Forum - View topicBudget anime releases?
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vashna
Posts: 1313 |
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Forgive me if this has already been touched upon, but I haven't seen it anywhere. I've been thinking a lot recently about how massive corner cuts could make a series release become extremely inexpensive. Among other things, if you had a sub-only release on a DVD with no bonus features, couldn't you fit around seven episodes on it? I was assuming that such a release could even be slim-pack shipped to save money on packaging. Assuming a very low retail price, would such a release get any coverage and successful sales? Am I missing something glaring?
In my mind, I'm imagining this to be something older. I got the idea after recently checking the animeigo release of Captain Harlock's "Arcadia of my Youth" out of the library, which was very stripped down. |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 19166 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Um, there are a fair number of current releases which come out exactly like that - i.e. sub only, no Extras (or nothing beyond clean opener/closer), 12-13 eps on two disks in single case the same size as a regular single release. They aren't seeing big discounts, unless you compare their price with the price of three single DVDs covering the same # of episodes.
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HaruhiToy
 Posts: 4118 |
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I'm not sure this is what you are looking for, but I always thought that His & Her Circumstances is an excellent anime made with a minimal budget. The artwork is simple yet well done, and the animation is very sparse yet effective when it isn't. At some points watching it is like having the voice actors just read you the manga.
I think the English dub is well acted as well. I haven't watched the Japanese track yet. |
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egoist
 Posts: 7762 |
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Well, just like Key said, there's not that much difference. Anime releases outside Japan are already very, very low compared to the Japanese ones. It's fine to pay a bit more to have dubs, even though I rarely listen to them. But then again, I hardly watch my DVDs. |
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vashna
Posts: 1313 |
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I had a look around, and I would like to apologize. I was wrong, and I do hope that my thinking didn't waste anyone's time.
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Mushi-Man
 Posts: 1537 Location: KCMO |
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Honestly I have mixed feelings about this type of release. On the one hand it does allow fans to buy a title faster if they just really don't care about the dub or extras, which is great for them. But personally I like to have the option of choosing dub or sub and I like to have extras. In fact I was just thinking that I would love to see more commentaries on anime dvds. I love hearing what the directors, writers, producers, and seiyuu have to say about anime. But I can understand why companies would do a striped down release for certain anime.
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Paploo
Posts: 1875 |
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For the record, Sentai's and others titles often do have lots of extras, it's just that for some titles, it might not be available, or they don't exist in Japan outside of clean op/closings.
Media Blasters subonly, cheap/quick release of Simoun had a whack of extras in terms of commentary, creative interviews, and wierd game shows with the voice cast. Neo Angelique had chibi theatre anime and other extras..... Emma came with extensive liner notes, and most of Nozomi's subonly releases contain extras. With all of these, even if a more expensive, dubbed version was made, I imagine we'd be getting the same extras we'd be getting with the subbed version, whether it'd be tons or none. Though making a dubbed version does allow you to make your own extras [something ADV had a nice habit of doing for titles that had less extras]. It really varies from release to release. Personally, I think the best budget type releases are re-releases of series that price them down to the 20-dollar range, like Media Blaster's Ramen Fighter Miki, Giant Robot and Gokusen boxsets, or some of Funi's S.A.V.E titles. These take advantage of successful single runs to give you a price that is a lot lower than an initial "budget" release can offer. Part of the reason to be glad there's still lot of diversity in release formats/packaging. |
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Ausdoerrt
 Posts: 481 |
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Try Chinese releases, with three series per DVD in low quality DLd from torrents, at 3-5 yuan per disk. True "budget releases", they are
Seriously though, I agree with the sentiment, and I only ever buy movies or box-releases. There should be more compact releases with subs-only and no extras, because as a viewer I could frankly not care less about the extra stuff they have to offer. There have been few cases where I actually felt like the extras were worth it. |
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HaruhiToy
Posts: 4118 |
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Ow. That was a bit harsh. I can understand your seeing it that way except that the writing (to me at least) seemed to go where it wanted to go, even when it looked like they were running out of time/money for the animation. The "plot" was never intended to be more than boy-meets-girl-girl-gets-boy. What would more money have added? |
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vashna
Posts: 1313 |
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Ausdoerrt, I do hope you’re not really suggesting that I would ever buy a Hong Kong bootleg; I don’t sanction that kind of behavior.
