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Why are the scene and the industry in this state?


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faintsmile1992



Joined: 18 Mar 2011
Posts: 295
Location: England
PostPosted: Fri Dec 09, 2011 5:49 pm Reply with quote
Talking at least relative to the population size, why isn't anime and manga at least as 'big' in the UK, as it is in America, which speaks Eigo too, or in France which is just across the channel? I'm asking here because someone on here must have some kind of clue.

The industry is ridiculously small here, and now Borders has gone ages back, only HMV and Waterstones carry small ammounts of DVDs and tankobon on their high street shelves. Most Japanese games like 2D fighters never get released here, either, although its well known that apaese games used to dominate the UK market. Most Japanese games never get licensed and you can't even buy a joystick or a gamepad designed for such games offline here.

Here the clubs are few and far between and are uni based, which naturally excludes everyone who's not a student type. Apart from one overcrowded London Expo, most of the events seem to be centred around drinking alcohol like everything is in the UK ("Can I have the money instead?"), and the entry tickets to the UK cons and expos are way overpriced to make it worthwhile going there to buy cheap stuff.

As a rough guess there must be like three library-based manga clubs throughout the UK, and incidentally, they're all far away from where I live anyway. Although enough people obviously turn up at the London Expo to create those horror stories about the queues to get in, and there are photos to prove it (I know the other Expos are much quieter, but they have less content), you must admit there's really very little fandom around in the UK compared to over in America, where schools often have clubs for drawing and reading manga. Why is this?

I've heard industry people mention the state of the UK industry and fandom before, but I've never heard anyone explain why its in this shitty state. Is it the result of the culture here being different to America and France, or the fault of the industry making mistakes that never happened in America or France? Did something go wrong, or is the relative failure of the UK industry outside the industry's own control? What's the actual cause of the problem?
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yurihellsing





PostPosted: Sun Dec 11, 2011 11:54 pm Reply with quote
Do you want the long or the short answer?
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faintsmile1992



Joined: 18 Mar 2011
Posts: 295
Location: England
PostPosted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 4:58 am Reply with quote
the long answer would be ideal. Wink
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ConanSan



Joined: 13 Jun 2007
Posts: 1818
PostPosted: Wed Dec 21, 2011 4:18 am Reply with quote
The AOD mess has broken my will to care of the UK industry any-more. It's clear nobody knows what the hell they're doing.
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faintsmile1992



Joined: 18 Mar 2011
Posts: 295
Location: England
PostPosted: Wed Dec 21, 2011 8:13 am Reply with quote
But the anime industry has been much more successful, and the scene so much better, outside the UK. Why are things so much better in the USA and France?
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Mohawk52



Joined: 16 Oct 2003
Posts: 8202
Location: England, UK
PostPosted: Thu Dec 22, 2011 3:24 pm Reply with quote
One word.

Fansubs.
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Zin5ki



Joined: 06 Jan 2008
Posts: 6680
Location: London, UK
PostPosted: Thu Dec 22, 2011 5:38 pm Reply with quote
Do such things leave a proportionally greater impact upon the local market than upon that of North America? Should this be the case, an industrial citation within which such a fact is declared would be appreciated.
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faintsmile1992



Joined: 18 Mar 2011
Posts: 295
Location: England
PostPosted: Sat Dec 24, 2011 8:46 am Reply with quote
Mohawk52 wrote:
One word.

Fansubs.


Well English fansubs exist in North America, and indeed there exist fansubs in languages other than English, so Fansubs can't explain it.
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yurihellsing





PostPosted: Sat Dec 24, 2011 1:55 pm Reply with quote
give me a week or two and i should be done with my reply.
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12skippy21



Joined: 25 Nov 2008
Posts: 785
Location: York, England
PostPosted: Sat Dec 24, 2011 6:03 pm Reply with quote
I believe I made a response to a simliar question a while ago which I will attempt to re-create.

Personally I would not blame fansubs or the industry. Although I will never understand why Strike Witches got released here I actually think the industry is doing the best it can with what it has been given. Every niche market as its cheats, those who will watch entertainment for free always represent a percentage of the population but I would say that it is a static percentage across all countries and this country does not have any more such people has others.

The simple reason is that the fanbase is too small. The reason for this is because I have always viewed British people as being a lot more narrow minded in its choice of entertainment than others. You could suggest a lot of reasons for this but I think it is because in each country you have a set representative of the population who does not like the main media. The USA is a good example because their entertainment is usually viewed as being sub-par and this generates a segment of the populace who rebel against it and look for other outlets which is why they have larger markets for alternative media such as anime or world cinema.

Meanwhile, along with the fact that the people of this country still hold silly notions of patriotism based upon our old empire, we have viewed our entertainment has being superior than other countries especially in the case of comedy. This has created a smaller number of people willing to look for alternative media but has also made a large part of the people somewhat hostile to any entertainment viewed as different and would quaff at such things. British people have a entrenched habit of always looking at the past, regardless of what it is, with rose tinted glasses, but that is a seperate issue for another day.

