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Ai no Kareshi wrote:

Meh, preaching to the average anime fan about the works of talented and "experimental" individual animators is like preaching to the average pop fan about the genius of Mozart and Beethoven. There's a time and place for everything...

When exactly is the time and place to preach about experimental animation? When you get older? Where you're with elitist crowd? You just have to be earnest about your passion. Luckily, we have technology like blogs, BBS, iphones, portable gaming devices that we can express our opinions in depth.
I do watch latest Anime's, but I do watch Koji Yamamura's Mt. Head DVD and other wonderful experimental animations to take a break from usual anime scene. I got tired of usual anime scene when people stopped bother to ask questions about all those popular commercial Japanese animations.

Ai no Kareshi wrote:

On that topic, though, I'd like to know why I never hear of things like Code Geass in all its so-called "cornball stylistic excess" winning any awards, or any sort of praise from the animation community. Is anime too obscure? Or is it all about framerate? In which case, why doesn't it get recognition for its artwork alone? Anyone can tell that Code Geass has stunning visuals, but I don't hear this from anyone outside of the anime fan community. Surely, art is something anyone can appreciate, regardless of its origin or associated fanbase?

I think Code Greass won Anime Kobe Award (for popularity). You know why shows like Code Geass never win award outside of Japan? General TV Anime is commercial entertainment meant to sell toys and merchandises. It's like asking why your favorite Saturday morning cartoon, which Anime is like, never wins award of recognition. It's not that Anime is too obscure. It's just too busy revolving around it's own fan world. Studio Ghibli films are successful to non-anime fans because they reach out all audience with honest expression of humanity through their imagination.

For people who watched Code Geass or any other popular Anime, from both story narrative and visual presentation, they rarely try anything drastically different. On Code Geass, from visual side; we see usual giant robots; usual pretty boys and cute girls, and usual black outlined cel animations on painted background peppered with some CG FX. Granted that Anime pulled off new expression of limited animation through innovative use of camera angle and graphic details. For Westerners, especially North Americans who are so used smooth technical animations, can't understand such innovative visual expressions with limited resource. Plus they only see the surface of Japanese animation, so they miss out handful of Anime titles, like Mind Game, Kemonozume, and Studio 4C titles, which goes above and beyond to experiment with visuals and narratives.

Myaow wrote:

This whole leaking-files business sort of infuriates me (especially since, if I recall correctly, it happened AGAIN to some other series). I preferred it when people would pirate their pirated pirate anime elsewhere with their own ripped-files and their own fansubs, instead of going and ruining everything for the trying-to-get-stuff-legally guys.

Same here. I love how the fansub "scene" posts complaints about Funi's streams like "640x368 is like a postage stamp in this day and age, we must have HD," but is all too eager to rip those same allegedly too-low-quality-to-watch-on-my-hueg-monitor streams if it means seeing a TV episode 24 hours earlier.

I have to admit it, I'm one of those anime fans who feels compelled to avoid works praised for being avant-garde, artsy, experimental, or what have you. Maybe its my years in academia that made me suspicious of anything striving to be art over entertainment. I don't actively dislike those items once I see them, but I tend to go for "otakubait" more often.

Rednal wrote:

The reasoning for this is fairly simple. Ideally, I would like to release a subtitle-only box set of a show within two weeks of the show finishing its airing in Japan.

Riiiiight, like the Japanese are ever going to approve of something that practically screams, "Don't buy single R2J DVDs, reverse import me instead!"

Fraser wrote:

the whole world minus Japan has been cheated out of every Macross series except for SDF Macross (US, but nowhere else), and Macross Plus, and all because some companies own some rights to Macross and some own some others.

What about Macross II? Wink

I was actually under the impression that 4chan liked you. It's pretty easy to tell when they are being tsundere for a web person.

I think digital distribution is great but there are snags...

How do you hook that up to your 1080P Hi-Def 50" Television?

