Forum - View topicAre dubs going extinct?
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Maidenoftheredhand
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True and it's also because in general animation is still considered a medium for children (whether it is true or not). I understand when talking about quality there is a huge difference between animation & live action. However when we are discussing the necessity of dubs, I think comparison with live action film is appropriate. I guess I don't really see the necessity of dubs or why people refuse to buy something because it has no dub. Now don't get me wrong I am not saying I hope dubs go away. I am perfectly fine with dubs. They just have no bearing on my purchase either way. Or I should say if it's a dub I enjoy it's a great extra to me. If it's a dub I don't enjoy I just ignore it, no harm done. Although I guess it's better to have a choice and dubs are good for people who have problems with subtitles (for whatever reason) but for those who think a release without a dub is substandard...that I don't agree with. |
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yuna49
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Nodame returned to Crackle some months ago: http://www.crackle.com/c/Nodame_Cantabile That said, despite the quality of the voice acting, by Ocean I believe, Sony didn't bother to translate any of the on-screen text. Right from the outset there are billboards that highlight some of the main themes of the show. English-speaking viewers of the Animax version won't understand any of these. Hell, they did not even bother to translate the titles of the musical works when they appear in the on-screen boxes. How much would it have cost to add those features compared to the costs of the dubbing itself? I'll stick to the fansub version myself unless a miracle happens, and Nodame is released in North America. Sony seems entirely uninterested in doing that. I've said here before that I don't see much future for plastic discs. The anime audience skews young, and most of them will be watching anime on tablets, phones, and game consoles in the years ahead. Do you think the kids in Dennou Coil would be buying optical discs or watching shows in their glasses? Then there's simple economics. You can belong to Crunchyroll for a full year for the cost of a couple of DVD boxsets. In return you get access to perhaps three-quarters of all new releases each season. And, for the person who asked the inevitable "why can't they wait" question, it's because people enjoy discussing episodes when they air, discerning the meaning of what has occurred and speculating about future developments. Why is that so hard to fathom? Now I'm old enough that I can afford to buy discs occasionally, yet my last few purchases have all been shows that are still available by streaming. They are also all subtitled. (Usagi Drop, Ikoku Meiro no Croisee, and Sarai-ya Goyou for the curious.) I bought these to support the types of niche shows that I enjoy. But I'm not going to pay $10/episode for Madoka when I can watch it at Crunchyroll in high-definition and without commercials, along with dozens of other shows, for $7/month. If someone released a subbed version of Dennou Coil on BD and charged the same $100 as Siren does for DVDs in R4 today, I'd buy that in an instant. Same for Mononoke or, in my dreams, Hyouge Mono. Chihayafuru? Nice show which I quite enjoyed, but worth owning on disc? I don't think so. |
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EricJ
 Posts: 876 |
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Well, that's just it: Did Sony commission Ocean's Nodame dub, or did Animax commission it for their network? Obviously a few subtleties are going to be streamlined for broadcast, on a channel that airs them cheaply, but if Sony had intended it for disk, they would have sold it by now. The fact that Sony-sponsored Crackle is showing it seemed to be only a short-lived tie in to help Animax get a foothold in the US streaming market, and was the only Animax-exclusivve title on the site. Yes, IF someone a little less lethargic than Sony could help a broadcast site groom these for sub/dub disks--the same way that old-school CN helped promote Pioneer and Bandai--we'd start having something, but don't blame Sony for the lack of localized sign subs. |
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Touma
 Posts: 2651 Location: Colorado, USA |
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The anime audience is only a small percentage of the people who use discs. As long as discs are being used for anything else they will also be used for anime. It is also worth considering that many of the people who watch, and buy, dubbed anime are not really anime fans. They may be fans of the shows that they watch but they do not care if it was made in Japan or the US or Italy or wherever. They are also not interested in the original audio, or how faithful the dub is. I do not have anything at all to support this, but I think that some of the most popular anime is being made popular by those people who are not anime fans.
And the cost of a computer. And the cost of high speed Internet. Not everybody has those things. For people who do not have those things, but do have a TV and DVD player, renting discs is cheaper. |
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getchman
 He started itPosts: 9121 Location: Bedford, NH |
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Wait, are you saying that people who prefer to watch anime in English rather than Japanese shouldn't be considered anime fans? |
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nobahn
 Subscriber Posts: 5120 |
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getchman--
I would respectfully argue that there are differing degrees -- or types -- of anime fandom (e.g., consider the debate over moe). |
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bravetailor
Posts: 817 |
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It's all about money and target audience. Anime in the U.S. has pretty much plateaued now in terms of separating the hardcores and bandwagoners, so what we have now is probably the realistic "post-boom" audience for the foreseeable future after the so-called boom of the 2000s.
That said, there are always titles that have crossover appeal outside of anime fans, and those ones will always be dubbed. Otherwise, it will usually be a matter of the big licensors dubbing at least 90% of their stuff vs the smaller companies, and the smaller companies will usually have to be much more selective in what they dub, and if they're really small, then basically never dubbing at all. |
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Touma
Posts: 2651 Location: Colorado, USA |
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No. I prefer to watch anime in English and I consider myself to be an anime fan. I am just saying that some anime shows are popular with people who are not anime fans. EDIT: And the reason that I am saying it is to point out that the fate of dubbed anime does not rest entirely in the hands of anime fans. Last edited by Touma on Thu Sep 13, 2012 11:28 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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hyogacisne
Posts: 29 |
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Dubs won't disapear. I know fans that love dubs, the market demands them. The is something magic to listen japanese and read the subtitles. It's far away to be something racional, gives an increible pleasure.
