Forum - View topicNEWS: Funimation Parent Navarre Reports Q4 Anime Sales Dip
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Sheleigha
 Posts: 1673 |
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First off, it takes ALOT of time to really profit off anything. Royalties and production need to get paid, etc. Who knows how much they actually even make? In the case of Playstation 3 consoles, they are ONLY profiting this year! Took them 4 years since they were selling them (and for a while, not many anyways) for cheaper than what it took to make them... Secondly, Pokemon and Gundam are owned by two seperate companies all together. Can't just take a license away, with contracts and whatnot. And if it sells? Why WOULD they want to give it up? FUNI put out a few C&Ds a few years back to stop some shows being subbed to a couple few groups, the moment they got their license to do it in english. Guess what? Someone, somewhere is still subbing it and since a copy of an episode exists, it always will... The sad truth. It cannot be stopped... Not yet anyways. And even if something like Bitorrent itself gets shut down, someone will come up with a new plan... It's all up to us to try and fix the situation! Heck, sometimes I feel bad in buying used items, seeing the current situation with everything! I'm buying stuff, I like physical copies, but it's really not supporting the companies themselves... |
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dbzliveaction
Posts: 9 |
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Navarre puts no more money in, but it also takes no more money out. Funimation continues to operate as normal, and any change in net worth of Funimation is due entirely to its operations as an independent unit.[/quote]
WRONG!!! Funimation continues as part of the Navarre group until the day its sold. Navarre continues to fund funimation through licensing/co-productions or whatever. Any profits Funimation makes until the day it is sold go directly to Navarre and are shown as "profits from discontinued operations" on their balance sheet. Also, a lot of people here seem to be completely oblivious to the fact that this business (the entertainment business) is seasonal and release/hit driven. Last years quarter they had some big releases, this years quarter less so, accounting for the dip in sales. That does not mean funimation is going out of business, its just the nature of the beast and equally if next quarter sales are up, that is no reason to jump for joy. |
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ABetterTimeandPlace
Posts: 101 |
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Well, not the only person. Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Ghost in the Shell, and Afro Samurai are among the anime titles that have also been successfully marketed to the mainstream. Afro Samurai and Funimation's future co-production plans indicate that the company has some long-term plans for reaching more of the mainstream. |
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jsevakis
Former ANN Editor in Chief
 Posts: 1684 Location: Los Angeles, CA |
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Your summary was pretty spot-on, I think. The good news is that the companies that are left standing are standing because they're the smarter ones, IMHO. Most of the anime labels spent up until the crash trying to sell anime to retail buyers, who never really "got it", but stocked it because people bought it. These retailers never understood that not all anime was for the same audience, and since the labels never had to break it down for them, they didn't really think about it either. I also agree that streaming needs to be far better marketed, and that will be one of the big challenges to that business model going forward. These are both really big topics that I think are better discussed in a different venue. I hope you or somebody will call into the next ANNCast call-out show to discuss this further. The niche content thing is more Japan's fault, as they've kind of trapped themselves in a safe state of pandering to the nerds who will buy anything with bishoujo moe girls on it. They appear to slowly be trying to break out of that cycle, and Funimation's initiative of trying to make anime adaptations of Western IP is also a great way to break out of that niche. So those two things make me hopeful. We're not there, not by a long shot, but everyone is trying and I think someone will eventually succeed.
Very true. For all the crap the fans give them, 4Kids has arguably recruited more otaku than any other company in America. GitS was a sleeper hit, but actually lost Manga Ent a lot of money. Afro Samurai was a pseudo-American piece, but a deftly handled one (and it was not really made a hit BY Funi, but rather by Spike TV.) |
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Sanosuke_Inara
 Posts: 1662 |
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TJ_Kat
Posts: 370 Location: Saskatoon, Canada |
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wait, so fewer titles are being released.... and sales are down...
OMG IT'S THE ANIME APOCALYPSE!!!1!ONE sorry, that's been the only thing going through my head for the past couple pages. i'm still trying to figure out how the panicky ones got from point 'a' to point 'b'. |
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egoist
 Posts: 7762 |
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No mention of the live-action shows Funi's been selling (apparently better than anime, BTW)? |
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Mr. sickVisionz
 Posts: 2173 |
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Navarre seems to be doing pretty well. They actually put out a lot of software that I didn't know they did.
