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NEWS: 1st Flowers of Evil Blu-ray/DVD Delayed Until Further Notice


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jymmy



Joined: 11 Nov 2011
Posts: 1244
PostPosted: Wed Jul 24, 2013 3:17 am Reply with quote
Zalis116 wrote:
Trolling doesn't pay the bills though

I'm pretty sure it would have been done to create the show they wanted to make without regard for what moe-obsessed otaku would want, not specifically made that way to piss them off and hurt their own sales. Or are you using the modern "annoying anyone at all ever" definition of trolling?
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ikillchicken



Joined: 12 Feb 2007
Posts: 7272
Location: Vancouver
PostPosted: Wed Jul 24, 2013 3:35 am Reply with quote
Zalis116 wrote:
Trolling doesn't pay the bills though, and there's apparently no "silent majority" willing to buy the discs to reward the creators for angering the otaku crowd.


Oh come off it Zalis. Just because A) they decided they wanted to do something radically different and B) this for some reason causes otaku to explode with rage does NOT mean they're "trolling". I swear, that has become one of the most misused words on the internet second only to hipster. At this point, any time someone does something you don't like they're "trolling".
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dormcat
Encyclopedia Editor


Joined: 08 Dec 2003
Posts: 9902
Location: New Taipei City, Taiwan, ROC
PostPosted: Wed Jul 24, 2013 3:46 am Reply with quote
The question is why change the original character design in such a radical manner. I'd say there would be much less rants and debates if the anime character design was a faithful adaptation, regardless of how the manga was drawn originally. Then again, had the manga illustrated in the style we see in the (current) anime adaptation, I doubt sponsors would give adaptation a green light in the first place.

Utsuro no Hako wrote:
I've sometimes wondered if there are any series that have sold more copies in the US than Japan. I think AnH might just manage that.

Reminds me the new cover art of Spice & Wolf US edition. Interestingly though, the US cover was welcomed on Komica (Taiwan's equivalent of 4chan) but hated on 4chan.


Last edited by dormcat on Wed Jul 24, 2013 4:05 am; edited 1 time in total
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YamadaKun



Joined: 17 Jul 2013
Posts: 304
Location: Sunny California
PostPosted: Wed Jul 24, 2013 4:01 am Reply with quote
@Utsuro no Hako There have been loads of examples. Big O, Ghost in the Shell 1995, Kiki's Delivery Service, Macross II, Macross Plus, Gundam Wing, Hellsing, Trigun, Cowboy Bebop(sold a lot, but not very popular), Dragon Ball GT(even though GT sold a lot in Japan as well), Dragon Ball Z(sold loads in Japan as well), Escaflowne, FLCL, Black Lagoon, Rurouni Kenshin, Yu-Yu Hakusho, Inuyasha, Tenchi Muyo, Pokemon(for sure), original Yu-Gi-Oh, SAC series, Akira, Advent Children and loads more. I'm not going to list any more.
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configspace



Joined: 16 Aug 2008
Posts: 3717
PostPosted: Wed Jul 24, 2013 4:38 am Reply with quote
dormcat wrote:
The question is why change the original character design in such a radical manner. I'd say there would be much less rants and debates if the anime character design was a faithful adaptation, regardless of how the manga was drawn originally. Then again, had the manga illustrated in the style we see in the (current) anime adaptation, I doubt sponsors would give adaptation a green light in the first place.

Utsuro no Hako wrote:
I've sometimes wondered if there are any series that have sold more copies in the US than Japan. I think AnH might just manage that.

Reminds me the new cover art of Spice & Wolf US edition. Interestingly though, the US cover was welcomed on Komica (Taiwan's equivalent of 4chan) but hated on 4chan.


I think this is cuts through the strawmen and gets to the point. The rage isn't because of anti-moe battle some apparently are trying to ascribe to it. If it were simply faithful to the original design there would be nothing to rage about! It is NOT the story or the atmosphere that is the complaint, its the freaking uncanny-valley, creepy, suspension of disbelief, draw-your-attention to the fake "animation", ugly rotoscoping that turns people off.

The original designs actually served the story better that functioned as sort of visual dichotomy to contrast aesthetic appearances with darker elements underneath. Daring or "innovative", this fake-anime adaptation was not.

In fact, it's trying to remove all subtlety from the visual elements. It's like trying to hit you over the head with "See here, the creepy visuals reflect creepiness of the story. Get it? Creepy Story = Creepy visuals. No seriously, do you see the genius?".

Imagined if the Higurashi adaptation did NOT take its moe route. Imagine if it--or Bokurano or NaruTaru--removed that contrasting dichotomy and subtlety and tried to blugdeon you over the head with its tragic-ness or horror-ness, and try to tell the audience, see? You're not supposed to find the visuals appealing, because see? it reflects the dark stuff underneath! (.. which defeats the entire purpose of distinguishing between the visual surface and what lies underneath)

You can download or view on Nico the live action footage. This entire effort was just wasted on rotoscoping. They should've just gone with a full blown TV drama or have a separate anime adaption for fans of the original manga.

dan9999 wrote:
Exercise some logic people. If the creators were concerned abut BD/DVD sales, what stopped them from going the cookie cutter/moe style and sell, what do you fancy, 2500-3000 discs? NOTHING.

