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NEWS: Toei DVDs Cancelled


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emory



Joined: 28 Jan 2004
Posts: 615
PostPosted: Mon Sep 18, 2006 2:12 pm Reply with quote
Dammit. Hopefully Toei now takes some time to learn how to make a DVD for the western world.
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LydiaDianne



Joined: 28 Jan 2006
Posts: 5633
Location: Southern California
PostPosted: Mon Sep 18, 2006 2:36 pm Reply with quote
I think that the executives at Toei are either druggies, insane, or both.

Is it just me, or are they cutting off their noses to spite their faces?

What's the point of cancelling product when you have the demand for it?

These people are weird... Confused

Can ANYONE explain why they are doing this?
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Nagisa
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Joined: 19 Aug 2003
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 18, 2006 2:37 pm Reply with quote
Great. It figures the only one I actually wanted to buy remains a Toei release. Ah well, back to once again waiting for the license to expire so it can get picked back up again by someone decent.
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Zac
ANN Executive Editor


Joined: 05 Jan 2002
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 18, 2006 2:40 pm Reply with quote
LydiaDianne wrote:

What's the point of cancelling product when you have the demand for it?

These people are weird... Confused

Can ANYONE explain why they are doing this?


Because the sales numbers for their DVDs were ridiculously low. Like, absolutely terrible sales, probably the worst in recent memory.

There is no "demand" for their product. A few people on the internet claiming they'd buy it is not "demand", and the sales numbers for Slam Dunk, Interlude and Air Master prove that pretty soundly.
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Lyrai



Joined: 04 Sep 2005
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 18, 2006 2:43 pm Reply with quote
Call me out of the loop, but what exactly did Toei do? I've heard people mention Toei being incredibly stupid, but never what they did
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kraid



Joined: 13 Oct 2004
Posts: 27
PostPosted: Mon Sep 18, 2006 2:52 pm Reply with quote
I believe the demand is there, it's just that after word got out how they authored the DVDs, ie using close captioning instead of subtitles and not having chapter breaks in between episodes, among other things, it turned alot of people off. I know I did not buy any of their dvds and this was after I was considering purchasing Slam Dunk. I'll wait and hopefully someone more competent will pick it up.
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Tempest
I Run this place.
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 18, 2006 3:04 pm Reply with quote
Lyrai wrote:
Call me out of the loop, but what exactly did Toei do? I've heard people mention Toei being incredibly stupid, but never what they did


Almost no marketing whatsoever for their DVDs (Major press received trailer discs, not the actual discs to review). So their was very little press about them. Anime Insider, Anime News Network, Anime on DVD and Newtype did not review the products before they were released (if at all).

And very debatable product quality. The dubs were decent, although somewhat liberally translated (something dub fans generally accept), but the subtitles were just as liberally translated (something subtitle fas don't accept).

Video and Sound quality were good, but the DVDs were a pain to navigate (each episode was its own title, so it wouldn't automatically go from episode 1 to episode 2). And hte menus were rather... cheap, they used the same background for all their DVDs across all their series (same background on Interlude as on Slam Dunk).

Finally, no extras.

Their biggest single mistake was the total lack or marketing (no press contact person even).

Fans were annoyed by the lack or response to any of the issues with their DVDs after they were pointed out by unhappy fans.

-t
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Nagisa
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Joined: 19 Aug 2003
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 18, 2006 3:04 pm Reply with quote
Zac wrote:
There is no "demand" for their product. A few people on the internet claiming they'd buy it is not "demand", and the sales numbers for Slam Dunk, Interlude and Air Master prove that pretty soundly.


Or there's no demand for the way it was presented. I remember that the news of how badly authored the Toei DVDs would be came out a couple weeks prior to the actual release date, and I imagine that had to have dealt a damn near fatal blow to the public's interest in them. Perhaps if someone who actually knew what they were doing had put these titles out, they would've fared better (for example, I'd have a copy of Interlude on my shelf right now as we speak, but that's a no-go so far due to the quality we got).
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LydiaDianne



Joined: 28 Jan 2006
Posts: 5633
Location: Southern California
PostPosted: Mon Sep 18, 2006 3:09 pm Reply with quote
tempest wrote:
Lyrai wrote:
Call me out of the loop, but what exactly did Toei do? I've heard people mention Toei being incredibly stupid, but never what they did


Almost no marketing whatsoever for their DVDs (Major press received trailer discs, not the actual discs to review). So their was very little press about them. Anime Insider, Anime News Network, Anime on DVD and Newtype did not review the products before they were released (if at all).

