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XChampion wrote:

Im pretty sure Anime Expo does turmstile attendence. Pretty much any convention that gets close to 100,000 or more attendees does turnstile. Its just a way to boost up numbers. These days thats all people care about.

Anime Expo 2015 reported 90,500 warm bodies and a turnstile attendance of 260,700. The 90k figure is not turnstile attendance. 2014 attendance was reported as 80k unique and 220k turnstile.

DavidShallcross wrote:

Well, DVD-R, not CD-R.
And even Warner Brothers is selling the depths of their back catalog on DVD-R. If you want to see Debbie Reynolds in the Unsinkable Molly Brown, Ginger Rogers in Kitty Foyle, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr in Sinbad the Sailor, Edward G. Robinson in Little Caesar, or for that matter, Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space, you have to go to DVD-R.

To be fair, though, it's not "depths"--
Warner's utter deep-seated neurotic paranoia of non-Batman/Harry Potter titles on DVD has simply moved almost their entire vintage catalog DVD library to the MOD Archive, where they still get the attention. Barebones releases, maybe, but professionally remastered from print sources, and on better-quality disks...It's not some kid in the garage with a Microsoft burner, as most here in the underground trading community are picturing.

As for inexperienced companies like Media Blaster getting into the "new industry" of MOD to save their troubled wide-release catalogues, however, there's no such guarantee.

Utsuro no Hako wrote:

angelmcazares wrote:

This is worrisome to me. I am sure I am not alone in hoping that we do not see NA companies fold like it happened with the mid-aughts anime bubble.

This bubble seems to be a war between Crunchyroll and Funimation for control of the streaming market. Crunchyroll established early dominance, but now Funimation wants in and they're willing to use all their financial muscle to do it.

Big businesses really only have room for two major players--
There's Coke and Pepsi, there's McDonald's and Burger King, there's Disney and Universal, there's Democrats and Republicans, and there's Netflix and Hulu. (Amazon is falling out of the subscription-streaming race, and likely going to fall back on their VOD business.) Any struggling third business is just going to get our pity.
And for anime streaming, it's going to be bad luck for any company that isn't Crunchyroll or Funimation. They match each other in that one has an advantage the other doesn't--Crunchyroll has the better setup to simulcast, while Funi nearly corners the market on mainstream dubs and hard disks--and one isn't going to fully replace the other any time soon, so we live with the yin-and-yang of two major players.

That's not a "bubble" in the sense of the licensing bubble, except for every other company that wants to get in on it.
The other earmark of a bubble is that companies get too full of themselves and outbid each other to drive the price up (which is what happened with the Licensing Boom), until they price themselves out of the market, and the customer base isn't there to back them up.
Here, we're just dealing with two companies that have the king-of-the-mountain game beat, and somebody's going to have to come up with a completely different strategy if they want to push one or the other off.

Animegomaniac wrote:

Why did Neon Ally fail while Funimation is succeeding, and just from the rhetoric on this board as it changed over the years, they are most certainly doing this right? So many reasons, so little time but I'd pick "nostalgia" as their biggest blind spot. "It's a streaming service...localized to a specialty device... with all the convenience of live action TV! It's just like you're watching Naruto on TV again!"

Neon Alley was the offshoot channel of Viz, who
A) is so stuck in business practices of five or ten years ago, they were still trying to sell us on a cable-style broadcast-schedule channel, and wondered whether we might like an unscheduled streaming option,
and
B) is so rooted in their manga business, they let the subtleties of the anime business go hang, except as it concerns their top selling manga titles. (Ranma, Naruto, Bleach, Sailor Moon)

That's a prime example of going gold prospecting without a map or compass, and they paid the price for it.
Me, I started watching HuluPlus again, and found a one-stop channel to get Funi, CR, Daisuki, Neon Alley and Anime Channel in one clearinghouse site, and have a feeling that's where the industry is going to head if they don't stop fighting themselves, and learn to hire their series streams out to the mainstream sites like Funi does.

