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Answerman - Tech Specs

I know its not easy work and I want the companies to make money. But on the flip side I am tired of them releasing these bastardization, 10-13 episodes of a show, and then telling everyone too bad, it didn't sell so you are stuck with this incomplete product. Additionally, its been what a few decades now that animation has been produced, its about time you figure out ways to cheapen the cost of making it, instead of figuring out ways to gouge customers. Im sorry I understand about markets and economics etc. ; but I can''t think of anywhere that comes close to even a fraction of the prices for dvd and blu ray that Japan puts on its anime. Look I realize that is how its been there, but with average costs of 30 plus dollars an episode, you just aren't doing something right. Even Europe where I am from, they don't close to gouging you on prices like Japan, and in Europe they gouge on prices. So maybe its time they start improving their product costs, instead of always passing the costs off to consumers.

CrownKlown wrote:

I know its not easy work and I want the companies to make money. But on the flip side I am tired of them releasing these bastardization, 10-13 episodes of a show, and then telling everyone too bad, it didn't sell so you are stuck with this incomplete product. Additionally, its been what a few decades now that animation has been produced, its about time you figure out ways to cheapen the cost of making it, instead of figuring out ways to gouge customers. Im sorry I understand about markets and economics etc. ; but I can''t think of anywhere that comes close to even a fraction of the prices for dvd and blu ray that Japan puts on its anime. Look I realize that is how its been there, but with average costs of 30 plus dollars an episode, you just aren't doing something right. Even Europe where I am from, they don't close to gouging you on prices like Japan, and in Europe they gouge on prices. So maybe its time they start improving their product costs, instead of always passing the costs off to consumers.

Even though you talk about cost cutting, do you think fans who like hand drawn animation will accept it? Animation-making is labor intensive. Do you want to compromise quality for cheaper price. When you want niche show with quality, then you have to pay the price, right? Even if they do everything high tech, production cost will soar again because artists are never satisfied to existing visual quality.

Do you even look at end credit of each episode and how many are involved in it? When I count names on end credit of hot anime titles, number of production staffers range from 100 to 200 people per episode. Or do you prefer half the staff with okay-quality animation and visuals for Anime? Many American TV animations are like that and they're not that pretty even with oversea staffs.

I don't know much about European side, but it depends on how much people are involved it. How many people are involved in typical European animation production? Are European films made for niche or mainstream? Japanese fans want their animations to be niche and also high quality if possible. That's why Japanese fans pay the high price.

So maybe its time they start improving their product costs, instead of always passing the costs off to consumers.

A very interesting insight into the subtitling process. I've noticed the issue where Blu-ray subtitles blink when they refresh (most notably and disappointingly on Bakemonogatari) which Justin briefly mentioned, but it's such a relatively rare occurrence that I'd been left miffed as to why it's happening. It's present on Kaze's European release of Samurai Girls but not Sentai's, despite Kaze using Sentai's subtitle track!

If you're that intent on offering both a subtitled and dubbed version of an anime, it'd be far easier to just have two copies of the video lying around, and most companies don't want to deal with that.

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If you're that intent on offering both a subtitled and dubbed version of an anime, it'd be far easier to just have two copies of the video lying around, and most companies don't want to deal with that.

Maybe I'm missing something, but why not?

I'm guessing that a large majority of the viewers want to watch either subbed or dubbed, and not both versions of every episode, so having two videos wouldn't automatically double the bandwidth.

Here's how I always saw reverse importation. (Overwrought metaphor time.) In a couple of weeks, America's favorite military wargame surrogate is starting up. Say there is a fan of the San Diego Chargers. In order to experience his hobby, he can a) stay at home a watch the game in HD quality on a big screen TV in all of modern comforts with cheap beer for free, or he b) spend several hundred dollars on tickets, parking, concessions, and cheap beer at exorbitant prices to see the game in the stadium. So why would anyone choose B? Because there is significant psychic value added by going to the game opposed to staying at home. Especially valuable is the experience of going as it related to the fandom, i.e. bragging rights. So why do people then choose choice A then? Because they can't always afford B. Anime fandom has a lot of similarity to sports fandom, and this is a obvious parallel. The average anime fan can watch shows for essentially zero cost online. Why buy the physical media then? For bragging rights and psychic value. Imported stuff from America is far less valuable in this case. Then why do people still import it? Because they can't afford the real thing.

It's that reason why this hand wringing over reverse importation is silly. Blocking it will have minimal effect on sales, since the consumers are purchasing it because they can't afford the real stuff. However, I can under stand why the Japanese suits are concerned, since their entire business model is based of an artificial manipulation of supply and demand.


Oh, and dealing with those damn subtitle bitmaps is a real pain. Thank God for OCR.