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NEWS: Aniplex USA Adds Kara no Kyoukai - the Garden of sinners

agila61 wrote:

hissatsu01 wrote: Sales in the US and the rest of the world outside of Japan, for the most part don't pay for crap. For most shows it would never pay back production costs, let alone be profitable. This is setting up a false Either/Or: Either international license income on its own can cover the costs of production Or else its not doing anything.

Not at all. If foreign sales don't even come close to paying for production costs, then someone is going to have to, and in the end it's the Japanese market.

eyevocal wrote:

They were called Bandai Visual. What ever happened to them?

They opened a branch in Europe called Beez Entertainment and are doing quite well with their overpriced first time releases followed by a probable Legends afterwards.

Beez Entertainment are part of the Bandai Namco group like Bandai Entertainment and existed long prior to Bandai Visual USA.

Why don't you take a look at sales numbers for anime in Japan. Most titles sell a few thousand at best. Those that do poorly may sell in the hundreds. Out of 130 million or so people in Japan, only a few hundred thousand or so have any interest at all in buying anime, and even a smaller number actually follows currently airing anime and regularly buys shows.

It would be nice to have sales numbers of anime for Japan and other countries, like the US, in order to grasp the scale of DVD sales.

If you are going by the sales posted on ANN then those are passed on the top sellers of the week. There is still a cumulative total sold that is not fully represented by the weekly chart. Blind tagging any and all DVD sales as otaku purchases is wrong too.

That is right getting some DVDs sold is not the sole reason for airing anime, other effective bits are ratings, commercials, and merchandise. Popularity of anime is not measured by DVD sales but by awareness.

There's almost always a wait from the time of the Japanese release, which is what this is. You want something at the same time as Japan, you pay the price.

If you listened to the Geneon ANNcast, quite a while ago, a similar effect was described. Lowering prices had no effect on sales, or at least didn't increase sales sufficiently to make up for the lowered price. If there was any sign that dropping prices would actually make them more money, don't you think it would have been done already? Unfortunately anime seems to be a textbook case of inelastic demand.

Okay, that's fine but you're simply stating how things are. That doesn't address my complaint though. Why is that in any way reasonable or fair to me as a customer? In this day and age I don't see why importing shouldn't be just as open of an option to me as buying local. If I'm willing to pay for shipping and region code/language isn't an issue, really, why should I have to wait or 'pay the price'? I don't think it's unreasonable to demand to pay a fair price for a product be it an R1 release or an import.

Hang on though. That was Geneon USA right? They were talking about R1 prices which are generally more or less reasonable already so I'm not surprised that it didn't have enough of an effect to increase total revenue. On top of that, If I recall correctly Geneon was, at that time, selling an absolute fudge-ton of anime already at the higher prices. Anime was in full boom and had more or less completely saturated the market for it. In fact, to go a step further, one could counter that drastic fall in prices per series shortly after the big collapse was instrumental in stabilizing the R1 industry. (I would suggest that this was because by this time, perceptions of prices had shifted and anime was selling for vastly too much).

I don't see this as the case in Japan. I mean, if titles are selling a mere couple thousand units, I really have to believe there's a huge latent demand for anime and for some reason people are being held back from buying it.

I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong. I just find it tough to reconcile the fact that Rebuild of Evangelion 2.22 goes and sells some 300,000 units with the fact that they apparently can't make a different nerdy animated show that'll sell more than a few thousand units. Of course, I totally recognize that Evangelion is a massive name brand and you absolutely can't expect your average show to come close. I just can't help but look at that and think, okay, if people are watching this then there must be some kind of an audience of people who are interested in watching a cartoon that's not just family friendly/kid's stuff.

The bottom line I arrive at is that there's not really any reason the prices need to be so high just for anime to exist and that being the case I'd say any potential justification for the prices breaks down.

I don't see this as the case in Japan. I mean, if titles are selling a mere couple thousand units, I really have to believe there's a huge latent demand for anime and for some reason people are being held back from buying it. Of course, that's not to say that your average middle aged adult is ever going to buy your average anime. I just don't really see why anime can't at least reach about the level of video games in Japan (or at least non-casual games). Yeah, sure, it's always going to be a niche, nerdy interest but I think it could at least be successful for that kind of thing.

I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong. I just find it tough to reconcile the fact that Rebuild of Evangelion 2.22 goes and sells some 300,000 units with the fact that they apparently can't make a different nerdy animated show that'll sell more than a few thousand units. Of course, I totally recognize that Evangelion is a massive name brand and you absolutely can't expect your average show to come close. I just can't help but look at that and think, okay, if people are watching this then there must be some kind of an audience of people who are interested in watching a cartoon that's not just family friendly/kid's stuff.

So why can't anime sell better? I don't know. I have to point to price as at least a partial reason. The thing about the Japanese prices is that they're just so over the top I can't believe that anyone would buy them if they aren't already a huge anime otaku. You completely cut out the casually interested customer which is very problematic because that's who overtime becomes the dedicated fan. Of course, all this applies equally to the content usually produced these days but that's probably a whole other discussion. The bottom line I arrive at is that there's not really any reason the prices need to be so high just for anime to exist and that being the case I'd say any potential justification for the prices breaks down.

As for adults interested in "non-kiddie/family" cartoons--no, for the most part, those don't exist in Japan anymore than anywhere else. How many people in the U.S. would want to watch The Wire in cartoon form? Not many. It's no different in Japan. Adults want to see actors for anything serious, anything besides wacky cartoon comedy. (I'm not suggesting a major cultural shift couldn't occur to change this, but it hasn't happened anywhere on earth that I'm aware of.)

@Annf: So...let me get this straight. By that logic, Hellsing is for mainstream after-school kids?

Black Lagoon? Monster? Baccano? Berserk? Gantz?

Because an audience for these is practically non-existent?

Despite the sheer popularity and viewer acclaim, that just so happens to not be mainstream after-school kids, which are in surprising numbers?

anime as a product continually appears on and frequently tops the various charts(movie, TV, DVD) of Japan. So it is popular when compared to other like goods.

What's there to address? There's reality, and there's your feeling that Japanese pricing is unfair. Okay then, don't buy it. Done. That's your only real option. I don't recall the last time I walked into a store, saw something for 2-3 times the price I was willing to pay, then demanded a "fair" price. I could try, but I don't think I'd get very far. You can't "demand" anything, because it's up to the seller. You can't make them sell at a price you're willing to pay just because you don't like it.

You don't remember Geneon USA's pricing, do you? For years they priced complete series collections for 26 episode series at $199.99, which is far higher than it is now.

Do you find it difficult to reconcile the fact that Avatar grossed $2.7 billion worldwide, yet the average cruddy low budget sci-fi movie disappears from theatres in a few weeks? If not, then I don't see why the the sales of one of the highest grossing anime movies ever outside of Ghibli films really has much to do with the average anime that is lucky to sell a hundredth what it does.

My apologies if this sounds condescending:

I think you may be thinking in terms of "anime" as a single class of thing, the way it's marketed in the West. In Japan, it's just cartoons, and there are mainstream cartoons as well as tiny niche market nerd cartoons, and Kara no Kyokai falls into the latter case.

What I'm trying to say is, the "reaching out" you talk about doesn't really make sense. There're already mass-market cartoons in Japan. Kara no Kyokai just isn't one of them.