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Mesonoxian Eve wrote:

Just because people aren't buying manga and anime in physical form seems to exclude there's no interest, and to me, that's insane.
Wink

Honestly, I could care less if anime is very mainstream and popular and everyone is buying it. What does matter to me is that it is no longer available to me in physical form, unless I pay an arm and a leg in imports. And that is what I miss about the "boom".

CrowLia wrote:

What does matter to me is that it is no longer available to me in physical form, unless I pay an arm and a leg in imports. And that is what I miss about the "boom".

For manga fans, this is valid. Though I still carry the belief most of what you saw in manga was limited to what was really available, I'll detract this from the position.

However, I'm at a loss when it comes to anime. Are you trying to indicate there's no releases on physical form?

Aside from the bluray/reverse importation issue, I can't believe this. Sorry, but just last year, fans were worried when Sentai was announcing many titles, afraid they were over-extending themselves.

That's not a sign the "boom" ended.

by the way, I forgot to mention another benefit of the boom and that was the dubs, as a guy that prefers dubs (not that I have anything against subs, but I like to choose) the boom years produced the best ones ever made, in my opinion

take my favorite anime ever for example, R.O.D The TV, I will admit that a very large part of my love for that show stems from the outstanding dub produced by New Generation Pictures for Geneon, which released R.O.D The TV in 2004 and 2005, right smack dab in the heart of the boom years

New Generation Pictures is based in LA, a city where you can't swing a dead cat without hitting actors hungry for a role and consequently the dub featured fresh new actors who have done either little or nothing at all in the years since, I would do backflips for another dub from the same team (NGP thankfully it still around, but only do video games these days)

however in the years since the boom you had a problem with dubs using the same exact actors over and over (which to be fair, was also something ADV did too back in the day) and now with Bandai gone dubs in general are now an endangered species

to give credit where it is due, Funimation still produces quality ones, but they're basically the last company doing so

Mesonoxian Eve wrote:

However, I'm at a loss when it comes to anime. Are you trying to indicate there's no releases on physical form?

Aside from the bluray/reverse importation issue, I can't believe this. Sorry, but just last year, fans were worried when Sentai was announcing many titles, afraid they were over-extending themselves.

If you'd read my first post -and about half of what I post on this forum- you'd realize that I do not live in the US. Thus whatever physical release you guys get means nothing to me. Where I live, such a thing does not exist. If I want any physical media -anime, manga, figures, merchandise- I have to import. There is no way around it. There is no Sentai, AoA or Funimation. Just a ton of Ghibli movies.

So yes, I am implying there are no releases of Anime on physical form because there is a world way beyond the US where the boom burst and then everything disappeared. I thought that was pretty clear since my first post.

I prefer now, with anime not creeping into the public consciouness and disc prices low and in boxsets. People will always think of anime as either kid shit or creepy tentacles stuff, so that's not even a point of concern to worry over.

walw6pK4Alo wrote:

I prefer now, with anime not creeping into the public consciouness and disc prices low and in boxsets. People will always think of anime as either kid shit or creepy tentacles stuff, so that's not even a point of concern to worry over.

you could say I'm jealous I guess, a lot of "nerdy" things these days are actually considered cool and I just wish anime was among them

at the same time though, I guess it's not the worst thing in the world, at least us anime fans keep it real, anime is almost punk rock in a way

CrowLia wrote:

If you'd read my first post -and about half of what I post on this forum- you'd realize that I do not live in the US. Thus whatever physical release you guys get means nothing to me. Where I live, such a thing does not exist. If I want any physical media -anime, manga, figures, merchandise- I have to import. There is no way around it. There is no Sentai, AoA or Funimation. Just a ton of Ghibli movies.

So yes, I am implying there are no releases of Anime on physical form because there is a world way beyond the US where the boom burst and then everything disappeared. I thought that was pretty clear since my first post.

At least Ghibli movies are good. Very Happy

In my country Nausicaa was never released!

It's true that anime sales declined in North America but sales of all types of physical media declined and have been declining since the 2005-2006 period, thanks to broadband internet.

There is any solid evidence that the total number of people in North America that watches anime has declined? Well, here in this forum the peak number of users active was in June, 2007, so that's some evidence supporting the hypothesis that interest in anime has decreased over the past several years in North America.

Joe Carpenter wrote:

at the same time though, I guess it's not the worst thing in the world, at least us anime fans keep it real, anime is almost punk rock in a way

Punk rock is much more mainstream than anime in my country. Very Happy

I cannot think of anything less mainstream in my country than anime, with the possible exception of Iranian movies.

[EDIT: For future reference, please use the Edit button instead of making 3 consecutive posts. Thanks. -TK]

^
That peak of 3,600 users was caused by trolls flooding the Forum and is most certainly not representative of the user activity in that year.

Mesonoxian Eve wrote:

Aside from the bluray/reverse importation issue, I can't believe this. Sorry, but just last year, fans were worried when Sentai was announcing many titles, afraid they were over-extending themselves.

That's not a sign the "boom" ended.