And? far more important? HOW MANY people are willing to make that happen?

Early adopters often have this thing where they believe that they have vast numbers. Even when you talk Napster, everyone was painting this picture that there were millions of people downloading, when the number was only ~400K... and a small subset of that were downloading a lot. It's pretty simple that it seems like everyone downloads, but it isn't the case.

The thing is: there may be a larger group of downloaders in the niche that is anime, but it still isn't the norm. If you want to expand the people who watch this niche, you will want to expand the numbers viewing in every sense, regardless if it's download or traditional DVD. And? I have screaming fast cable internet, until everyone gets home at night and gets on their computers. DSL can be a whole other thing. What makes ANYONE believe the infrastructure is there to support EVERYONE streaming vids and TV shows? Who is going to PAY for that kind of infrastructure upgrade? Ever have your internet fees double because of a fiber-optic buildout? I have.

Another point about streaming or downloads?... I usually check out streams for things that you really can't get in the US, like Gintama. I also try to check out interesting titles to see if I think I will like them before buying. Sometimes I like titles that everyone else thinks aren't that good, PLUS I usually look at a few eps from the middle of the series to see if it gets better over time, as series' often do. But. I popped in a DVD the other night that I had previewed streaming on my computer. Now, I have a really good chair at my computer, but it isn't my couch, and those headphones aren't my sound system.
Even though the the viewable area of my computer screen at 18" distance is roughly the same as my TV at 6' distant, it just isn't the same. In every demonstrable sense my TV and DVD are superior to a computer screen, even a really good one. This will only get better when I get Blu-Ray. I was very happy to see those smoothly flowing, bright un-pixelated images leaping out to meet me.

I watch stuff as entertainment. Sometimes I bring friends over too... oooh, what a novel idea!

Currently the computer isn't quite up to the task. It may someday be, but you have to ask yourself this: How long does it take to push 15GB of infomation over an internet connection? That's just a dual layer DVD. Blue Ray is 3X that big.
Now what happens if 2 people do that and they tell two friends and so on, and so on. There are roughly 110million TV households in the US. Someday everyone, no doubt, will be pulling their entertainment on demand through the air and cable to their homes. But try to imagine just how BIG that amount of data is before you start celebrating the end of the DVD or CD.

Right now there are 11 terabytes of DVD and CD goodness waiting for me at home, and all I have to do is decide which thing I want to see, pop the disk in, and put my feet up on the table and watch... in glorious 5.1 sound. With a frosty beverage at hand that I'm not worried about spilling onto my keyboard, or into the computer. IF I want to see something new, like the latest Gintama, I'll head over to the computer, but it isn't as satisfying. This is where you have to think about people's physical viewing habits in addition to their actual preferences in genre.

Then you can crow about how new technology changes everything. While trying to figure out if the 50year old wiring in your house will support your DSL, over a phone system that is the same technology in essence that A.G. Bell designed for the phone in the late 1800's. Spliced together with cutting edge fiber optics, that are still susceptable to being cut with a backhoe.

Rock is dead. Long Live Rock.

britannicamoore wrote:

Like i've said in the 20 other threads the One Piece guy- I don't really care all that much. I get legal streams were available but hey- these are the people you all said can't wait for the show to get picked up and viewed legally. ..do you think a couple days is any different?

Does that make it right? Depends on your morals. I don't care it was posted- i'm not applauding the guy but I don't feel what he did was bad. It was a good thing- Funimation could have improved their security and moved on. But they didn't.

I feel like One Piece won't be back until weeks after Funi gets their security together- they'll probably want to see proof its set.
It seems like the show didn't suffer much in Japan and that to me came across as the biggest concern.
Someday.

This is the kind of bullshit reasoning that pisses me off. You're pretty much saying that because somebody can perpetrate a crime, it's ultimately the victim's fault that they weren't able to prevent it. I am so sick of this mentality that it's okay to steal things as long as it's online.