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yuna49
Posts: 3804 |
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Animax is a subsidiary of Sony. While Animax has other partners, I generally see Animax, Crackle, and Sony (and A-1 Pictures) as all of a piece. Also, take a look at this rather discouraging posting by Quarkboy about Nodame licensing: http://www.mania.com/aodvb/showpost.php?p=1834559&postcount=135
Everyone here presumably has a computer, as does anyone who has ever watched a fansub or stream. High-speed Internet is another matter, but the expansion of high-speed cellular networks continues apace. Read the Pew studies on cell phone usage. 41% of US cell phone users go online with their phones at least once a day. Half of all cell phone users own a smart phone. Those figures will only continue to grow, and those trends fit better with streaming than they do with physical media. You don't really think that Netflix is going to be relying on shipping physical discs in the long run, do you? I can assure you that they do not see the world that way. They now have 24 million streaming subscribers in the US, Canada, the UK, and Latin America. They have about 10 million DVD subscribers, all in the US because of rights limitations. The streaming figure is growing while the DVD figure continues to fall. |
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Touma
Posts: 2651 Location: Colorado, USA |
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"Everyone here" is a very small percentage of everyone. You were talking about the demise of physical media. In that context anime fans are a small minority. There are still many consumers who could not watch streaming video even if they wanted to, but can and do use DVDs. There are also some who can watch streams but prefer not to. And some who watch streams but still want the show on disc. As long as that market exists physical media will exist. And as long as physical media exists somebody will put anime on it. We are all anime fans here, but the use of physical media extends far beyond the anime community. What we do will have little effect on the DVD market. EDIT: And the increase in streaming does not necessarily mean the death of physical media. It is possible for both to exist, just as television and physical media exist. It seems to me that television is basically the same as streaming video, only bigger and better. |
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yuna49
Posts: 3804 |
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OK, then, how about of all Americans? In 2010, 81% lived in a household with a computer; that figure is higher for people under 44 years of age. 71% of households include someone with Internet access. Is Colorado so different from the rest of the US? I already gave you citations to statistics showing the rapid growth of smart phones and cellular Internet access. The NTIA reported that 71% of households had Internet access in March of 2010; 68% had "broadband" access. I don't know why you think that either access to a computer or to the Internet is so rare, Touma. The people who don't have these things are a distinct minority today. They also tend to be over 65, not a population with a lot of anime viewers. And how, pray tell, would someone without a computer or Internet access even learn about anime these days? There is hardly any anime on television, nor at the movie theater. What is shown are either very mainstream programs or movies by famous directors like Miyazaki. There might be a tiny section of animation in the local video rental store, if there is a video rental store around. The physical disc rental market is declining overall (down 17% in the past year), and much of the market that remains is being served by kiosks like Redbox or by Netflix rentals, which have fallen considerably as I cited in my last post. I haven't seen any anime in a Redbox kiosk. Have you? Let me just say these are all trends that make the Hollywood studios happy. The video disc rental business was built on the "first-sale doctrine" where the studios earned nothing from the income collected by renting and re-renting a disc. Streaming relies on negotiated contracts between a company like Netflix and the studios, where the fees collected depend on the number of subscribers and the number of viewings. In the streaming model, at least as it applies to movies from major studios, Hollywood makes much more profit than it ever did from disc rentals. That is the principal reason why Netflix's financials have been less rosy since they began widespread streaming. The studios have gotten greedier and demand higher and higher licensing fees for streaming of their most popular releases. Do I think optical discs will go away in the next couple of years? No, of course not. But a decade from now? If they still exist, they will more likely be the niche method of delivery in a world dominated by streaming and pay-per-view options on television systems. Discs could cater to the high end of the market with releases targeted to viewers with 4K sets.
I stream to my 40" television now. New sets have built-in streaming features, as do video game consoles and many Blu-ray players. |
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Touma
Posts: 2651 Location: Colorado, USA |
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Yes, I see that in table 2B. But table 1A says that there are computers in 44% of the selected households. I guess that table 2B is counting all of the members of the household. In both tables the percentage drops significantly for households with incomes under $50,000, which are the households that I am familiar with. It is not broken down any more than that. I wonder what the percentage is for incomes under $40,000, and under $25,000, and so on. In any case I do not see anything there that convinces me that DVD sales are endangered. Definitely nothing to indicate that dubs are going extinct.
That is not true everywhere. I think that there are a lot of people in North America that you are not aware of. Fortunately the DVD publishers do know about us.
I might do that too if I had a 40" TV, and a fast Internet connection, and a computer with an HDMI output; but probably not. I really do prefer DVDs. Anyhow, the reason that I mentioned television is that television, which has a lot more content than streaming video, has not killed the DVD. So I see no reason to believe that streaming will. When optical discs become obsolete it will happen because they are replaced by the next generation of physical media. I think that it will probably be solid state, but a lot can change before that time comes. |
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