relying upon customers. It's through those systems that the DVD sales are driven.

It requires work to do but it's not out of the question. It's not that they're giving away their material for free, rather it's that they're relying upon advertising revenue rather than customer revenue. It's easy not to buy a show you haven't seen and given the sheer volume of anime out there, anime fans can afford to be fussy nowadays.

What other avenues are available? ... Plus, attempts to create their own TV channels have basically failed since they were buried in deep cable or available only in limited markets. ...

correct, people need to become conditioned to going on Youtube and watching the legal streaming or going to funimation's websites. Most of the series averages less than 10,000 views. Even some of the best selling anime doesn't get that many views. I think the only series even close to averaging 100,000 views is FMA Brotherhood.