That's really an apples and oranges comparison. Sentai is licensing a ton of stuff because primarily they pick niche shows that Funimation/Viz won't touch, pay peanuts for the licenses (which probably has to do with there being almost literally no competition for such shows) and dump them out quickly on low print run, sub only, DVD only, cheaply priced, complete collections that are only available through online stores. It's night and day to the way things used to work, were everyone was so desperate to get a piece of anime you had at least a half dozen major companies all bidding like crazy, driving license prices through the roof for even the most niche shows so they could give them the full dub treatment, spread them across as many as eight single DVDs and put them all out in your local Best Buy.

Honestly, I don't know how the flat number of titles released stacks up. I think we'd really have to look at some hard data to say which had more. But it's a pretty well established fact that there was an absolutely massive economic boom in the anime industry during the early and mid 2000s. The first wave of anime in the 90s (which was mostly more niche OVAs and movies) helped set the stage and make "anime" a known, distinct thing. Dragonball Z and Sailor Moon created a deluge of younger fans in the late 90s. And then, just as those fans were growing into teens/young adults by the early 2000s, we saw a string of hugely successful shows with major western appeal like Evangelion, Cowboy Bebop, and Trigun. All that, and finally the ongoing explosion of the home video market with the advent of DVD (especially for TV shows) created a massive boom that continued to grow for the next half decade until it eventually dramatically ended in late 2007/early 2008 with Geneon going out of business, ADV restructuring and virtually everyone else massively scaling back, pulling heavily out of brick and mortar stores, transitioning from singles to complete collections, and anime largely disappearing from TV.

Mind you, I don't think your point is entirely wrong. Sentai is really on the upswing lately. And the fact that Sentai is back on track is great. They (and the rest of the industry) really seem to have figured out this new business model and as a result we have seen a really nice resurgence the lately. But "lately" is the key word there. I don't think there is any denying that 2008-2011 were extremely lean years following the big burst and that even where we are now, the sheer economic scale of things is a fraction of what it was during the boom.

dtm42 wrote:

^
That peak of 3,600 users was caused by trolls flooding the Forum and is most certainly not representative of the user activity in that year.

That's interesting. what was is that attracted all them trolls?

^
I have no idea. I've tried asking several Mods over the years, and other people have asked too, but they (the Mods) refuse to talk about it. Weird.

ikillchicken wrote:

...driving license prices through the roof

Aww crap, why did you have to remind me of that? The amounts paid for some of those shows is simply criminal. ADV were morons for allowing Sojitz that sort of power.

@ikillchicken: finally someone else who sees it like is, bravo good sir

and I assume the influx of trolls had something to do with 4chan if it happened in 2007

[EDIT: Please stop excessively quoting. -TK]

ikillchicken wrote:

Honestly, I don't know how the flat number of titles released stacks up. I think we'd really have to look at some hard data to say which had more. But it's a pretty well established fact that there was an absolutely massive economic boom in the anime industry during the early and mid 2000s. The first wave of anime in the 90s (which was mostly more niche OVAs and movies) helped set the stage and make "anime" a known, distinct thing. Dragonball Z and Sailor Moon created a deluge of younger fans in the late 90s. And then, just as those fans were growing into teens/young adults by the early 2000s, we saw a string of hugely successful shows with major western appeal like Evangelion, Cowboy Bebop, and Trigun. All that, and finally the ongoing explosion of the home video market with the advent of DVD (especially for TV shows) created a massive boom that continued to grow for the next half decade until it eventually dramatically ended in late 2007/early 2008 with Geneon going out of business, ADV restructuring and virtually everyone else massively scaling back, pulling heavily out of brick and mortar stores, transitioning from singles to complete collections, and anime largely disappearing from TV.

True. But I don't think that anime became less popular, the single main reason for the decline in the revenues of the industry is the internet.

The music industry, for example, has been collapsing since 2000, thanks to the internet (http://money.cnn.com/2010/02/02/news/companies/napster_music_industry/), but people today are listening to more music than ever. I think that anime may be similar: I think that more people than ever are watching anime outside of Japan, but, the monetary revenues of the anime industry are stagnant.

Joe Carpenter wrote:

anime is kind of back where it was in the 90's, that is to say it still has a devoted following, but it's totally underground now, any flirtations with mainstream appeal are dead

I do miss all the stores that had a big selection like Media Play and Suncoast.....but I can't agree with the above statement.

Anime has hardly gone back to being "underground" thing. It's all over f.y.e., Barnes And Nobles, and Hot Topic. Best Buy still has a (albeit small and pathetic) section. Quite often if you talk about it with a random person, you no longer get the answer "what's that" but more of "oh, yeah, someone else I know is into that".

Plus con attendance rates are the highest they've ever been...which is why admission just keeps skyrocketing....ugh, soon it's going to cost 100 dollars at the door, I just know it. =_=

Quote:

there were no boom years? so companies like Geneon, ADV, Bandai USA, Manga Entertainment and Tokyopop, which were around and no longer are, is not indicative of a boom?

Um....Geneon used to be Pioneer, and like ADV and US Manga, they had been around since the 90s. They didn't all just suddenly pop up between the years of 2003-2008. As for being no longer around, ADV simply changed their name...and the others were killed by the same things that killed many video stores and Borders; the economy/pirated material.

FYE and Best Buy are awful examples. FYE never has anything decent and when they do it is well over priced and they have a ton of singles that never move from back before box sets became the norm, and has way to many DBZ orange box sets as well.

Also Best Buy has a very limited supply and its getting smaller and smaller.