Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Are Sentai Titles Showing Up On Anime Strike?
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Thorfinn
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^mangamuscle An Amazon rep said in an interview that she looks months in advance at shows when deciding what to get. They look at things like the source material, the popularity of the source material and the staff. They definetely are choosing things carefully.
Shobitch will stream on AS, it's been confirmed by Sentai. Now to my own thoughts on this. Basically, Sentai got really lucky, if it weren't for Amazon they'd be dead or their company would shrink massively. This was an insightful post and it really made sense. |
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Alan45
 Village Elder Posts: 9828 Location: Virginia |
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Amazon as a store sells most of the anime on DVD and Bluray that is published by others. Amazon as a streaming service does not publish their own DVDs and Blurays. In this context, "Publishing" means translation, subtitling and perhaps dubbing a show. Also the authoring and physical production of the disks and packaging material. Amazon, like Crunchyroll leaves that to other companies, for now at least. Last edited by Alan45 on Wed Oct 04, 2017 1:37 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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HeeroTX
Posts: 2046 Location: Austin, TX |
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I'm sure the answer involves corporate BS and will never be fully explained, but WHY THE HELL WOULD THEY DO THIS?!? FUNi had a floundering streaming service and all the other indies (minus: Netflix) were dying. Crunchyroll had pretty firmly established themselves as THE streaming platform for the anime space. I'm sure their deal with FUNi was very "strategic" but why unhitch from the existing relationship with Sentai JUST so you could hookup with FUNi "instead". Even if we accept the "CR publishes their own stuff too", the deal with FUNi (and prior deal with Sentai) proves that their own titles CAN coexist with a partnership arrangement. Heck, if the "point" was to block Amazon+Netflix, wouldn't it have been better for the pure-"anime" companies to present a united front? The only ways this makes sense are if: a) FUNi strong-armed them into it, which if so, boo on FUNi but again, I dunno that it was worth to dump and existing arrangement for a basically similar arrangement, or b) CR thought they could get a better "deal" unhooked from Sentai, which based on the info in the column, probably assumed Sentai was going to essentially go away. And if it was "b" then CR basically encouraged Amazon's deal with Sentai and put that partnership together. All of their recent decision PLUS the titles they're getting/losing may push me to finally drop my CR subscription. |
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lossthief
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 1388 |
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It is? Because if so their social media team has really dropped the ball. The series doesn't have any mention on Aniplex USA's twitter, outside of when they sponsored Ei Aoki's panel at Otakon 2017. The show's also nowhere to be seen on their website, unless I've missed it somewhere on their "Titles" page. |
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Morry
Posts: 756 |
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Funi's streaming service was hardly floundering, it's been growing a while, especially after they started doing broadcast dubs. Funi was also Crunchi's biggest competitor for licenses before Amazon and Netflix wanted in. Sentai was struggling a whole lot more and Funi was about to revamp their streaming platform. It was the perfect time to call a truce and draw a line on who streamed what where.
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relyat08
 Posts: 4125 Location: Northern Virginia |
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Well that is certainly the excuse many pirates give. "I buy anime on disc, so illegally watching it online is giving it exposure" etc.
The Funi-CR partnership is suspected to be in reaction to Netflix and Amazon becoming more involved in the anime space. It didn't have anything to do with Sentai, specifically, though. Like you said, Sentai only became involved well after the FuniCR thing was put into place. Likely as a further reaction of that deal. It's like Dominos, in some ways, I guess. Or The Butterfly Effect. lol
Amazon is a retailer, not a publisher. They are selling discs licensed by Funimation, Sentai, Aniplex, Viz, etc. They are not, however, licensing shows themselves and putting them on disc with their own company logo, etc. |
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Gemnist
Posts: 1755 |
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I only hope Sentai dubs the shows they acquire. Then I will forgive Amazon for everything (except Virgin Soul).
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Polycell
 Posts: 4623 |
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Tuor_of_Gondolin
 Posts: 3524 Location: Bellevue, WA |
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CR definitely is the place to go for their wide variety and number of anime they stream, and I really like their player, too. However, you don't get dubbed anime on CR; you do get it on Funimation. I prefer my anime dubbed, but if I want to see new shows, then CR is (or was) the way to go. I don't like AS because Amazon's player is horrible, their layout is pretty bad, and I refuse to do the double-paywall thing: I don't really need Prime, and getting it just to get AS (for $5 per month more) seems exploitive to me.