DavidShallcross wrote:

Paiprince wrote:

CD-R on demand? They're putting themselves on the level of physical pirates you see in kitschy marketplaces. Not a practice I'd condone for a legitimate licensing company.

Well, DVD-R, not CD-R.

And even Warner Brothers is selling the depths of their back catalog on DVD-R. If you want to see Debbie Reynolds in the Unsinkable Molly Brown, Ginger Rogers in Kitty Foyle, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr in Sinbad the Sailor, Edward G. Robinson in Little Caesar, or for that matter, Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space, you have to go to DVD-R.

Unsinkable Molly Brown is now on a TCM set, so no DVD-R on that title.

I am sorry to see Media Blasters go print on demand. They were a good company to blind buy, when Best Buy actually had an anime section. Now CR and Funi is the anime aisle.

I love having physical media, but with the advent of big time legal streaming it gets harder and harder to actually get to the old stack
of dvds I own. I still buy, but 9 times out of 10 its for a show I saw on CR or Funi.

John Thacker wrote:

Paiprince wrote:

CD-R on demand? They're putting themselves on the level of physical pirates you see in kitschy marketplaces. Not a practice I'd condone for a legitimate licensing company.

Generally, but I do remember how Nintendo had machines set up to do just that in Japan in game stores and even convenience stores. Ah, the Famicom Disk System.

Yeah, I know about since that's how the original Fire Emblem Thracia 776 and a few other titles were distributed. Never really caught on with the rest of the world in a legal sense.

DavidShallcross wrote:

Well, DVD-R, not CD-R.

And even Warner Brothers is selling the depths of their back catalog on DVD-R. If you want to see Debbie Reynolds in the Unsinkable Molly Brown, Ginger Rogers in Kitty Foyle, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr in Sinbad the Sailor, Edward G. Robinson in Little Caesar, or for that matter, Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space, you have to go to DVD-R.

Right, meant DVD-R. I still see most of the ancient dust-bin titles go the "legit" route of DVD publishing. Usually you see them as "classics" compilation or what not. Never do they advertise the DVD-R option as a mainstream way to sell the product.

On the subject of DVD-R, if the choice was between that and not watching the show I would choose the DVD-R, if I wanted to watch the show badly enough to buy it.
It would never be my first choice for media, but it would be better than nothing.

I never had any problems with the Cat's Eye DVD-R discs that I got from imaginasian about eight years ago. I will admit though that I have not tried to watch them recently, I probably should do that soon. It was a decent show.

One could get DVD-R and immediately copy to a hard drive, and put the DVD-R someplace safe ( as in cool ). Of course, then you have to worry about how often the hard drive, and/or it's hard drive backup, are going to have to be replaced. Most of my DVDs are from the oughts, and not stored in a cool area right now, and I'm leaning towards getting a 4 terrabyte hd and going digital. I just groan when I think about the 30 plus hours it's going to take. I'd hate to use that much time and not have a backup. Decisions, decisions. Confused

Anyway, DVD-R wouldn't be my first choice, but if it was some old school thing that I'd never see any other way, and it's only like $25 a show, I could see it. Price absolutely enters into it. Waiting for a better license rescue is risky. When Dirty Pair TV looked liked it would never get released, I would have accepted DVD-R for $50 for the whole thing.

CorneredAngel wrote:

Brand wrote:

Where is AX is a for profit con and if they want that ad revenue larger numbers mean more eyeballs and more eyeballs mean a better chance of getting supporting advertisers.

That's not correct - AX is a project of the Society for the Promotion of Japanese Animation, a non-profit 501(c)(6) organization. So, they may certainly be interested in attracting advertising support and such, but it's not like any of the money they make goes to "owners" or "shareholders" or whatever.

No, it is correct. Do you know who else is 501(c)(6)? The NFL.