So, you, and all that are like you, can go to hell.

@ArthurFrDent -- you stole some of my thunder while I was composing, but I'll post anyway. And you thoroughly covered my mention of the technology challenges. Thanks for that. BTW, if you're still watching anime on your computer, and you have that many DVDs, then you can afford a solution Wink

Have your local computer guru shop build you a little "media" pc that hooks into your home theater and has a wireless card. Stream anime through your router from your "server" PC. Voila. You can even buy a case that looks like a stereo component.

sunflower wrote:

The paper:

Converting Pirates Without Cannibalizing Purchasers: The Impact of Digital Distribution on Physical Sales and Internet Piracy

(This link leads to the abstract page, from which a free copy may be downloaded.)

Thanks for this. Nice to see some formal research on this subject.

I did want to point out to those being critical of the "slow learners" in terms of technology that although advancement is inevitable, it is usually far slower in occurring than expected in the real world. But there is another factor at work as well, which is composed of habit and other variables.

People who have been buying DVDs for many years simply won't abandon that channel of distribution just because digital downloading is available. Besides the remaining technological hurdles, which are not insignificant--we are definitely not "there" yet--there are the personal factors like of pride of ownership. We are a consumption society. We buy stuff and put it on shelves so we can look at it, hold it and show it to other people. Figures, for instance, can't be downloaded, but you can certainly download high quality images of them and even videos if the only purpose is to look at them. But it's obviously not the same.

New distribution forms or channels, oddly enough, rarely displace other channels rapidly. From my personal experience having worked in banking and the Internet for some time: Major banks were sold the concept that by offering services through Web sites, they would reduce service costs drastically. People would do all their banking online, allowing a reduction in number of branches and in staff per branch. Sounds logical.

What actually occurred was they created an "additional" channel, which required its own set of costs that were not offset by reductions in other channels. They couldn't close the branches, because they lost customers to other, closer bank branches. The lines for the teller on Friday afternoon and Monday morning didn't reduce significantly, so a reduction in staff wasn't feasible. Eventually, they started using force (charges) to get people to bank from home. Now even those have rolled back, and they rely on exorbitant overdraft charges and such.

Ten years into it, usage of online channels has grown, but you still wait in line on Fridays. Overall, the cost of service didn't fall, it rose.

If film entertainment companies are expecting to drop DVD production anytime soon, as in the next 5 to 10 years, I think they are in for a shock. I doubt they would hope for that to happen anyway, because my feeling from the incidental data is that they are far from earning significant revenue from digital distribution. The only benefit is capturing a tiny amount of revenue from potential illegal downloaders. I suspect we could still be a generation away from losing physical media, if we ever do entirely.

Vapors wrote:

My choice would have been to create a Criterion collection type company.

The idea of a Criterion-like approach to anime is brilliant. I buy the best version of film DVDs I can find, and I would love to see anime treated similarly. The economics are a challenge with the complexities of Japanese licensing, but I would certainly pay a premium for collectable sets with remastered content and lots of extras. (Which, BTW, is still the best defense against losing DVD sales to digital distribution: If there is no difference in content, then a Millenial generation buyer happy with digital has no incentive to buy DVDs).

Blood- wrote:

Ugh, it shocks me that in 2009 there are still people who are in denial about the shape of things to come with respect to digital distribution. Yes, there will always be people who will cling to physical media like DVDs.

I can import DVDs from around the world, no problem, shipping cost aside (very small compared to importing books). No hope of digital download services for anime in the Philippines in the next five years. We don't switch over to digital TV until 2015.

If the media companies could just forget about locking out people who actually want to pay for their TV shows, movies, and music regardless of where they live, then I wouldn't have as much of a problem with them going digital.

Hard drives aren't as durable as CDs or DVDs (I have a small stack of dead HDDs as proof); good ones have at least 80,000 operating hours mean time between failures. Backing up to CD-Rs or even DVD-/+Rs is a little better, but not by much. Tape back-up is more reliable, but it's slow and a bit of overkill for the home user.

