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DmonHiro





PostPosted: Sat Apr 24, 2010 2:05 pm Reply with quote
vashfanatic wrote:
...oh, and one more related item on my rant, if you rip the DVDs of American releases of anime, you're not a fansubber either. Anyone who has worked in any of the fan translation fields ought to hold the same level of contempt I do for these people.


There are very many people who are fansubbers and also rippers. Learned that the old fashion way.

Pandadice wrote:

I can't believe Sacred Blacksmith was licensed before Michiko to Hatchin...
what the heck Funi? what the heck..
but hey, at least you can make Sacred Blacksmith your third Manglobe title, right? then wait for a House of Five Leaves release and make that your fourth :\


You should believe it. I mean...how much do you think Sacred Blacksmith cost? Also, it's got cute girls, monsters and swords, so it has some mainstream appeal. It will most likely do semi-decent. M&H has no appeal for mainstream, and that's what Funi is going for right now. Then again, neither does House of Five.
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vashfanatic



Joined: 16 Jun 2005
Posts: 3489
Location: Back stateside
PostPosted: Sat Apr 24, 2010 2:20 pm Reply with quote
DmonHiro wrote:
There are very many people who are fansubbers and also rippers. Learned that the old fashion way.

I know, and it's utterly depressing. I took pride in my work, you know? Working on that gave me a feeling of accomplishment, and really helped me realize how much I love translation work. I can't see getting that sense of satisfaction from just taking credit for what other people do!

Quote:
You should believe it. I mean...how much do you think Sacred Blacksmith cost? Also, it's got cute girls, monsters and swords, so it has some mainstream appeal. It will most likely do semi-decent. M&H has no appeal for mainstream, and that's what Funi is going for right now. Then again, neither does House of Five.

How is Michiko and Hatchin not "mainstream"? Maybe not within the "mainstream" of anime, i.e. otaku who will only buy stuff with "cute girls, monsters, and swords," but in terms of actually getting viewers from outside the cliquish world of the converted, it has a way better chance than Sacred Blacksmith. We need more titles like it out there to make anime mainstream in the truest sense of the word.

I'll probably give Sacred Blacksmith a rent to be sure, but the promos and such that I saw of it, plus the season preview reviews here at ANN, made it look well below MANGBLOBE's previous work. Perhaps it got better?
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Vertical_Ed
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Joined: 01 May 2009
Posts: 278
Location: New York, NY
PostPosted: Sat Apr 24, 2010 2:25 pm Reply with quote
classicalzawa wrote:
I didn't know Vertical was doing so well, I only see their titles in bookstores rarely (I've had to get most of the stuff I have from them off TRSI, although I do see the Ode to Kirihito reprints in Borders now), but that's good to know that they're set for now.


Yeah, well you have to understand that Vertical releases other books outside of manga. Our new cookbook line which includes books from original Iron Chef Chen Kenichi and Japan's most popular celeb chef KENTARO are selling extremely well. Black Jack has been a success. Buddha has had long-term legs...add better than expected sales for our novel Summer of the Ubume and 2009 was huge. Our sales were up 18% and our net finances were up nearly 30%. Definitely a big year when the rest of the publishing world was down.

Quote:
Glad they actually reprint their manga instead of leaving us hanging with impossible to find volumes 19 and 20


We try not to put titles OOP. So one way or another our titles are almost always available. So while hardcovers are limited to 10,000 to 15,000 units, the paperback editions are almost always being reprint unless the license is pulled (as in the case with our novel Strangers...which was also done in hard cover and paperback).

Quote:
I can't wait to get my mitts on Twin Spica too... Also glad it's going for $10.95 since most of the other manga I have from them goes for at least $15 it'd seem.


Well most of our titles tend to have high page counts. Black Jack releases are all at least 320 pages. Buddha and Dororo also around the same. The new Ode to Kirihito reprents are at least 400pages long for $14.95!! That's a deal really.

So Spica and our hard sci-fi title 7 Billion Needles will both be $10.95 as they are both around 200 pages long. Peepo Choo will be a little higher also because of page count and color pages. While Chi's Sweet Home will be $13.95 because it is all in full color and will be printed by the Japanese printer for optimal color reproduction and to match Japanese trim sizes.

I hope you give all our new titles a chance once they come out.
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DmonHiro





PostPosted: Sat Apr 24, 2010 2:28 pm Reply with quote
Uhm...dude...have you SEEN what's been licensed and produced lately? That's the mainstream now. And I don't think Funi's going to take any chances unless they know exactly what they're doing. IMO, it's pretty risky right now to license something that didn't even do that well while it was free online.

