Forum - View topicANNCast - The Last Days of Bandai Entertainment USA
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Echo_City
Posts: 1236 |
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ADV is dead (and its resurrected corpse legally disparate from ADV) & Bandai is ebbing from America so now could be the time to let it debut. Say, what is the "legal status" of the ADV audio? Maybe someone could let just that out into the wild & enterprising fans could sync it to their copies of GL themselves?  
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agila61
 Posts: 3213 Location: NE Ohio |
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You'd have to have a lawyer read the contract to know for sure, but derivative works in localizations often revert to the original rights owner when the licensees license lapses, if they weren't handed over earlier and used under the license. |
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reanimator
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Anime still needs widest exposure to western market. Western fans are known for having the most excitement for certain anime that they like and yet that positivity doesn't seem to translate for better or rising sales. On the other hand, Japanese fans don't seem to clamor much as us westerners (other than standing long lines for anime pre-order releases), but Japanese companies are doing pretty well just for selling niche cartoons. Can western fans make U.S. market relevant to Japan again? Put it bluntly, is western anime fandom all talk, but no substance?
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walw6pK4Alo
 Posts: 9322 |
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Even if the West were substance, we pay $50-80 for 12 episodes. That's what Japanese fan pays for 2. We'd need to expand the anime fanbase several times over to have any kind of economic persuasion, but still have to deal with the reality that we'll either have crippled BDs, long waits, or higher prices as DVDs begin to fade. Then there's those who might decide to only pay for their streams but forgo discs entirely. That's not exactly going to make for a strong monetary presence either, where their entire year's contribution was nearly matched by a single person buying a single disc in Japan.
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TitanXL
 Posts: 4036 |
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What? I don't think I've seen the American fanbase get anywhere close to being as 'dedicated/excited' as what the otaku do. People complain when a boxset is 60 dollars, where as otaku will gladly pay 600 for a boxset. Then you have Comiket and other fanworks that don't really have a parallel in America. |
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tuxedocat
 Posts: 2183 |
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...and yet, that is what it seems they are doing. Looks like yet another climb up Starblazers Mountain.  
I have many Bandai Entertainment USA boxes on my shelves. I have to admit that with the amount of warning we received, I was able to get most of what I wanted from your catalog before the complete shut-down. (Unlike the situation with Geneon, which was just cruel). Though the company is gone now, I am grateful that you were here. |
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ZeetherKID77
 Posts: 981 |
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Did you read my post? I mentioned that there's a survey going on that one of Bandai Visual's higher ups is running alongside someone from a university to size up the anime market in the US. http://ht.ly/i6wEI If anything this COULD be a sign Bandai is trying to figure out the US market and I bet the great majority of people who take this survey would NOT want to pay tons for imports. Japan needs to understand that unlike their country where people rent or DVR shows instead of buy $1000 Blu-ray sets of shows with gigantic boxes and production materials, we prefer to own stuff on physical media more and would NOT prefer to pay stupidly high amounts of cash to do so. |
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Alan45
 Village Elder Posts: 9829 Location: Virginia |
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I don't believe it. We are on the fourth page of this and no one has picked up on Roberts mention of Hyperwerks and the Deity comic.
Man that was a fun comic. I picked up everything related that I could find, comics, posters, collected editions, extra covers, I even bought the Diety box and the Cosmic Cat Activity book. That was a quality production. I miss your writing. |
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invalidname
 Contributor Posts: 2441 Location: Grand Rapids, MI |
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I'm sure Bob wasn't intentionally trying to make "Starblazers Mountain" happen, but if that were to become the title of a new TV Tropes entry for "massive overproduction of a media product that goes unsold and must eventually be disposed of", I would really enjoy it.
The Atari 2600 E.T. The Extraterrestrial cartridge and the Apple Lisa computer — massive quantities of which were both reputedly buried in the desert — would be two examples to seed such an entry. |
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StudioToledo
 Posts: 847 Location: Toledo, U.S.A. |
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Remember people, Star Blazers Mountain!
I'm sure it is. I'll give it another 20 years. |
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omoikane
Posts: 494 |
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Long podcast so it took a while to go through.
Just want to also say a big thank you for having Robert Napton on the show, and a big thank you to him (and his coworkers) for Bandai's various ongoings as a part of the R1 anime industry. I remember seeing him at Otakon 2011 and it struck me that he looked more distraught than usual, so that's probably at some point after the news broke to them huh... I'll definitely miss you guys at the cons! |
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Angel M Cazares
 Posts: 5420 Location: Iscandar |
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And yet, if Bandai returned to the U.S. market, they would probably adapt the Aniplex USA model. If AoA is successful economically, it wouldn't surprise me if other big Japanese distributors established U.S. subsidiaries to sell pricier anime.
What's with this sense of entitlement? Furthermore, we do not deserve Gundam in the U.S., I've been told several times that it does not have that many fans here to begin.
Tell that to Aniplex USA supporters/buyers. AoA is probably doing something right (besides having the backing of Aniplex Japan) to have survived more than two years with higher prices and constant cursing by many people. |
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agila61
Posts: 3213 Location: NE Ohio |
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Wait a minute ~ Japan needs to understand that the American market BOTH has a stronger preference than Japan for the physical media AND a weaker preference than Japan for the physical media. Well, that explains why the Japanese have such a bi-polar approach to the American market ~ there are those who understand that we have a stronger demand and those that understand that we have a weaker demand but not a lot who easily understand that we have a stronger and weaker demand simultaneously. In a way, the full Aniplex model, of cheap, readily available streaming, more expensive but not collector level digital downloads, and expensive collector physical media, seems like it is in fact respecting such a contradictory US market: the digital media sells at a substantial to massive discount, reflecting the US preference for the physical media (at this present point in time), the physical media is prices at a modest to steep discount to the Japanese price, and at the same time priced above the mainstream DVD price points, reflecting the fact that its selling small runs to the collector end of the market where the worthwhile margins can be maintained. So get a penny or two from the international free streaming audience in its millions, a dime or two from the subscription streaming audience in their hundred thousand, a few dollars at a time from the mass market ownership crowd in download to own, in return for not requiring any of the headaches and distribution slices of physical media, and tens of dollars at a time from the small but lucrative segment of the market who not only prefer physical media but are willing to pay a price at which it is worthwhile catering to their preference for physical media. |
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marcos torres toledo
Posts: 269 |
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Another great interview ANNCast and another sad one about Bandai joining other anime,manga distributor companies bites the dust. Thanks Robert Napton for great work at Bandai Entertainment USA may anime rise from the ashes soon. Ceilbdemented so there are still bookstores where you live enjoy them while the last as I have written before there all closed down here in Puerto Rico no comic book stores either. We can't stream from Anime Network or Manga.com here as well.
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tuxedocat
Posts: 2183 |
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I don't think anyone was blaming Bob. I think he used the term as an analogy to Japan's overestimation of the N.A. market. I got the impression that "the mountain" predated his term there. |
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