Maybe flash memory will get fast and cheap enough to be the medium of choice in the download era. Maybe magnetic RAM and/or memristors will be available to consumers in the near future. Until then, shiny factory-pressed plastic discs aren't going anywhere.

heh, pparker, happens to me all the time... yours is a good post. As for the computer stuff you mention... yeah, I just don't care enough. I do that all day long everyday, I DON'T want to dink with it at home. That is another point unmentioned. Think about the man-hours required to keep a computer system running with software updates, virus-scan, backups and whatever. It's not an insignificant amount of time. The general population prolly doesn't want to dink with that either, just to watch a show.

ArthurFrDent wrote:

heh, pparker, happens to me all the time... yours is a good post. As for the computer stuff you mention... yeah, I just don't care enough. I do that all day long everyday, I DON'T want to dink with it at home. That is another point unmentioned. Think about the man-hours required to keep a computer system running with software updates, virus-scan, backups and whatever. It's not an insignificant amount of time. The general population prolly doesn't want to dink with that either, just to watch a show.

Yeah, we need a Steve Jobs solution for the average consumer. Windows... Not Wink

Techies always forget that the majority of people haven't a clue, and more to your point, don't care to have one. They have actual lives, where they even go outdoors sometimes...

I haven't bought a PC for anime myself yet, but will soon. Nothing special, just minimum to play anime. I do it now with my laptop, just plug the audio/video into my receiver. Works fine for my current needs. I am firmly in the "I watch TV on a TV" camp. But then, my teenage kids watch anime in a corner of the monitor while they play games and chat... so there's that non-DVD generation.

The storm of pretension appears to have hit as it always does all I wanted to chime in on was:

Quote:

There's this perception that completely baffles me, that experimental shorts and films are too "challenging" to be enjoyed on the same level as popcorn entertainment. It's wholly untrue on every level, as you can be just as entertained on a more cerebral and artistic level by Koji Yamamura's Atama-yama than, I dunno, Code Geass, with all it's cornball stylistic excess. And the thing that really sucks is that trying to explain this concept to people usually makes you come off as some head-up-your-own-ass elitist. Which is again wholly untrue; I enjoy cornball stylistic excess as well, for all the same reasons that everyone else enjoys them

this is so unbelievably true! Thank you.

Eruanna wrote:

E-Peen? Am I the only one who got the flakes referance to forumwarz? Anime hyper

I think the phrase "E-Peen" has spread far enough across the net that you can't be guaranteed that the person using it got it from forumwarz, whatever that is. (I know I can Google it, but I don't care enough)

ArthurFrDent wrote:

How do you hook [your PC] up to your 1080P Hi-Def 50" Television?

VGA or DVI, same as you hook up your monitor. Modern HDTVs are closer to PC monitors than SDTVs.

Quote:

Currently the computer isn't quite up to the task. It may someday be, but you have to ask yourself this: How long does it take to push 15GB of infomation over an internet connection? That's just a dual layer DVD.

A DL DVD is 8.5GB. And that's assuming you download MPEG-2 encodes rather than something more modern like h.264, in which case equivalent (or superior) quality is 4GB or less. For actually downloading that? A DVD-equivalent bitrate h.254 file is about 2 megabits per second. That's well within the possible streaming bandwidth of your average broadband connection (going by UK averages). Not that any company has bothered streaming in any sort of reasonable bitrate (apart from the now-defunct Stage6 techdemo).

Quote:

Someday everyone, no doubt, will be pulling their entertainment on demand through the air and cable to their homes. But try to imagine just how BIG that amount of data is before you start celebrating the end of the DVD or CD.

