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Answerman - How Do Publishers Choose Which Older Shows To Re-License?

"Oh, you want this A+ title from 2001? Sure, but you'll also have to take this crudely animated pervy OVA from 1985 that nobody's heard of."

There could also be the issue of the Japanese studio not wanting a specific older show to be released again until after all the remake films are done, the last of which is taking an exceptionally long time.

And how old is "old"? Is Rakugo considered old yet?

...and then there's *that* series. You know the one, licensed by ADV, in many different versions, had a great theme song.

Steel Angel Kurumi. Wow, they must be charging a fortune for that one...

Gina Szanboti wrote:

And how old is "old"? Is Rakugo considered old yet?

The problem with Rakugo never has been "age", it is an anime for mature audiences (and by that I do not mean sex, nudity, violence, obscene language, drugs or guns). This one would really benefit from a kickstarter, as in "We know this series will not provide any real profit, but we will do a kickstarter to serve our most excellent fans", a true gentei product. If successful it could open the door for other similar series that will n-e-v-e-r get a print release.

I frequently see Evangelion held up as the great "white whale" by anti-industry detractors, who use its unavailability as a cudgel against legal streaming services and disc publishers. Of course, the fact that Eva is less popular on a views-per-month basis on The Flagship Bootleg Streaming Site than many mediocre yet legally-available modern anime kind of punctures that talking point. And even if NGE were available, they'd name something like Paranoia Agent or the NGE-inspired, best-moe-harem-comedy-of-2002 RahXephon as the replacement.

Gina Szanboti wrote:

And how old is "old"? Is Rakugo considered old yet?

The problem with Rakugo never has been "age", it is an anime for mature audiences (and by that I do not mean sex, nudity, violence, obscene language, drugs or guns). This one would really benefit from a kickstarter, as in "We know this series will not provide any real profit, but we will do a kickstarter to serve our most excellent fans", a true gentei product. If successful it could open the door for other similar series that will n-e-v-e-r get a print release.

The answer never acknowledged the original question's idea of running a Kickstarter for license rescuing an old show. I have to think that would be out of the question, as the fans would have no legal standing to license the show, and contributors would be out of their minds to give money to a campaign whose pitch was "help us amass a big bag of money, and we'll float it around to English-language licensors and see who bites."

It does seem like there have been fan-run Kickstarters of this ilk that have been shut down, but I can't remember any specific cases.

You guys honestly get a lot of stuff we don't, or at least a lot of stuff we once had but no longer did.

You guys honestly get a lot of stuff we don't, or at least a lot of stuff we once had but no longer did. I got into R2 importing to pull an end-around on Aniplex's nonsense, and what really surprised me is how many bigger-ticket items weren't available in the US. Everything from Berserk 1997 on Blu-ray, to most of Satoshi Kon's catalog (Millennium Actress even got a UK dub!), to some fairly recent movies that were even dubbed by NYAV Post yet still don't have a physical release here. Then there's Australia, which got all of Monster, plus shows like Dennou Coil and Kaiba years before they finally made it over here. I was honestly thinking of submitting this as a question one of these weeks.

I wonder what show the person was referring too in his/her question. There might be other people here in the forum that would be interested in a re-release as well.

I do think that we need more companies that pick up older titles. We have many companies that will pick up horror movies, grindhouse movies and other cult films like Shout! Factory, Arrow Video, Kino Lorber Studio Classics, Synapse Films, Blue Underground, Code Red DVD, Scorpion Releasing, Severin Films, Twilight Time Movies, Vinegar Syndrome, MVD Rewind and Vestron.