Sacred Blacksmith did not "get better", but you do grow to love the characters. The story was a big disappointment though. It went nowhere and didn't even end right...or end at all, for that matter. It just kind of stopped.
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Vertical_Ed
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Joined: 01 May 2009
Posts: 278
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 24, 2010 2:30 pm Reply with quote
GATSU wrote:
Ed: I hope you're not offended that I think you sound like Millhouse's dad. Laughing

As for MW's comeback, I'm gonna bet people heard of and/or torrented the movie adaptation, and interest for it went up; 'cus it doesn't sound like a title which would benefit from being scanatalated.


Hmm well I do wear glasses but I think I get more action than Milhouse's dad...

I thought the MW movie would have helped but in general it really didn't get a great response anywhere. We were hoping to see it hit the US indie theater scene but it hasn't. And it barely screened in any North American film festivals either. And while it did screen in a number of Asian festivals, we didn't see a bump in international orders either.

MW was interesting cause it isn't a title I'd expect to be in Barnes & Nobles but instead once we reprinted it in paperback form they and Borders were all over it and it is now doing better than ever...outperforming Dororo and a number of volumes of Buddha.
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Kalessin



Joined: 15 Aug 2007
Posts: 931
PostPosted: Sat Apr 24, 2010 2:35 pm Reply with quote
Blood- wrote:
I was very interested in that whole direct online selling discussion. I'm not sure why, but I never stopped to consider the impact online retailers like Amazon and TRSI were having on retailer anime selling, although in retrospect it seems obvious. Sadly, it's a situation where the rise of online selling is a boon to individual customers due to the price savings, but sort of detrimental to the industry as a whole, I believe.

Personally, I'd prefer to buy my anime in person at a b&m location because of the convenience (as opposed to having to wait for something to come in the mail). However, especially in Canada, that option makes zero economic sense. Hell, TRSI offers significantly better prices on items that are NEW versus what second hand stores here offer for those same items that are USED.

But what we lose is the possibility of new recruits. If you're wandering through a store and happen to stumble across the anime section, you might stop and take a look and maybe even buy. If b&m retail locations are taken out of the equation, you won't get that "walk-in" factor. Or at least, it seems harder to see how that kind of thing can happen from strictly online selling.


I've worried about it for books. Book stores are definitely in trouble thanks to the likes of amazon (especially the specialty book stores and the mom and pop book stores). And with book stores, there's a huge benefit for the buyer because they can scan what's there, looking for new stuff to read and even read part of it to determine if they really want it. It's much harder to just "scan the bookshelves" so to speak at someplace like amazon. I'm much more likely to buy from an author that I've never heard of before from a b&m book store than online.

But the prices are too high. Buying from amazon or another online store is pretty much always cheaper. I'm generally wasting my money if I buy books anywhere but online. Pretty much only real reason to buy from the book store is to keep it alive so that I can use it to search for new books later. Certainly, if I'm buying a book that I already know about, I'm going to buy it online. And to top that off, online selection is going to be better anyway. It really makes no financial sense to buy books in a book store. And the same goes for DVDs.

If anything, it's worse for DVDs given the much higher prices that you'd end up paying in the store (probably mainly due to the fact that DVDs cost more than books to begin with). And anime DVDs are no exception. From a financial perspective, who in their right mind would by a DVD at some place like Best Buy for close to MSRP when you could buy it at RightStuf for 46% off MSRP on one of their sales once your 10% membership discount is thrown in? I won't even buy from RightStuf unless it's on sale. It would be a waste of my money otherwise - especially because I buy so much.

The sad thing about all of this, of course, is that it harms the b&m stores and can drive them out of business. Now, I've never been to a local anime store, and I'm not worried about driving the like of Best Buy out of business due to a lack of anime DVD sales, but it is definitely a problem for books. Even a store like Barnes and Noble is going to be impacted when their main product is purchase primarily online. But the price difference is just too great for me to justify buying something like that in the store instead of online. Maybe if I was rolling in dough, but like most people, I'm not.
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Vertical_Ed
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Joined: 01 May 2009
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 24, 2010 2:38 pm Reply with quote
vashfanatic wrote:

GUIN SAGA! Bring out more of the BOOKS, not just the manga! I finished the first 5 and man...There are 120 more, right? I know it's unfinished due to Kurimoto's death, but still.


We are working on that. While we were only given rights to the first five volumes, we are considering new ways to release the rest of the series as Kurimoto's estate has given us permission to look at the rest of the Saga.

And just a point of note...The Guin Saga's story unofficially ended at around volume 100. The rest of the volumes were just filler and gaiden side stories. Guin was Ms. Kurimoto's life work and she would have continued to write the series for another 40 years if she could. But she herself felt the story proper ended after its first century of volumes.

Quote:
So Mr. Chavez, what is Project-R?


Hmm find out at either AnimeNext or San Diego Comic Con. Verbal contracts are only that but we should have the deal formalized by next month. So you'll be hearing about this and hopefully a few other titles this summer.