It's not too surprising that they want to get rid of Funimation. The other subsidiaries seem to be doing well enough to keep the company going and they probably feel like if they invested the money they spend on Funi in other areas they'd of the company they'd get a better return on it. |
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ABetterTimeandPlace
Posts: 101 |
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Yeah, Manga spent way too much on Ghost in the Shell's production, but that is a different issue from how well it marketed the film to the mainstream. Still, Manga Entertainment was able to leverage its resulting production rights to get a piece of the pie on the many GitS projects afterwards (even those it had nothing to do with). It's like how Warner Brothers leveraged the initially money-losing 1989 Batman film into a revival of the marketing franchise outside comics, only on a much, much smaller scale for Manga.
Similarly, one can say that Pokemon was not really made a hit by 4Kids, but rather by Nintendo. Perhaps it can be said that 4Kids and Funimation's best marketing success comes not just from making the right marketing decisions, but choosing the right bandwagon to hitch themselves onto. Macek/Harmony Gold did that with Robotech (following in the footsteps of World Events' Voltron), 4Kids did that with Yu-Gi-Oh (following in the footsteps of Pokemon), and Funimation is doing that with its co-production plans (following in the footsteps of Animatrix and to a lesser extent, Afro Samurai). |
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ArsenicSteel
 Posts: 2370 |
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I only put down two scenarios I am interested in seeing the results. I am not the type of person that only wonders about the positive possibilities. There should have been a question mark at the end of my last statement about will(_?_) Nav shut down Funi if the sale does not go through. I am completely calm on this matter as the anime business does not feed or clothe me. It is news and I am just watching it develop with a few comments here and there. |
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Hiyugi
 Posts: 59 |
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If I had a million dollars, I would give it all to FUNimation.
I think FUNimation is doing okay. Sure they're going through some tough times through the economy, but I can't imagine them going out of business anytime soon. Some people here just want the worst to happen, because they see everything around themselves falling apart. You know I'm going to pray for them, because it's not their fault they feel that way. I used to feel that way too, I was so negative for these past couple of years it started to affect my friends and family where they too started to feel negative. Then one day, I snapped out of it and decided I'm not going to let life beat me down and stay positive! Is it wrong to be optimistic? No Is it okay to be pessimistic and passing it along for others to listen? Heck No! Sorry for my rant, it's just I feel that when people talk about the doom and gloom whenever this topic arises, it just sorta pisses me off to no end. Please use responsibility when making comments is all I ask. Because I want the Anime R1 DVD Industry to remain here for many years and I think FUNimation is a great company. |
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dizzon
 Posts: 338 |
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A positive optimistic rant?.....I like the cut of your jib. 
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teh*darkness
 Posts: 901 |
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So it wasn't only me. I think too many people look for the inherent negative in everything, no matter what the words on the page are actually saying. *text bolded by me |
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gorbal
Posts: 114 |
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I think the problem is the beginning of the article only discusses the negative aspects and it isn't until the end that you learn that they actually made more money and cut their debt 5 times in half.
On the one hand, people should read the whole article; reporters all to often put important information at the bottom of an article and know all to well only about half of us will read the whole thing.( I wonder if anyone has done a study on that) Anywho, I can't wait to see who buys Funimation, I secretly hope it's a company that will throw all the ecchi away. |
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unready
 Posts: 400 Location: Illinois, USA |
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Only if Navarre wants to loot Funimation before getting rid of it, pretty much leaving only debts and NA licenses to anime. Sucking all the cash out is the thing to do when shutting a unit down. Instead, Navarre wants to sell Funimation. I think everyone is smart enough to realize that there's no one left in NA who would buy Funimation just to get the licenses. (If I'm wrong about that and everyone isn't that smart, I hope they figure it out fast.) By discontinuing Navarre's operation of Funimation, Navarre is disentangling itself from Funimation, making it easier to sell. Navarre doesn't operate Funimation anymore. Navarre still owns Funimation, of course, but Funimation operates Funimation. |
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