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Answerman - Can Fans Ever License Obscure Shows Themselves?


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v1cious



Joined: 31 Dec 2002
Posts: 6202
Location: Houston, TX
PostPosted: Fri Feb 09, 2018 12:28 pm Reply with quote
Who was that one weird guy with the ova that tried to do this and got shut down? I remember he ended up getting arrested and it was quite a shitshow.
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mgosdin



Joined: 17 Jul 2011
Posts: 1302
Location: Kissimmee, Florida, USA
PostPosted: Fri Feb 09, 2018 12:29 pm Reply with quote
Win one of the Mega Lotteries, with $100 Million or so in the bank, hire Justin and Zack as consultants, get some real good American & Japanese Attorneys that specialize in entertainment. Then and only then can you start making a small fortune in Anime.

But boy will you have fun!

Mark Gosdin
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Shiroi Hane
Encyclopedia Editor


Joined: 25 Oct 2003
Posts: 7580
Location: Wales
PostPosted: Fri Feb 09, 2018 1:31 pm Reply with quote
v1cious wrote:
Who was that one weird guy with the ova that tried to do this and got shut down? I remember he ended up getting arrested and it was quite a shitshow.

Corey Maddox. ISTR pretty recently stumbling across a folder I made in my bookmarks for that stuff when it was happening.
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誤称



Joined: 12 Mar 2012
Posts: 549
PostPosted: Fri Feb 09, 2018 1:34 pm Reply with quote
Not to put him in the same boat, but isn't this exactly what Robert Woodhead does at Animeigo?
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Nom De Plume De Fanboy
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Exempt from Grammar Rules


Joined: 14 Jan 2011
Posts: 611
Location: inland US west, pretty rural
PostPosted: Fri Feb 09, 2018 1:52 pm Reply with quote
Sigh. This is partly why I went along with Funimation's Escaflowne kickstarter. It WAS grossly expensive, but I didn't think it would happen otherwise.

So support Animeigo when they do stuff, and buy what old goodies RightStuf/Nozomi can get, and accept that if they can't do it, it isn't happening anytime soon. I waited like 8 years for Dirty Pair TV, but RightStuf did finally get it, and I bought ( and re-bought ) all of it. It is hard, I'm still waiting for my blu-ray of Do You Remember Love, and maybe it will never happen. That's Life.

Or you can try this: don't license it, this show you love so much. If you want a taste of the dub problems, scrape up some money and try and do a fan dub; maybe with a drama group, from a college or high school or just an amateur acting group. I have been to a large city's art high school's plays that were pretty good, so there is amateur talent out there. Then release it by "other means."

Getting better materials and re-mastering, that's a matter for a different place...
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Nate148



Joined: 24 May 2012
Posts: 466
PostPosted: Fri Feb 09, 2018 2:24 pm Reply with quote
誤称 wrote:
Not to put him in the same boat, but isn't this exactly what Robert Woodhead does at Animeigo?

Kind of thing is one he has money and two he is one half of the team that made wizardry which STILL has games being made in japan so his a bit of a celebrity over there
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jsevakis
Former ANN Editor in Chief


Joined: 28 Jul 2003
Posts: 1684
Location: Los Angeles, CA
PostPosted: Fri Feb 09, 2018 2:43 pm Reply with quote
誤称 wrote:
Not to put him in the same boat, but isn't this exactly what Robert Woodhead does at Animeigo?

Hah! Hardly! They might be a tiny boutique publisher that's run as something of a hobby, but Woodhead has a track record of being accountable and successfully bringing anime to market that stretches back over 25 years.
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Primus



Joined: 01 Mar 2006
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Location: Toronto
PostPosted: Fri Feb 09, 2018 2:50 pm Reply with quote
Anime Midstream.
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Lord Geo



Joined: 18 Sep 2005
Posts: 2544
Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey
PostPosted: Fri Feb 09, 2018 3:12 pm Reply with quote
Primus wrote:
Anime Midstream.


This would probably be the best example for the type of idea that this question asks, especially since Midstream actually got an entire show released on DVD (Matchless Raijin-Oh), and, from my own recent digging, B't X should be on its way at some point this year, hopefully. But, like Justin illustrated, Midstream is still run by a guy who at least knows how to run a business. He isn't like Corey Maddox, who tried operating off of nothing but a dream... And a hope that no one would catch him breaking his parole by going to an anime con.
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Spastic Minnow
Bargain Hunter
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Joined: 02 May 2006
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Location: Gainesville, FL
PostPosted: Fri Feb 09, 2018 3:23 pm Reply with quote
Just a reminder:

Do read the Mike Toole article Justin Links to:
The Strange Saga of Star Anime Enterprises

It does go deeply into the subject.
And the comment thread for it adds a little to the conversation as well
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Triltaison



Joined: 03 Jul 2011
Posts: 722
PostPosted: Fri Feb 09, 2018 3:54 pm Reply with quote
Lord Geo wrote:
He isn't like Corey Maddox, who tried operating off of nothing but a dream... And a hope that no one would catch him breaking his parole by going to an anime con.


