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ANNCast - The Last Days of Bandai Entertainment USA

The attitude that there are always two sides, those two sides are always equal, and equally trustworthy and that the "truth literally always lies in the middle between these two viewpoints" is why our news media sucks so hard and is so bad at actually finding the truth.

Great podcast. To say that Bandai Entertainment USA will be missed is an understatement. While it was active, it released some of the best titles ever to reach US shores:

Cowboy Bebop, ... Escaflowne, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Planetes, Wolf's Rain, ... and FLAG.

If Napton's commentary - which he couched firmly as his opinion as a first-hand source on the issue - isn't enough for you, you're welcome to dismiss it as "biased and one-sided" but saying that somehow this is being pushed on you as "the absolute truth", as though Bob never said "this is my opinion" over and over again, is mischaracterizing the tone of the interview entirely. If you can't trust a first-hand source who was literally there during the entire ordeal and absolutely need Bandai Japan's take on it to trust any of the information, then I can't meet whatever your personal standards are.

The attitude that there are always two sides, those two sides are always equal, and equally trustworthy and that the "truth literally always lies in the middle between these two viewpoints" is why our news media sucks so hard and is so bad at actually finding the truth. This is how CNN reports on things - "man says sky is blue, but others say sky is neon yellow. Who's right? Well, the truth could be somewhere in the middle!" It's of no value to anyone.

It isn't being billed as the definitive version of events, but Robert has given me zero reason (and any reasonable person zero reason) to think he's wildly spinning things in his favor, or not telling the truth, or otherwise not a reliable source. I stand by the interview as a perfectly valid account of what happened.

Again, you can't have it both ways. You can not say that Napton's account is not the absolute version of what happened with the company and then turn around and say that its a "perfectly valid account of what happened."

Good point, but you could also argue that the Japanese gaming market is much different today than it was in the 1980s. A lot of games released over there never see the light of day over here.

You could also say that, besides a few exceptions western games in generally do better over here than Japanese ones do.

You can't have it both ways. You can't say that Napton's commentary was his opinion and should be taken as such and In the same breath say that his account of what happened with Bandai Entertainment USA should be trusted 100% (translation: should be regarded as the ultimate truth). Do you really think that Napton does not have any bias in favor of the U.S. staff and what they did over the staff in Japan?

In my opinion, like in all debates, the truth within the debate over what happened to Bandai Entertainment USA and why it didn't do well

This is how CNN reports on things - "man says sky is blue, but others say sky is neon yellow. Who's right? Well, the truth could be somewhere in the middle!" It's of no value to anyone.

HeeroTX wrote:

Name ANY foreign entertainment market that has so far SUCCESSFULLY sustained "mainstream" popularity (in the US) outside of a "niche" audience.

Nintendo

they are encouraging piracy by not making the title readily available

Aniplex might be the same way.

Echo_City wrote:

Say, what is the "legal status" of the ADV audio? ....

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.

For the more niche titles, Manufacture-on-Demand is your friend. It's worked very well for Warner Bros, Sony, MGM, Nickelodeon, and others. It's the reason so many movies and shows have had a chance to come to DVD here. I'm not sure how well Tokyopop did with releasing Rave Master this way (dub only didn't help, and that was not a good dub either, but I'm mostly talking about how the discs physically came out), but Sony's been able to get some of their anime catalog out this way too (prays for Cyborg 009 to come next).

agila61 wrote:

Echo_City wrote: Say, what is the "legal status" of the ADV audio? .... 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.

A lot of the time, at least post bubble, I think the dub is owned by the licencor in the first place (i.e. the dub is usually provided to the UK via Japan, not America, and all the occasions where Japanese BD re-releases include the US dub as an extra).
The exception I'm sure about is 5cm/s where Comix Wave had to commission a new dub.

Hitler is informed that Bandai and Media Blasters are shutting down their anime releases:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NduAtcWpnO0&list=PL7D09BD50935DAC83

(I finally managed to re-upload this)

followed by, "Hitler hears that FUNimation and ADV are suing each other"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bagaUNWz8Sc

Also, "Hitler is informed of the Tokyopop shutdown ending the Hetalia manga."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qyNzoN9G_Y

The problem is that the Japanese don't understand the American market... ...The Japanese still think that by doing things the Japanese way then the rest of the world will just become like Japan and all of a sudden you are going to get a flood of new anime fans all wanting the latest sub only Blu-ray 2 episodes for 70 dollars. They are going to buy hug pillows and action figures of the cutest giant headed anime girl...

...The thing getting in the way of Japan's expansion as a global (Anime) market isn't having American branches,.. ...the problem is that you can't have 4 million customers worldwide when your product is exclusively aimed at 100,000 Japanese people.

So what I take from this is that Japan, by and large, had no godamn clue in the 80's, 90's 2000's and they have no godamn clue now. Sounds about right.

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.

Wouldn't it be easier if the current (R1) fanbase instead paid more for anime ($100 per 12 episodes, instead of $40)? The fanbase WILL NEVER multiply by 10 (not even by 2). To me the best way to have a bigger economic presence in the anime industry is to pay top dollar.

Guys, you're conflating uncertainty with doubt...

Could perhaps Bandai then release this long-hidden ADV dub of Gurren Lagaan to the world, show us what could have been? I wanted to like the Bandai dub of GL, but my ears just couldn't.

I've heard that when the Japanese confiscated Ghost Stories they kept the dub & subsequently released it with the ADV dub. I wouldn't stake my life on the veracity of that, but if Bandai could release the ADV dub on a release of GL, even if it weren't a US domestic release, I'd buy it.

Alternatively, if these "noble" options don't work for Bandai, well, perhaps they could release the dub just to spite ADV...again?

Someone at ADV has to have a copy of this, and I'm sure they could release it. Before its demise, a demise supposedly hastened greatly by Bandai shafting them on the GL dub, ADV was trying to break into the "torrent scene". Releasing their GL dub via torrent could finally get them that "presence" on the "torrent scene" that they sought all those years ago. C'mon guys.