First, under 3000 copies/vol is very low. Nowhere near enough to recoup costs. Second, there's no guarantee it would be a hit regardless. Do you know how many of the traditional style fail to sell all that well on their own (i.e. generate profits by video alone) The answer is MOST of the them. What does sell are specific titles regardless of genre, regardless of being "moe" or not, that have something special enough for people to shell out about $500 per cour per show.

But this isn't a single creator's pet project. It's illogical to think the people and investors involved would simply burn through money just to stroke some ego. If I had to guess, I think they realized the risk, but since they also knew that all anime was already risky, they decided to go forward.

But while all shows are inherently risky, without guarantees of success, Aku no Hana just guaranteed itself a failure as far as video sales goes. But who knows, maybe the sponsors or production committee are willing to bank on the manga sales more from the buzz--positive or negative--than video sales
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TitanXL



Joined: 08 Jun 2010
Posts: 4036
PostPosted: Wed Jul 24, 2013 5:52 am Reply with quote
YamadaKun wrote:
@Utsuro no Hako There have been loads of examples. Big O, Ghost in the Shell 1995, Kiki's Delivery Service, Macross II, Macross Plus, Gundam Wing, Hellsing, Trigun, Cowboy Bebop(sold a lot, but not very popular), Dragon Ball GT(even though GT sold a lot in Japan as well), Dragon Ball Z(sold loads in Japan as well), Escaflowne, FLCL, Black Lagoon, Rurouni Kenshin, Yu-Yu Hakusho, Inuyasha, Tenchi Muyo, Pokemon(for sure), original Yu-Gi-Oh, SAC series, Akira, Advent Children and loads more. I'm not going to list any more.


Yeah, you're gonna have to provide some sources for that. Some are believable like shows that flopped big time and no one cares about in Japan like Big O and Trigun, but you can't honestly suggest stuff like Dragonball, Pocket Monsters, and Yu-Gi-Oh are more popular in America given how huge they are in Japan (especially in the later two's cases where the anime in America is regulated to terrible timeslots on Toonzai and Cartoon Network and may as well just be dead for all it matters) Dragonball is a dang cultural icon in Japan and they get tons of stuff for it America will never see. And Macross... does America even get that many Macross releases? I thought we just cash in on Robotech nostalgia every so often when Harmony Gold's bank account gets low.

configspace wrote:
You can download or view on Nico the live action footage. This entire effort was just wasted on rotoscoping. They should've just gone with a full blown TV drama or have a separate anime adaption for fans of the original manga.


I've seen the actors and I agree they should have just made it live-action, rather than some bizarre hybrid and doesn't seem to appeal to either group.
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ikillchicken



Joined: 12 Feb 2007
Posts: 7272
Location: Vancouver
PostPosted: Wed Jul 24, 2013 5:58 am Reply with quote
configspace wrote:
Daring or "innovative", this fake-anime adaptation was not.


How to invalidate your entire post in two easy words. Laughing
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CrowLia



Joined: 24 Feb 2012
Posts: 5500
Location: Mexico
PostPosted: Wed Jul 24, 2013 8:42 am Reply with quote
Fencedude5609 wrote:
Tenchi wrote:
Out of curiousity, since it's been posted, why does the chart make it look like A Certain Scientific Railgun S is selling both fantastic and poorly? Is it that most of the fanbase wants the super-duper premium edition on Blu-Ray and are completely ignoring the regular editions, especially on DVD?


First column is its Amazon sales rank (current/previous). Lower is better. Railgun is sitting at number 22, which is pretty damn good.

The next column is sales points, which is the predicted number of units sold. Railgun is at 13k for its BD, Aku no Hana is at 606. So higher is better.

The next column is Pre-orders through NicoNico Douga, which is largely meaningless and can be ignored.

As for the DVD version, yes DVD versions almost always sell incredibly poorly, and more and more series aren't even being released on DVD at all.


Just a quick honest question, where are you people looking at all this? I don't really know my way around Amazon but all I can find is the DVD ranking
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Fencedude5609



Joined: 09 Nov 2006
Posts: 5088
PostPosted: Wed Jul 24, 2013 8:46 am Reply with quote
CrowLia wrote:


Just a quick honest question, where are you people looking at all this? I don't really know my way around Amazon but all I can find is the DVD ranking


Sorry, it was an image that has since been deleted.

It was a Screenshot from Amazon Stalker, a third-party Japanese website that tracks sales ranks on Amazon Japan
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Sparvid



Joined: 06 Oct 2009
Posts: 240
PostPosted: Wed Jul 24, 2013 10:21 am Reply with quote
I wonder how much it would have to sell to just to make up for all the money lost on delaying a release only two days before sale date, with everything printed and probably shipped to retailers.
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ConanSan



Joined: 13 Jun 2007
Posts: 1818
PostPosted: Wed Jul 24, 2013 2:33 pm Reply with quote
Yeah, this is not surprising in the least.