I never did mean to suggest I didn’t like having the dub track or having extras there. I was trying to think of ways to release series with very low price tags attached to them. However, I corrected myself after actually visiting animeigo’s website. I found a lot of what they’ve released actually follows some of the lines I was saying; though I do not wish to sound like I am specifically endorsing any product. Particularly, I was trying to think of ways to release older series. Maybe even have my fanboy wish of a faithful release of the original Space Pirate Captain Harlock. |
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Richard J.
 Posts: 3367 Location: Sic Semper Tyrannis. |
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An English dub costs comparatively little, between $10,000 to around $7,000 per episode, if the information I've read is accurate. (Wish I had studio balance sheets to work with.) Even if a series is relatively short (12-13 episodes) and thus would cost at most around $130,000 to dub, it could still cost much more per episode to license, hundreds of thousands or even millions. (Of course, this depends on the Japanese and how they see the release doing overseas.) Extras also can be very expensive depending on who owns the rights to them. The Japanese have a lot more people to deal with when it comes to rights. (The anime creators and producers, the actors, the publishing company that owns the manga/light novels/game the anime is based on are just some of the possibles there.) So occasionally, extras can cost much more for one series while being dirt cheap as part of a licensing deal for another series. Then there's the issue of actual consumers over here. A series that is sub-only sells fewer units. This is a fact that the industry insiders have pointed out numerous times. Fewer units are sold as well due to a lack of brick and mortar store space. (It is entirely possible the industry would be having no problems if only anime more widely available.) There is a lot more that goes into the final costs of a release than just the dub and extras and whenever you cut one thing, you lose consumers who wanted those options with no guarantee the price change will net you enough replacement customers to offset this. And that's assuming you had enough consumers to break even or profit from the beginning. It's a terrible situation right now made dire by the economy. |
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Mr Adventure
 Posts: 1598 |
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Funimation has just rolled out their S.A.V.E. line of DVDs. Intending to sell boxsets at big mark downs. ANN has ads up for it right now, and it seems to be exactly what you are talking about.
EDIT: Well, maybe not exactly what you're talking about, as you are trying to come up with cheap ways to get currently unlicensed niche material out in R1. And I guess SAVE is more about rereleasing previously released series (that have Dubs) sans Extras, at budget price. I would love to see more dirt cheap box sets of niche shows that are sub only at a mark down, and you do see that sort of thing from time to time. (Nozomi's recent licensing of Dirty Pair, and Disco Tek's licensing of Fist of the North Star spring to mind) though they aren't usually as 'cheap' as you'd hope. Usually because even these old shows have high licensing fees. |
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Ausdoerrt
Posts: 481 |
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"Learn humour to understand Russians" (c) 
I also was rather referring to the mainland bootleg, which is even more brootal. No, I couldn't be serious cause it's not valid collection material, given the quality. The price can't compensate for it... I do think every anime fan needs to own one (just one) of those to know what it is. Personally, I'd be happy if there was a happy middle between these and over-expensive American releases, but as most posts here suggest, if they're indeed correct in their claims, it just ain't happening. |
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vashna
Posts: 1313 |
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Haha, sorry for not getting the joke at first. I should also really thank Mr Adventure for the link to S.A.V.E. Regardless of whatever my idea was in the beginning about niche anime distribution, I really think Funimation is on to something big with this program. That cat on the website scares me though =P
I do think I should clear something up; I love DVD extras. I didn’t mean to imply otherwise, and I didn’t mean to imply they cost a lot of money. What I was trying to say was they take up what might be termed in computer science as ‘logical space’ on the DVD. I was trying to say without them, you could fit more episodes on a DVD for niche distribution. I never wanted to see them go away! I also should say that I didn’t want to sound like I didn’t like dub-jobs. If I get the chance, I like to watch a series with the Japanese audio on and then with the English audio on, if I like them equally. I also like to listen to the commentary tracks. I actually didn’t know that dubbing cost less than $200,000 an episode; I was convinced it was far more, but then again I wasn’t considering how many recording facilities there are for this kind of thing now. I was thinking back to the old days of ADV where they had to rent out studios and such. |
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