Last edited by Vertical_Ed on Sat Apr 24, 2010 3:01 pm; edited 1 time in total
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mglittlerobin



Joined: 28 Aug 2008
Posts: 1071
PostPosted: Sat Apr 24, 2010 2:41 pm Reply with quote
The thing about Gurren Lagann is that I was all gung-ho to buy it until I found out there was no dub. I do hope it sells well, but I won't be buying it.
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Pandadice



Joined: 17 Dec 2008
Posts: 181
PostPosted: Sat Apr 24, 2010 2:41 pm Reply with quote
vashfanatic wrote:

Quote:
You should believe it. I mean...how much do you think Sacred Blacksmith cost? Also, it's got cute girls, monsters and swords, so it has some mainstream appeal. It will most likely do semi-decent. M&H has no appeal for mainstream, and that's what Funi is going for right now. Then again, neither does House of Five.

How is Michiko and Hatchin not "mainstream"? Maybe not within the "mainstream" of anime, i.e. otaku who will only buy stuff with "cute girls, monsters, and swords," but in terms of actually getting viewers from outside the cliquish world of the converted, it has a way better chance than Sacred Blacksmith. We need more titles like it out there to make anime mainstream in the truest sense of the word.

I'll probably give Sacred Blacksmith a rent to be sure, but the promos and such that I saw of it, plus the season preview reviews here at ANN, made it look well below MANGBLOBE's previous work. Perhaps it got better?


I would have to second Michiko to Hatchin is infinitely more "mainstream" than Blacksmith is.. But maybe Manglobe just wanted too much for M&H? plus with all the music in it, it probably would be really hard to license or something.

And as for Blacksmith getting better? no, no it doesn't. do not take the time to watch it. Blacksmith is like one on those moe+other element titles that Chi was talking about last week. It tries to be a fantasy sword fighting knight series, but in the end it's just cute girls looking cute and nothing happens. It was a complete waste of time..

I mean, Funi got Casshern Sins and Eden of the East. They were making some good calls not too long ago.. but then they get Blacksmith and Vampire Bund? come on....
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vashfanatic



Joined: 16 Jun 2005
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 24, 2010 2:41 pm Reply with quote
DmonHiro wrote:
Uhm...dude...have you SEEN what's been licensed and produced lately? That's the mainstream now. And I don't think Funi's going to take any chances unless they know exactly what they're doing. IMO, it's pretty risky right now to license something that didn't even do that well while it was free online.

Then have someone other than Funimation release it?

And since when has doing well online been a necessary indicator that it will sell? I've found that relatively true among manga titles (the highest rated series on internet viewers tend also to make the NYT Bestseller's list), but what are the honest sales numbers on these shows? You know what Funimation's biggest title was? Afro Samurai. Which sure as heck doesn't fall into the otaku "mainstream" you're talking about here. Why did it do well? Good publicity and a good TV run. I mean, seriously, it's a relatively short series with a really hot chick on a motorcycle. You can sell that. Maybe not to the otaku crowd who are terrified of grown women, but definitely to others.
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Kalessin



Joined: 15 Aug 2007
Posts: 931
PostPosted: Sat Apr 24, 2010 2:57 pm Reply with quote
vashfanatic wrote:
Quote:
...which should be renamed gobbledy-gook...

Amen. A-blipping-men, I hate Tsubasa. And I love xxxHOLiC. Unfortunately, in spite of Del Rey's repeated protestations otherwise, you have to read the one to understand the other, and what's more as a result xxxHOLiC runs into its own bit of gobbledy-gook. My personal theory is that the timeline for Tsubasa caught up with them before they expected, which is why in volume 12 they suddenly break from an ongoing story and then dump a whole lot of "hints" that (as someone who is re-reading it right now) don't make much sense. It's very poorly handled, which is remarkable given how well they handle most other twists.


I actually really like both, though I do think that Tsubasa does much better once it's farther along. Its plot twists later on are certainly fantastic. As for reading one without reading the other... Well, you technically can, I'm sure, but I definitely agree that it makes more sense (for both of them) if you read both. It's confusing enough when you're reading both and one of them has stuff which relates to events in the other which haven't happened yet (at least haven't happened in what's been published yet in the US) - though I think that that's more of a problem with reading XXXHolic than Tsubasa, primarily because there's so many fewer volumes for XXXHolic that it's easy for it to get ahead.

