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Interview: Henry Goto, President, Aniplex of America

I agree with you Tuor, the responses given were very stiff and orchestrated to me. The response he gave about the Garden of Sinners price solidified that. I won't argue that their set's do come with a lot of extra's that the other US licensors don't put out. But they do this at a absurd cost (again mainly directed to their GoS set).

They have gotten a little better with pricing seeing the Bakemono will cost $150 which is something I can swallow a bit more. But with NISA putting out sets comparable to the ones AoA puts out at half the cost... I can't help but shake my head at their pricing.

@ Tuor_of_Gondolin - having 5 people in their operation is very believable. Remember, they are a wholly-owned subsidiary of Aniplex and their only function is to release a handful of cherry-picked Aniplex titles each year. Not only that, but they only sell through a few online retailers so they don't need a big sales/marketing/advertising department. All their physical production (i.e. actually putting the box sets together) would be contracted out - you don't need inhouse capability for that stuff. In this day and age, having a low overhead is critical to being profitable in the anime distribution business.

The only thing I'm currently holding out hope for from Aniplex is a domestic Blu-Ray release of Kamichu!, one of the most gorgeous-looking anime TV series of the naughts, but the old Geneon DVDs have distracting artifacting when I watch it on my 720p television.

If only there were a way to get Garden Of Sinners on BD for a reasonable price (sure, it is a superb anime, but not $800 superb). The price of the DVD edition would be right for a (lesser/no-frills) BD edition.

Reading this article (and I thought Zac asked good questions), I was thinking that it was a bit like asking a used car salesman if he thought that his customers were getting good deals, or a politician if he thought he was really serving the needs of the people in his district.

The one thing that I did find interesting is that AoA has only 5 people in it. I'm not sure what that means. Is he saying that his entire company has only five people in it? That's hard to believe. Do they actually create their own disks, then? What about shipping? Or are they merely middle-men for all of that?

Well, at any rate, nothing Mr. Goto said changed my opinion of AoA or of their pricing schemes. I still think they gouge their customers and I'd still like to see them go away. But, if people are willing to buy at their price points, then they're going to stick around into the foreseeable future.

Blood- wrote:

@ Tuor_of_Gondolin - having 5 people in their operation is very believable. Remember, they are a wholly-owned subsidiary of Aniplex and their only function is to release a handful of cherry-picked Aniplex titles each year. Not only that, but they only sell through a few online retailers so they don't need a big sales/marketing/advertising department. All their physical production (i.e. actually putting the box sets together) would be contracted out - you don't need inhouse capability for that stuff. In this day and age, having a low overhead is critical to being profitable in the anime distribution business.

Then it *is* as if they were merely middlemen for the whole process: middlemen between Aniplex of Japan and some retailers here in the US. In effect, they're AoJ's extension in the US whose purpose is to maximize profits in any way possible, regardless of the effect it might have on the R1 anime industry as a whole. That's my impression, anyway. But I think that's all I'll say about it. I don't want to start another re-hash of this subject. Everyone has already stated their positions on that matter, after all: if you want to pay those prices, do it, and if not, then don't.

• Either start translating your opening and ending credits, or at the very least give us a FULL credit scroll.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I agree with making the subtitles more flexible and certainly I believe that we should have EVERY single extra the Japanese release gets, even if it isn't subtitled.

That being said, I like having artboxes, posters, and other extras that also come with the Japanese release.

[Here's a helpful ownership diagram:

Sony (Japan) ----> Sony Music Entertainment (Japan) ----> Aniplex of Japan ----> Aniplex of America

As you can see, it would be quite easy to simply use the infrastructure of one of the parent divisions inside Sony.

The recent Durarara!! blurays don't have a separate subtitle track for on-screen text like the DVDs do, which means that anyone wanting to watch the English dub either has to watch the show with all the subtitles on, or they have to turn the subs on and off every time a piece of untranslated text comes on screen. This is especially bad in episode 24, where two characters have an entire conversation in Russian that ISN'T TRANSLATED. I know you probably used the Japanese image as a means to cut cost, but it shows a massive lack of effort on your part, and is a slap in the face to anyone wanting to watch the show in English, especially considering that the feature is already produced and available on the DVDs.

The Nakano event from the DRRR bluray and the behind the scenes features from the Garden of Sinners set have been completely stripped out of the US release.

For the love of God, run a SALE every now and then!! It doesn't have to be often, say every six months or so. And it doesn't even have to be a big sale, either. You could take 10% off. Or heck, put out a coupon for $5 off. It would do wonders for your guys' reputation if people saw that you were willing to give them a break every now and then, even if it's just a little one. And please... PLEASE let us use our RightStuf Got Anime? membership on your items!! We pay good money for that, ya know.