Not to defend him or his actions, but I guarantee that attending such a place did not occur to him as breaking any rules. I knew him in real life prior to the storm and he was an incredibly forgetful person who would forget the most basic things like buckling his seatbelt, homework, and what we were watching while still watching it. I'm pretty sure he had some kind of attention deficit disorder. He operated in life in the same way you described how he operated in business.

I remember that his favorite anime was Air and always found it bizarre that he was like a carbon copy of the girl in that. Then more insanity happened. I still can hardly believe the whole Corey thing, years later. Shocked
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Lord Geo



Joined: 18 Sep 2005
Posts: 2544
Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey
PostPosted: Fri Feb 09, 2018 4:08 pm Reply with quote
Triltaison wrote:
Lord Geo wrote:
He isn't like Corey Maddox, who tried operating off of nothing but a dream... And a hope that no one would catch him breaking his parole by going to an anime con.


Not to defend him or his actions, but I guarantee that attending such a place did not occur to him as breaking any rules. I remember that his favorite anime was Air and always found it bizarre that he was like a carbon copy of the girl in that. Then more insanity happened. I still can hardly believe the whole Corey thing, years later. Shocked


Fair enough, & no disrespect to Corey was intended; just making a stupid joke. When he announced his entire company, I was behind him in concept (since I had no real interest in what he had licensed), & he definitely had the passion behind his intentions. How exactly Crimson Star came to an end is just too bizarre to ever forget, though. At the very least, Corey's intentions resulted in Right Stuf taking the initiative & getting that OVA released officially, so there was some sort of happy ending for the people who were looking forward to that anime.

Still, looking back at the comment section from Mike's old Mike Toole Show article that was linked, I'm reminded at how easy it can be for even a nobody fan to get a hold of official licensing materials. In that topic, I brought up how I once e-mailed dentsu USA & acted like I was interested in licensing some anime from them. I did it as a gag, thinking that dentsu would want some proof that this was for real, so imagine my surprise when dentsu responded with not just interest in working with me, but also attaching a full-on catalog of what anime dentsu USA was had the rights to; the only thing missing was how much they were asking for each title! I got rid of it years ago, but now I wish I had held on to that PDF, because I never realized it was that easy to get a basic start.
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EricJ2



Joined: 01 Feb 2014
Posts: 4016
PostPosted: Fri Feb 09, 2018 4:14 pm Reply with quote
誤称 wrote:
Not to put him in the same boat, but isn't this exactly what Robert Woodhead does at Animeigo?


I was about to say, "What Robert Woodhead DID at AnimEigo", past tense--
Independently wealthy from creating the "Wizardry" CD-ROM games back in the day, he didn't need Kickstarter to go out and buy Bubblegum Crisis or Vampire Princess Miyu's OVA series...And then later Urusei Yatsura, which was the in-demand fan series of its day (we're talking the days of college clubs and raw trades), followed by the first real Macross subs for Robotech fans.

Unfortunately, the realities of the industry were:
A) You had to RENEW licenses to keep them from going OOP--Bob got in on the pre-Internet underground cult-campus days when US anime was still literally a "secret", even from the Japanese, but once Japanese licensors found out that they could sell a classic or be outbid by a bigger cross-Pacific corporate interest like Bandai or Pioneer, the secret was out and the prices started going up. If you bought an AE series like Rumik World or Spirit of Wonder, you had to move fast.
B) Somebody has to pay for those dub actors, if you're planning on a big-scale retail release for disk. AE infamously tried doing their own dubs "their" way (ie. that first infamous "Those Annoying Aliens" dub, no relation to the later Urusei movie/OVA dubs), and then had to hire out with Coastal Carolina studios' real voice actors.

And because AE was still Bob's garage company, he had no particular obligation to keep his company in anime; he let the remaining licenses lapse, and turned the company toward his new hobby of endless live-action restorations of Lone Wolf & Cub/Shogun Assassin.
Until, of course, he found out about Kickstarter twenty years later, and tried to nostalgia-jumpstart the licenses he hadn't lost, unlike UY and Macross. Either it never occurred to him to license his little independent hobby-acquistions to Crunchyroll in the 10's, he didn't have the negotiation leverage, or he just thought that anime was still a cult-Kickstarter thing.

Basically, the lesson is, It's Not 1992. ADV, Pioneer and Bandai came and went, Viz changed the landscape as we know it, and Funi, Crunchyroll and the Bubble changed things further.
Even I'm embarrassed to see fans still trying to relive those old campus days. Embarassed
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DerekL1963
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Joined: 14 Jan 2015
Posts: 1113
Location: Puget Sound
PostPosted: Fri Feb 09, 2018 4:28 pm Reply with quote
mgosdin wrote:
Win one of the Mega Lotteries, with $100 Million or so in the bank, hire Justin and Zack as consultants, get some real good American & Japanese Attorneys that specialize in entertainment. Then and only then can you start making a small fortune in Anime.


Reminds me of the old joke told by used & rare booksellers:
Q: How do you make a small fortune buying and selling books?
A: Start with a large fortune.
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invalidname
Contributor



Joined: 11 Aug 2004
Posts: 2441
Location: Grand Rapids, MI
PostPosted: Fri Feb 09, 2018 4:37 pm Reply with quote
What's the anime in the icon for this article on the ANN front page? Is that Looking Up at the Half Moon?
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