I do have to say though that the movies weren't all that great. They basically put two movies into the length of one which basically made for an extended episode for each rather than a story of any real length. Movies - especially anime movies - already tend to be too short to tell a good story. With the Tsubasa/XXXHolic movie, they're way too short. The Tsubasa story was totally forgettable and definitely worse than most stories in the anime. The XXXHolic one on the other hand, was fairly good. The story was at least decent, and it definitely did look good (though the character designs, as always, are a bit extreme with their proportions). I thought that the idea of spoiler[a collector of collectors] was rather interesting. But I can totally see someone thinking that it wasn't worth paying for a whole movie just to get a totally forgetable episode of Tsubasa and a decent episode of XXXHolic with above-average visual quality.

Vertical_Ed wrote:
And just a point of note...The Guin Saga's story officially ended at volume 100. The rest of the volumes were just filler and gaiden side stories. Guin was Ms. Kurimoto's life work and she would have continued to write the series for another 40 years if she could. But she herself felt the story proper ended after its first century of volumes.


That's great news! I was quite leary of taking on a series of that size when it didn't have an ending. I was under the impression that she'd decided to draw out the series at the end rather than end it at its intended length. But if the later stuff is side story stuff with the series having actually, properly ended, then it may be worth picking up. And having it being published by a publisher who's actually in decent shape by the sounds of it, it definitely comforting. It would be bad if a good chunk of the series were published just to have the publisher go under. I still worry that something like that will happen with Tokyopop and The Twelve Kingdoms (though, in their case, they have quality issues as well - like forgetting a whole chapter in the most recent book. *Sigh* Oh well, we take what we can get). Thanks for the info!
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Vertical_Ed
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 24, 2010 3:10 pm Reply with quote
Kalessin wrote:

That's great news! I was quite leary of taking on a series of that size when it didn't have an ending. I was under the impression that she'd decided to draw out the series at the end rather than end it at its intended length. But if the later stuff is side story stuff with the series having actually, properly ended, then it may be worth picking up. And having it being published by a publisher who's actually in decent shape by the sounds of it, it definitely comforting.


Well let me be clear unless something of a miracle occurs there is no way we will be publishing the remaining 137 volumes, let alone the 95 or so that remain in this narrative.

Licensing and translation costs alone would make something like that impossible (the combined total for both would be in 5 figures per volume... with 95 volumes that's more than a few million dollars!!!). We are in better shape but no publisher with a staff of 5 is in that good shape.

So I am considering new options to release additional arcs. But nothing is set in stone as of this point. Right now our focus is on Twin Spica and Chi's Sweet Home. If they take off, expect to hear plenty of good news on a number of fronts from Vertical.
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GATSU



Joined: 03 Jan 2002
Posts: 15279
PostPosted: Sat Apr 24, 2010 3:39 pm Reply with quote
Ed: Well, Dororo was always unfortunately a "cult" series, even in its PS2 incarnation. I'm just surprised the demand for MW is as high as it is, though, given the age and the fact that Kirihito seemed to get the most attention of all these Tezuka gekiga manga.
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Kalessin



Joined: 15 Aug 2007
Posts: 931
PostPosted: Sat Apr 24, 2010 3:42 pm Reply with quote
Vertical_Ed wrote:
Kalessin wrote:

That's great news! I was quite leary of taking on a series of that size when it didn't have an ending. I was under the impression that she'd decided to draw out the series at the end rather than end it at its intended length. But if the later stuff is side story stuff with the series having actually, properly ended, then it may be worth picking up. And having it being published by a publisher who's actually in decent shape by the sounds of it, it definitely comforting.


Well let me be clear unless something of a miracle occurs there is no way we will be publishing the remaining 137 volumes, let alone the 95 or so that remain in this narrative.

Licensing and translation costs alone would make something like that impossible (the combined total for both would be in 5 figures per volume... with 95 volumes that's more than a few million dollars!!!). We are in better shape but no publisher with a staff of 5 is in that good shape.

So I am considering new options to release additional arcs. But nothing is set in stone as of this point. Right now our focus is on Twin Spica and Chi's Sweet Home. If they take off, expect to hear plenty of good news on a number of fronts from Vertical.


If you were to publish the rest, I wouldn't necessarily expect you to license them all right now (since I assume that that's why you're talking about the cost being too high). And even if you did license them all now, that certainly wouldn't mean that you'd manage to release them all. There's obviously plenty of volumes left that pretty much anything could happen between now and the release of the final volume in the US. But since you could theoretically continue to license them piecemeal, then it's at least conceivable that you'll get to them all eventually - unless you specifically plan not to due to the sheer number of them. But regardless, you can't license something that doesn't exist, so the fact that she finished the main story is great news.

In any case, it's good to know where things stand. I'll have to look at picking the already published books at some point soon.
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Randalt



Joined: 10 Mar 2010
Posts: 17
Location: Toronto, ON Canada
PostPosted: Sat Apr 24, 2010 4:06 pm Reply with quote
It's amazing that 38,000 doujin circles participate in a Comiket. I always enjoy hearing about that kind of thing.
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