If you're going to try something different (like rotoscoping), you need to bring your A-Game or you're gonna land flat on your stupid potato-ass-face.

You can do the whacking off motion in the face of detractors all you want but if your product is lacking (and it was SORELY lacking in this instance, I've said it before and I'll say it again, you can't have drama with Donkey Faced people, it's just not doable) all you're doing is talk.
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jsc315



Joined: 09 Aug 2004
Posts: 925
PostPosted: Wed Jul 24, 2013 3:06 pm Reply with quote
Conan-san wrote:
Yeah, this is not surprising in the least.

If you're going to try something different (like rotoscoping), you need to bring your A-Game or you're gonna land flat on your stupid potato-ass-face.

You can do the whacking off motion in the face of detractors all you want but if your product is lacking (and it was SORELY lacking in this instance, I've said it before and I'll say it again, you can't have drama with Donkey Faced people, it's just not doable) all you're doing is talk.


It was a stylized choice. How many times do I need to say this. It wasn't due to budget cuts or anything like that. It was done on purpose.
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ConanSan



Joined: 13 Jun 2007
Posts: 1818
PostPosted: Wed Jul 24, 2013 3:08 pm Reply with quote
jsc315 wrote:
Conan-san wrote:
Yeah, this is not surprising in the least.

If you're going to try something different (like rotoscoping), you need to bring your A-Game or you're gonna land flat on your stupid potato-ass-face.

You can do the whacking off motion in the face of detractors all you want but if your product is lacking (and it was SORELY lacking in this instance, I've said it before and I'll say it again, you can't have drama with Donkey Faced people, it's just not doable) all you're doing is talk.


It was a stylized choice. How many times do I need to say this. It wasn't due to budget cuts or anything like that. It was done on purpose.
They knew the rules, they paid the price.
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dan9999



Joined: 25 Oct 2011
Posts: 648
PostPosted: Wed Jul 24, 2013 3:15 pm Reply with quote
configspace wrote:

First, under 3000 copies/vol is very low. Nowhere near enough to recoup costs.


An yet, there are lots of anime that sale between 2500-3500 and get sequels and keep coming non-stop, you know generic, pointless, just one more anime to the pile.

Do you know why I said 2500-3000? Precisely for what you said, low sales, even when following the generic manga visual style, the story, as it was, it would have been pretty much just one more anime, with low sales, to be forgotten immediately with the next pointelss generic anime.

configspace wrote:


But while all shows are inherently risky, without guarantees of success, Aku no Hana just guaranteed itself a failure as far as video sales goes. But who knows, maybe the sponsors or production committee are willing to bank on the manga sales more from the buzz--positive or negative--than video sales


And this is merely your conjecture, not even 100% of late night anime (well this even aired at 10 or was it 10:30 pm) needs disc sales.

Most recent example: Chihayafuru.

Its merely your conjecture and to trash something that did not cater to your tastes and label it failure. In this case you have no proper basis to say it depended on disc sales alone.

Fact remains, if creators needed to depend 100% on disc sales, then why intentionally make an anime that they -surely- knew would not cater to the hordes of hardcore fans that buy discs? Now this is whats really illogical.

Logic dictates that in case of Aku no Hana, with all its particularities, there was/is another source of revenue more important than disc sales, important enough to dont give a damn about the rage that was expected and surely low or super low disc sales if you so wish that were surely also anticipated.

Conan-san wrote:
They knew the rules, they paid the price.


And do you care to explain what "price" please. Aku no Hana was a risky series without doubt and all parties involved agreed to it, including the mangaka, in this case it was not making a series and hoping it would be liked and would be bought by otaku, all the negativity was anticipated and discussed, surely low sales included, its no secret what kind of fans buy discs and what their taste are, so what price is that? You dont have , and noone has, absolutely no idea under what circumstances the anime was given the go and what are or were its goals, financial and non financial ones.

The circumstances of Aku no Hana seem not the same as your usual late night anime in which we can safely assume it depends 90-100% on disc sales and if it gets low sales we can safely assume, commercially, it was a failure.

This kind of statement have come from particular fans that for once were not the target audience and feel the need to label it a failure to feel good, this happened since day one.


Last edited by dan9999 on Wed Jul 24, 2013 5:37 pm; edited 3 times in total
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ConanSan



Joined: 13 Jun 2007
Posts: 1818
PostPosted: Wed Jul 24, 2013 3:17 pm Reply with quote
Oh they'll probably fart out a season two (and lord knows have it be 12 episodes of Nice Boat with the soundtrack calling the viewer a f'face or something stupid) inspite of what the numbers tell.

Last edited by ConanSan on Wed Jul 24, 2013 3:19 pm; edited 1 time in total
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