Forum - View topicAnswerman - What Happened With Anime Sols?
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Brand
 Posts: 1028 |
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I can't remember but I think the pricing was also a bit on the expensive side. Especially compared Right Stuf's offerings like Cobra and Princess Knight. Timing just always seemed to be bad for me, I wanted to get in on it but just never had the money at the right time.
And I do agree, streaming on a site like Crunchyroll or even Hulu would have been better. I just would never think to go there to watch a show, and by the time I did, they were shutting down. I do appreciate the effort they put in. It is nice to see people care about these older show (some of which I love). This made me curious of Viki was still around. And it is, but the anime selection seems to be slim pickings. |
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st_owly
 Posts: 5234 Location: Edinburgh, Scotland |
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They also were North America only, which would've put a lot of people from anywhere else off contributing. It was only thanks to classicalzawa acting as a mule that I managed to get Dear Brother. I think I have the only set in the UK, certainly one of a very few if there are any others. I agree that the price per disk was extremely expensive in comparison to other anime too. I wanted to get Creamy Mami too but I just couldn't afford both.
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GracieLizzy
 Posts: 551 Location: Sunderland, England, UK |
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Yeah as a British magical girl fan I would have loved to get the Creamy Mami disks and would have happily backed a release of Pastel Yumi too but sadly Anime Sols was US only.
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VampireNaomi
 Posts: 146 |
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I would have been happy to back so many of their projects, but as I'm in Europe, it was impossible. Thankfully I was able to buy the Creamy Mami and Dear Brother sets on Right Stuf and both are among the gems of my collection.
I know that it's not done out of spite or anything, but it really gets under my skin how I can't support certain projects even though I want to. I might have backed the Skip Beat Kickstarter, but if I can't have the physical goods delivered to me, it's pointless. |
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yamiangie
 Posts: 465 |
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I was always sad they didn't try for a third Black Jack set. The donate to pay for just the subs thing later was interesting but I wasn't that into a lot of the shows. I was also still waiting on my second Black Jack set. Also I couldn't seem to use one of the bonus things I got for pledging because I could never get the e-reader to work. Still I have a neat Black Jack Wall Paper.
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DmonHiro
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I'd like to also point out that the only shows they managed to release were (to my knowledge) Black Jack, Onii-sama and Creamy Mami. Those were also the only ones )to my knowledge) that had been completely fansubed.
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publicenemy333
 Posts: 563 Location: Los Angeles, CA |
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I'd say that is probably why they were the only successfully released ones to begin with. They were fully fansubbed, meaning that there was an audience for it that wanted it. The others weren't fansubbed, meaning no one cared enough for them |
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EricJ2
 Posts: 4016 |
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Makes a good point that we're not just living in some new disk/Internet enabled version of the "purple VHS" days where fansubbers in back rooms could create gray-industries for grass-roots support of subbing and distributing cult vintage titles among their own loyal selves, just because Kickstarter has now taken the place of "$5 for tape-trading and postage costs".
In addition to licensing, there's also the fact that you need streaming to GET your show exposed, and even though Discotek and RightStuf are still just coming out of the "old days" and aren't big and corporate like Funi and Viz, they're getting that market on Crunchyroll. The backroom fansubbers now have to be big enough to embrace the big-time of Streaming, or no show is ever going to get made. No fan buys a series sight-unseen anymore, and the days of old fans who remember Creamy Mami is disappearing rapidly. |
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RHorsman
 Posts: 151 Location: Loch Loman |
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I have the Creamy Mami and Dear Brother sets. The final releases were definitely nothing to write home about, but I am glad they tried. I do wish some of their shows would get picked up for streaming, but I imagine the licensing is even harder now. I know there's people at Crunchyroll who would love to say they have deep catalog old school stuff like Yatterman. Though Discotek did announce Tezuka's Dororo --one of the shows in Anime Sols' last streaming round that went unfunded-- like a week after AS folded. Always assumed that was at least partially a rescue of the subtitling work done for AS, but I don't know if that's been publicly confirmed anywhere.