How big? A drop in the bucket. A 1 TERABYTE hard disc is now under £50. Bandwidth and storage capacity are soaring exponentially. The technical infrastructure for widespread distribution is already in place (hey, dem dasterdly pirates don't seem to have a problem shuntin' bits), it's the whole "how do we skim our profits from the 'distribution' phase when distribution costs are negligable" problem that's causing the delay.

How the servers were 'hacked' :

http://www.srsfkn.biz/2009/05/30/funimations-servers-were-compromised-right/

Quote:

This is purely Funimation’s fault. They leave all of the streaming material on their server somewhere that people could easily guess the file paths, making the streaming videos easy to download, and there’s nothing preventing you from downloading it directly from that folder. It’s like asking for leaks. If they’re serious about streaming, maybe they should make their streaming service better instead of blaming others and saying “Boo-hoo our servers were compromised” after the fact.

I'm not defending the leak. I'm just pointing out that Answerman, and everyone else raging about 'hackers', look like fools. Someone guessed the http address (something anyone with basic computer literacy could do) and told all their friends. This guy needs to be sent to Gitmo, before he brings down the Pentagon mainframe.

Dorcas_Aurelia wrote:

Eruanna wrote:

E-Peen? Am I the only one who got the flakes referance to forumwarz? Anime hyper

I think the phrase "E-Peen" has spread far enough across the net that you can't be guaranteed that the person using it got it from forumwarz, whatever that is. (I know I can Google it, but I don't care enough)

Considering that the word predates forumwarz by well over a decade, it would probably be far safer to assume the opposite.

bj_waters wrote:

I have always been under the impression that Europe has always had a greater respect and appreciation for animation and anime is certainly not excluded. Here in America, most people see animation as Dora, Disney, or South Park. In short, nothing to be taken seriously. So it doesn't surprise me that an art student in the UK would have research materials about all of these "unknown" directors and their work, all because anime is an art style and Europe has been taking art seriously for centuries.

Um... I'm American and went to college in the Midwest, where I learned about *gasp* all of the same animators, particularly Kihachiro Kawamoto, Renzo Kinoshita, Koji Yamamura and the token Tezuka, that the writer did. In addition to them I also first learned of greats like Oskar Fischinger, Jiri Trnka, Jan Svankmajer, David Russo, Caroline Leaf, Joanna Quinn, Lotte Rieneger, Paul Grimault, Rosto, Yuri Norstein, Alexander Petrov, Wan Laiming, and scores of other artists and innovators who worked with the medium of animation as an art form. It's not really about European vs. American sensibilities at all; it's about the sensibilities of anime fans vs. fans of animation in general. I've frequently mentioned on the forums before that the USA has a very healthy and vigorous independent animation scene, filled with amazing work and artistic expression, and it's this crowd that tends to embrace experimental, independent work from around the globe--including Japan. Mainstream anime fans tend not to give experimental Japanese animation a second glance--but I don't think that's necessarily the fault of the fans. It's not like everyone in America who went to see Up last weekend knows, or cares, who Suzan Pitt is, despite the fact that both she and Pixar make American animation.

On a related note, I'm teaching an introductory animation course this summer and fully intend to screen selections from my personal animation collection for my students (including Koji Yamamura, of course), to open more eyes to global independent and experimental animation.

bj_waters wrote:

America just hasn't reached that pinnacle of culture where they can take animation, heck, art as a whole, very seriously, and these directors remain unknown. That's why anime fans are so peculiar in America: they take animation seriously.

Don't make yourself feel too special, there. And maybe consider attending some animation festivals and screenings, take advantage of websites like AWN and Channel Frederator and maybe actually talk to American-born artists and animation enthusiasts before deciding who takes animation seriously and who doesn't. Personally, I find a lot of anime to be about as "serious" as your average afternoon soap opera. Which is to say, not at all.

Cheers for linking to AniPages, Brian. *Self-promotion* And I'd also encourage readers to check out the two-part interview we did with Benjamin Ettinger (the author of AniPages) in Chicks on Anime, which is located here and here. */Self-promotion*

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