As for Sentai, I regard them as basically Amazon's front man in the anime industry. When Amazon wants something on AS, they turn to Sentai, toss some money (and publishing rights) at them, and say, "Go get this for us." I guess it works for them, but it means that from now on, several shows will be priced out of my willingness to see, which is too bad, but that's just how it is. |
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DerekL1963
Subscriber Posts: 1113 Location: Puget Sound |
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Justin writes:
Huh? You must be watching a very different Amazon than I do! Despite all the hype about how many shows Amazon is gobbling up, the reality is that they generally average ten (or fewer) shows per season. (And not all of them exclusives.) Quite a bit fewer than Crunchy gets in the same season. What Amazon is doing, and getting steadily better at, is skimming the cream - the most anticipated and most desired shows along with the more unique shows. They're learning to avoid the "average" genre shows that make up the bulk of a season's bell curve. |
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TasteyCookie
 Posts: 421 |
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I don't know where they are getting their metrics for skimming shows but they are obviously doing a pretty poor job. If you look at any of the anticipation lists from either here on ANN, or any of the various Japanese polls for the most anticipated shows of the upcoming season, there are rarely more than 2-3 Amazon shows on there and not even at the top of the list. They've honestly gotten lucky with some shows (Made in Abyss, thanks to Sentai) and unlucky with others (Welcome to the Ballroom not being a big hit) but overall they just don't seem to get what anime fans want. It doesn't seem selective as it just seems outright random. From everything we've seen, Amazon hasn't been telling Sentai to grab any shows in particular, as the shows Sentai has licensed resemble all of their previous dealings before Amazon showed up, which leads me to believe they give Sentai a check and have them do the licensing. We already know CR will try to license literally everything they can in accordance with their policy of wanting to bring over every anime that ever gets made, but Amazon just seems to be content with throwing money at specific channel blocks so that they don't have to choose which shows to license. It's like they don't care, which also explains the Sentai deal. Let Sentai make or break all the hard licensing decisions for them so that they can try to reap the benefits without the work. Throw money at it till competition goes away has always been Amazon's motto, and the current Sentai deal just reeks of the same uncaring attitude. |
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mangamuscle
Posts: 2658 Location: Mexico |
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Huh? You must be watching a very different Amazon than I do! AS Fall season is average at best, you seem to be living still on the summer and/or spring season when they managed to pull a fast one on funiroll (or was crunchymation?). Last edited by mangamuscle on Wed Oct 04, 2017 4:31 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Angel M Cazares
 Posts: 5420 Location: Iscandar |
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@TasteyCookie
The way you characterize Amazon in regard to anime streaming sounds like chaos. I agree with that to a certain extent that they don't know what they are doing. But isn't this chaos a great thing for those who want Amazon to get out of anime? If they were smarter they could easily decimate Funimation and Crunchyroll. I will not really worry about Amazon as long as they keep streaming only around 10 new anime shows per season. |
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TasteyCookie
Posts: 421 |
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Oh no I totally agree! It is a great thing  As long as they keep it up where the shows they license seem to be of random hype levels and they only grab 10 or less a season, CR should be fine. Though I honestly have no idea where Sentai fits into the big scheme of things. I love Sentai as a licencor (though I hate their deal with AS) because they have generally pretty good releases and release lesser known shows. But I don't think anyone is guessing that Amazon will stick with them for the long haul. Unless HiDive takes off then I have no idea where that leaves them, and it's a little sad.
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TD912
 Posts: 274 |
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We don't know the details of the various contracts between Amazon, Sentai, various Japanese companies, Crunchyroll, etc. so all the comments here are basically just speculation. Still, it does seem that Amazon is focusing on quality vs. quantity. Amazon only picks up a few shows every season, and (this is subjective but) at least so far they've tended to be pretty good. Meanwhile it seems that Funi+CR have been trying to get everything under the sun, no matter how "good" the show is as that's what they've always been trying to do. I wonder how much money CR typically spends on shows every season... I do know some money is spent up front, and additional money comes from how many people actually watch the show. It's only been a few months so there's not much a pattern to go off of yet, but I guess we'll see in a couple months how things are going... |
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