There's a big difference between a 501(c)(3) and AX and the NFL's 501(c)(6). When I attend a 501(c)(3) event, I receive documentation from that convention that I can use towards my tax write-off. I don't receive anything from (c)(6) events.

Let me assure you that AX has shareholders and these people do receive their tribute every year, either in the form of money and/or artwork. There's a rather murky underbelly that most attendees are unaware of that occurs at conventions both big and small and AX is certainly no different.

As for AX and it's 15K+ jump in attendance every year for the last three years, I personally feel that conventions that get to a certain size become "too big to fail". That's largely why AX doesn't give a darn if you're unhappy. Should you opt not to attend, there will always be at least once person more than happy to take your place. Other medium to large anime conventions, like SakuraCon, Fanime, etc. don't experience nearly the same increase in attendance that AX does, however, their numbers usually go up a nominal amount every year. There may be many factors to consider, such as guests of honor, etc. that may explain this increase.

EricJ2 wrote:

Big businesses really only have room for two major players--
There's Coke and Pepsi, there's McDonald's and Burger King, there's Disney and Universal, there's Democrats and Republicans, and there's Netflix and Hulu. (Amazon is falling out of the subscription-streaming race, and likely going to fall back on their VOD business.) Any struggling third business is just going to get our pity.
And for anime streaming, it's going to be bad luck for any company that isn't Crunchyroll or Funimation. They match each other in that one has an advantage the other doesn't--Crunchyroll has the better setup to simulcast, while Funi nearly corners the market on mainstream dubs and hard disks--and one isn't going to fully replace the other any time soon, so we live with the yin-and-yang of two major players.

That's not a "bubble" in the sense of the licensing bubble, except for every other company that wants to get in on it.
The other earmark of a bubble is that companies get too full of themselves and outbid each other to drive the price up (which is what happened with the Licensing Boom), until they price themselves out of the market, and the customer base isn't there to back them up.
Here, we're just dealing with two companies that have the king-of-the-mountain game beat, and somebody's going to have to come up with a completely different strategy if they want to push one or the other off.

Your analogy completely falls apart when you look at other countries. In the UK, you see far more KFCs than Burger Kings, and there's a hell of a lot of Subways (my slightly larger than average local town has 5, three in the centre less a mile apart)

You say, there's basically just FUNi and CR, and that's all there will ever be. I'd be surprised if that was the case in a few years time, both Daisuki and Viewster are pushing aggressively into the anime market, and Viewster at least seems to be making ground in Europe.

That said, given the contempt Crunchyroll seems to treat Europe with, I think anybody that acted like they gave a crap would have gained support...

Buzz201 wrote:

EricJ2 wrote:

Big businesses really only have room for two major players--
There's Coke and Pepsi, there's McDonald's and Burger King, there's Disney and Universal, there's Democrats and Republicans, and there's Netflix and Hulu. (Amazon is falling out of the subscription-streaming race, and likely going to fall back on their VOD business.) Any struggling third business is just going to get our pity.

Your analogy completely falls apart when you look at other countries. In the UK, you see far more KFCs than Burger Kings, and there's a hell of a lot of Subways (my slightly larger than average local town has 5, three in the centre less a mile apart)

You say, there's basically just FUNi and CR, and that's all they'll ever be. I'd be surprised if that was the case in a few years time, both Daisuki and Viewster are pushing aggressively into the anime market, and Viewster at least seems to be making ground in Europe.

Excuse my Yankee-centrism, but a US-established company has to make it big back home before it can travel.
KFC is big in Japan as well, and both it and Subway have a different enough product that can compete with McD and BK without having to compete on their same playing field. Which is more than can be said for Popeye's competing with KFC or Quizno's competing with Subway.
People's tastes for one product rarely fall into threes, and it's human nature that attention will fall onto tastes-great/less-filling disputes over the two biggest competitors. (We know Dreamworks' battles with Disney/Pixar, but who's going to see Universal's Minions movie?)