And very debatable product quality. The dubs were decent, although somewhat liberally translated (something dub fans generally accept), but the subtitles were just as liberally translated (something subtitle fas don't accept).

Video and Sound quality were good, but the DVDs were a pain to navigate (each episode was its own title, so it wouldn't automatically go from episode 1 to episode 2). And hte menus were rather... cheap, they used the same background for all their DVDs across all their series (same background on Interlude as on Slam Dunk).

Finally, no extras.

Their biggest single mistake was the total lack or marketing (no press contact person even).

Fans were annoyed by the lack or response to any of the issues with their DVDs after they were pointed out by unhappy fans.

-t


Idea

Ahhh, so they've cut their own throats due to the poor marketing and poor production (menus, subtitles etc.) of their own product.

Quote:
I think that the executives at Toei are either druggies, insane, or both.

Is it just me, or are they cutting off their noses to spite their faces?


I guess that I may be right!
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Chrno2



Joined: 28 May 2004
Posts: 6171
Location: USA
PostPosted: Mon Sep 18, 2006 3:13 pm Reply with quote
Oye vay! My baby 'Air Master' cancelled. Sad Crying or Very sad

Again this was a series I really wanted to own. But again I got the same word about how badly the production was. Hell, even if I decided to buy them they were still delayed due to the bad sales. It was only a matter of time before they would be cancelled. It doesn't make sense to sink your money into something that isn't going to finish it's release. It's really a shame. There had to be people out there that supported it and wanted it. And it's not like people didn't know of this series. I hope that maybe that this whole deal doesn't hurt its future chance to be released by another distributor. But then again how do you fix something by someone else? Question
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Colonel Wolfe



Joined: 05 Aug 2004
Posts: 370
PostPosted: Mon Sep 18, 2006 3:58 pm Reply with quote
I think it may have something to do with the recebt scandal regarding the Slam Dunk manga and some other manga series that was being published by Kodansha where one manga series plagiarized the other manga series by copying the same style. It was a huge scandal about a year or two ago and this may be Toei's way of saying that they weren't going to be caught up in the middle of the scandal.
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Pyoko



Joined: 13 Apr 2005
Posts: 56
PostPosted: Mon Sep 18, 2006 4:08 pm Reply with quote
Even if they hadn't screwed up the sub/dub/authoring, I'm not sure who over at Toei thought people were actually going to pay $25 each for 20+ volumes of a 10-year-old sports anime. They should have just done sub-only box sets.
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chrisb
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Joined: 07 May 2006
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Location: USA
PostPosted: Mon Sep 18, 2006 4:29 pm Reply with quote
What a shame, all the titles were very good and I loved Air Master and Interlude was good too. Slame Dunk was starting to grow on me aswell but ofcourse they sold badly the way the DVDs were designed were awful: no extras and no chapter skips, all the menus looked the same, awful sound, sometimes glitchy, and no decent subtitle track (although the dubs weren't awful and some voices were actually good). Why does Toei do this to their own titles when they come to the U.S?
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LydiaDianne



Joined: 28 Jan 2006
Posts: 5633
Location: Southern California
PostPosted: Mon Sep 18, 2006 4:39 pm Reply with quote
I have a question...

If an anime company such as Toei goes out of business...what happens to the titles it has control of?

Do titles such as Sailor Moon revert back to the originator? Would she then be able to turn around and sell/license to another company?

What about titles that were thought up by Toei itself? What happens to those?

I hope that I'm making sense of what I'm trying to ask.
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kusanagi-sama



Joined: 22 Aug 2004
Posts: 1723
Location: Wichita Falls, TX
PostPosted: Mon Sep 18, 2006 4:44 pm Reply with quote
LydiaDianne wrote:
I have a question...

If an anime company such as Toei goes out of business...what happens to the titles it has control of?

Do titles such as Sailor Moon revert back to the originator? Would she then be able to turn around and sell/license to another company?

What about titles that were thought up by Toei itself? What happens to those?

I hope that I'm making sense of what I'm trying to ask.


Toei itself is not out of business, just the poorly managed and arrogant US office (Toei is a company that thinks it can do whatever it wants, and not what its customers want).

Oh, and the originator for Sailor Moon is Toei
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