Ofcourse there are others factors at play, such as ordering items from the American instead of British markets (I am guilty of this), the difficulty of generating more interest in younger generations who are usually bombarded with sub-par cartoons but with more attractive adult based media to view and so on. Feel free to enhance on the list.

Considering the reaction I have received from trying to get people interested in anime and other forms of media this is the opinion I have generated but different experiences through other people generate different reactions so I would be interested in hearing what others think. Something to balance out my cynicism would be nice.
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faintsmile1992



Joined: 18 Mar 2011
Posts: 295
Location: England
PostPosted: Sat Dec 24, 2011 11:33 pm Reply with quote
12skippy21 wrote:
The simple reason is that the fanbase is too small. The reason for this is because I have always viewed British people as being a lot more narrow minded in its choice of entertainment than others. You could suggest a lot of reasons for this but I think it is because in each country you have a set representative of the population who does not like the main media. The USA is a good example because their entertainment is usually viewed as being sub-par and this generates a segment of the populace who rebel against it and look for other outlets which is why they have larger markets for alternative media such as anime or world cinema.

Meanwhile, along with the fact that the people of this country still hold silly notions of patriotism based upon our old empire, we have viewed our entertainment has being superior than other countries especially in the case of comedy. This has created a smaller number of people willing to look for alternative media but has also made a large part of the people somewhat hostile to any entertainment viewed as different and would quaff at such things. British people have a entrenched habit of always looking at the past, regardless of what it is, with rose tinted glasses, but that is a seperate issue for another day.

Ofcourse there are others factors at play, such as ordering items from the American instead of British markets (I am guilty of this), the difficulty of generating more interest in younger generations who are usually bombarded with sub-par cartoons but with more attractive adult based media to view and so on. Feel free to enhance on the list.

Considering the reaction I have received from trying to get people interested in anime and other forms of media this is the opinion I have generated but different experiences through other people generate different reactions so I would be interested in hearing what others think. Something to balance out my cynicism would be nice.



The British are indeed narrow minded about entertainment, just think of how difficult it is to get Japanese games or even suitable gamepads and sticks here in the UK without importing them from PlayAsia. But the problems with your reasons why are that most British people seem to agree that our television is a rock of shit (hence the obsession with mostly gay US imports) and that your view of British patriotism is a stereotype based upon how Grauniad readers view the readers of the Daily Mail.
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Mohawk52



Joined: 16 Oct 2003
Posts: 8202
Location: England, UK
PostPosted: Sun Dec 25, 2011 11:57 am Reply with quote
faintsmile1992 wrote:
Mohawk52 wrote:
One word.

Fansubs.


Well English fansubs exist in North America, and indeed there exist fansubs in languages other than English, so Fansubs can't explain it.
England is not the size of NA and vice versa. When historically right up to even today; licenses take up to two years to get here after they have been released in NA, fansubs have been the bain of the UK market since the 1990's, because by then mostly everyone's already seen it, and few will then like it enough to buy it because of reasons of quality, or distribution platform, or both. Importing also has it's influence as well for roughly the same reasons, but at least the licensed distributors still get the money for their efforts with importing, just not the British one's.
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yurihellsing





PostPosted: Sun Dec 25, 2011 12:12 pm Reply with quote
Mohawk52 wrote:
faintsmile1992 wrote:
Mohawk52 wrote:
One word.

Fansubs.


Well English fansubs exist in North America, and indeed there exist fansubs in languages other than English, so Fansubs can't explain it.
England is not the size of NA and vice versa. When historically right up to even today; licenses take up to two years to get here after they have been released in NA, fansubs have been the bain of the UK market since the 1990's, because by then mostly everyone's already seen it, and few will then like it enough to buy it because of reasons of quality, or distribution platform, or both. Importing also has it's influence as well for roughly the same reasons, but at least the licensed distributors still get the money for their efforts with importing, just not the British one's.


You could have just summed that up by saying it's a service issue cause Manga ent UK has been giving us real pool service as of late.
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Mohawk52



Joined: 16 Oct 2003
Posts: 8202
Location: England, UK
PostPosted: Sun Dec 25, 2011 4:51 pm Reply with quote
yurihellsing wrote:
You could have just summed that up by saying it's a service issue cause Manga ent UK has been giving us real pool service as of late.
Just Manga Ent? Compared to what we also get from the rest? I see little difference. Still it's way better than 11 years ago and the three we have are the survivors from then else we would have nothing, but fansubs and imports, so I don't grumble too much. My only gripe to them is not picking up and completing the series abandoned by the likes of Revelation and ADV.
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faintsmile1992



Joined: 18 Mar 2011
Posts: 295
Location: England
PostPosted: Mon Dec 26, 2011 4:20 am Reply with quote
Well if that really does explain the smaller industry then what about the absence of a fandom over here? If people are watching and reading in some way or other here, how come the yanks have manga clubs in their schools whilst we have only two or three manga clubs in libraries across the entire country?

And do Australia and NZ have the same industry problems that ours does?
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