If Viewster's big in Germany, well, so is David Hasselhoff, but that doesn't make it an immediate threat to Netflix as a movie streaming company in the US or Crunchyroll as an anime streaming company any time soon. At least not until, like most wannabe sites, they can learn to overcome low-quality prints and cheap PD catalogues if they want to be a "threat" to the two or three main established companies with money and access to the good stuff. You can't just go out there with the shirt on your back and hope that we'll all flock to the idea of it.

Cutiebunny wrote:

No, it is correct. Do you know who else is 501(c)(6)? The NFL.

There's a big difference between a 501(c)(3) and AX and the NFL's 501(c)(6). When I attend a 501(c)(3) event, I receive documentation from that convention that I can use towards my tax write-off. I don't receive anything from (c)(6) events.

I don't want to get into an argument that almost everybody else reading this probably doesn't care about, but, true, you generally cannot write off contributions to a 501(c)(6) as donations (you can as business expenses). But for the purposes of the organization itself, it's still a non-profit. Again, that does not mean it can't make money. Just means that there is no single owner or group of owners who directly benefits from it making money. End of story.

^ There is a big difference between "nonprofit" and "not-for-profit". Anime Expo is the latter and that's where I took issue with your initial post. Assuming AX makes a profit (and I would be surprised if they don't considering the industry funding they receive), I'm quite curious to know where it goes. In the NFL's case, there's a pension fund, but I strongly doubt AX has such a thing in place for its volunteers and staff. I'm sure there's a valid reason as to why they could not qualify for 501(c)(3) whereas SakuraCon does. My guess is that, with (c)(6) classification, AX can receive unlimited individual and corporate donations whereas, if it were a (c)(3), the bulk of its funds would have to come from the public.

TL;DR version - Anime Expo is a corporately run convention, not the innocent charitable entity it likes to portray itself to be.

Cons, attendance strategy, and buying merch:

For the last ten years I've gone to one huge con each year - either ACEN or Otakon, skipped cosplaying, and bought merch.

This year, I'm skipping Otakon, despite the fact I live in town, but I don't know why. Instead I'm going to two or three smaller cons, and I'm going to cosplay at each.

As for merch, I learned that it is more cost effective to buy DVDs and figures from RightStuf or Amazon. The merch I can't get anywhere else comes from the Artist Alley, so that I don't skip.

I think the "kids these days" have a really good strategy.

I checked out my local Best Buy, and I noticed they doubled the number of shelves devoted to anime. The first time that ever happened since I first checked it out. Barnes & Noble also recently announced they are expanding the size of space for manga and graphic novels. While bidding for anime appears to be skyrocketing, there also seems to be an overall growing demand for it.

Funimation has the advantage of hindsight when it comes to the risks of production committees, so I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Also, compared to GITS, Kino's Journey or Ergo Proxy, Dimension W feels less dark or heady, more adventurous, action oriented and humorous. It looks like it is meant to appeal to teens as much as adults. With the complicated metrics for measuring success with video streaming, it will be difficult to gage whether it breaks even unless Funimation announces they will do it again.

This is all exciting and nerve wracking. Is anime crossing a threshold or flying too close to the sun? I doubt when this bubble bursts it will be exactly like last time, but something is going to give. The question is, what? As a wise man once said, "We'll see."

Yeah Media Blasters has been trying very hard to assuage people's concerns over the DVD-R. IDK.

I would really like a NA release of YamiBo though so I suppose if they ever get around to it I'll still buy. .

It is sort of concerning long term going forward though since the stuff I've bought from them always seems so niche. I'm trying to remember if any former titles of theirs have been considered classic enough for other companies to release new editions down the line.

Quote:

his isn't unprecedented. Manga Entertainment was a committee member for the original Ghost in the Shell movie; ADV was on the production committee for Kino's Journey and others, Geneon USA was on the committee for Ergo Proxy and others.

you forgot CN as well cause they did the same thing for both Big O II and IGPX.

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