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samuelp
Industry Insider
Posts: 2231 Location: San Antonio, USA |
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I'll go ahead and confirm that the team that did Dororo subtitles went on to finish them for Discotek. I'm glad one of the series we ended up not doing proper justice was given a chance thanks to us. One of the reasons that we developed our own site and didn't use Kickstarter, was because I came up with the concept in... ~2010. Kickstarter launched in 2009 and didn't really break out into the mainstream until Ooya in 2012, in fact I had never heard of it when I came up with the original plan (which was quite a bit different than kickstarter: it involved pledging $5 each for a coupon that could be redeemable for $5 off the DVD when it came out, and having the Japanese companies foot the bill for ~50% or so of the rest of the risk... This was a naive assumption on my part about how royalty payments actually work and the appetite for risk taking, and my original ideas were quickly morphed into a basically zero-risk strategy). The plan on which I originally sold the partner companies was developing our own site because that's what I thought was necessary at the time, since I didn't realize something like kickstarter existed! Once you get companies like these on board, it's basically impossible to change something fundamental about the plan like "creating your own website". I did push to try kickstarter hard immediately after launch, and was vetoed immediately by my boss at the time as being a betrayal to him (Yomiuri only cared about the perception of the project domestically as a "cool Japan" thing, and switching gears would have been admitting some kind of failure). This eventually culminated in me quitting working for him to properly shut down the project. I think timing was the biggest enemy (better timing would have netted better contents). Unfortunately it took almost 2 years from concept to forming the key partners and then another 6 months for setting up the LLP legally in Japan. Everything took way longer than I had thought it would, but that's just the pace that Japanese business works. The idea came ~2-3 years too late, and the DVD market had rebounded by that time already. |
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DuelGundam2099
 Posts: 533 |
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I remember these based folks, unfortunately their crowd funding did not include a "just wanted to help, no rewards for me thanks" option Kickstarter campaigns have. I am not a merchandise person so unfortunately I had no incentive to donate money.
It is a real shame since nobody else would touch Tobikage, Tekkaman, or classic Hurricane Polymar.
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Triltaison
 Posts: 723 |
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I really think the lack of exposure hurt a lot. This was exactly my cup of tea, and I didn't hear about it until the last few days of the final Creamy Mami set when it was mentioned in an ANN column offhand. I immediately pledged for that set and added all three previous sets onto my pledge, but I would have pledged more had I heard of the site earlier. I did buy all of Dear Brother when it became available on Rightstuf for general purchase, and squeed like a wee fangirl when it came in the mail since I never thought that I would ever get to own either.
So, I'm incredibly thankful for what they did. I love old magical girl shows, and even fansubbers haven't touched the likes of Magical Emi. I finally got to see a little of some very ignored shows that I never thought would see the light of day in the states. It may have been a short lived venture that could have used some work, but they're fine in my book because they gave me Creamy Mami and Dear Brother. |
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RHorsman
Posts: 151 Location: Loch Loman |
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Glad to see it confirmed! In re: "proper justice": it was pretty clear at the time that you (AS as a whole, and you Sam in particular) were working under a LOT of constraints, especially when it came to marketing and publicity, and it's really impressive that you got out what you did given that. I remember holding my breath on those last two Mami sets, but I've got all four on the shelf. |
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TonyTonyChopper
Posts: 256 |
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I still hated how this went down ... at least i wanted all the Tezuka stuff to make it but it seems that just having is name with it wasn't enough to really get it funded on this website. (i don't even think most who funded black jack 2004 where much of big Tezuka fans in praticular just people who had seen it fansubbed ...)
I Should have funded Dear Brother because it was a Dezaki series and i just found out a while ago i really like all of his work and most importand his style. They really should have gone to kickstarter to really give it a platform, getting money though that own website sucked. Also another stupid thing was that i'm not even in NA so the only reason i could even fund was to use an middle man .... And if you have to go so far most people outside of Nord America probably didn't even bother anymore at that point ... (Amazon rightstuff etc make no secret of the fact they still sell alot of disc's outside of the USA and Canada) |
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Parsifal24
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I always thought streaming the series you wanted to release and have people crowdfund seemed like a bad idea as it always felt like some would have the idea of "why buy the cow when I can get the milk for free".
So to speak if I had more disposable income I would have gladly backed it but with my limited budget and the as Justin stated "okay" quality of the releases. Not something I felt like supporting a valiant Quixotic effort but just wasn't meant to be I guess |
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