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In regards to the OVA licensing/release discussion, I think it's important to distinguish the type of content one is actually referring to.
When talking about content that wasn't first aired on TV, as I see it, you have four different types:

First, you have the content that is created for dvd/bds that are essentially extras made to enhance/entice the purchase of the discs. These are usually only a few minute shorts that often are non-canon and are frequently comedy or fanservice. Whether on not these are on the US release tends to vary. Funi is usually good for them (the recent Senran Kagura issue not-withstanding) while Sentai used to not have any, but have gotten better in recent years. Still, it probably comes down to whether or not the licenser wants to let the material go, if it's even available to license at the time the deal is made and if it's worth it to the company financially
Second, you have full episodes that didn't air on TV, but are included on the dvd/bd release. The unaired 13th episode of a 12 episode broadcast for example. The chances of these being licensed seems to fall on the same conditions as the smaller extras, imo, but as they are less likely to be fluff, seem more likely to be included.
Third, you have the content that best defines the term, and these are the ~30-60 minutes episodes that are released on disc first. These are less likely to be licensed since it's hard to be profitable releasing so little content on a single disc at a time here. These are more likely to get licensed it seems after several episodes have been released so that the value to consumers is there. Or it might get released as an import. Gundam Unicorn, GiTS: Arise, Akito the Exiled, etc. fall into this category.
Lastly, you have the content that are essentially the same as the previously mentioned OVAs, but these are the episodes that get bundled with manga volume releases. Correct me if I'm wrong, but these are rarely (if ever?) licensed and released here. Not only is there a small amount of content, but being bundled with manga likely means that there are additional companies to deal with and more money required. The Attack on Titan OVAs, the recent HSD: Kenichi episodes among other series fall into this category.

Feel free to chime in if you think of any others I may have missed Smile

EyeOfPain wrote:

]When has Gonzo ever had a masterpiece?

Aside from gonzo being an English adjective in its own right, Welcome to the NHK and Gankutsuou are pretty well-regarded, and I'm partial to Speed Grapher.

Somebody was going to make poop porn. It may be a dirty job, but just think you are making some people "happy".

the Doctor has those nurses do all sorts of bizarre things. poop just barely scratches the surface

Lol, good story. Most people really do lose their minds around scat.

One bit of advice I’ve remembered for anyone who has an interest in sexual comics is to know the law, know the environment, and know the politics.

I try to be very sympathetic to publishers who face issues around obscenity. Digital Manga has been viewed on the edge at times in publishing, while at others more conservative than other companies. I suppose that is partly what makes it difficult to form reasonable expectations from a customer’s point of view. Those expectations can have a big impact on consideration and understanding about products.

Coffin of Cerebrum was part of a package deal it seems so Project H had to try and make the best out of a difficult situation.

Still, I have a little trouble figuring out exactly what to think about the Project H line. If they’re not comfortable with the risk of some content whereas another company might publish similar things I understand. But, since I’ve been purchasing from the various imprints of Digital Manga for 10 years now I know that there are books of which reasonable people would feel run afoul of the stated Project H licensing guidelines. So it’s sort of confusing if potentially problematic content is published under an imprint yet, avoided in another which features or is exclusively made up of adult books. I mean, any trouble is still going to come back to some of the same people right? Or am I missing some sort of nuance?

Hey, James Joyce was partial to farts. In fact, I can safely deduce from his...interesting letters to his wife, that he would have absolutely LOVED Night Shift Nurses uncut.

Fascinating how, without the poopy crap (NO PUN INTENDED, CALM DOWN!!!), Night Shift Nurses was a big seller. As much as I loathe censorship (to a point...I'm very much in favor of creators realizing where to draw the line, no matter what grandiose visions of ART! and shock value they may have), it seems to have been a sound decision to cut those scenes out.

Regarding OVAs, I really think it's a useless format by now, due to reasons stated. The content and the modern industry that it has to compete in are just too different. It isn't nearly as fresh and useful as it was in the 80s and 90s.

Mentioned here was the possibility of a revival of the hentai market here in America, that would be great as I'd love to see Cream Lemon, pretty much anything from Toshio Maeda and U-Jin remastered on DVD or BD. (OK, only Cream Lemon and a couple Maeda titles would ever conceivably see BD...)

That is, if the materials haven't burned up in a fire! HEH HEH HEH HEH. (You know, that's the excuse given for why we've never seen a completely uncensored print of the Fist of the North Star movie released, here or Japan. Figures, the only one I care about and it seems to be true...)

It really is ridiculous that, in the year 2014, there's still a legal classification of "obscene" material that could potentially be declared illegal. The Miller Test is one of the most godawful pieces of case law ever constructed, particularly in the infuriating vagueness of the "community standards" clause. I've yet to see any cogent argument for why material found "offensive" by some particular group should be persona non grata from a legal standpoint. In the case of a completely-fictional drawn or animated work, just who is it that is in need of legal protection?

doomydoomdoom wrote:

(OK, only Cream Lemon and a couple Maeda titles would ever conceivably see BD...)

One already has: Overfiend has a blu ray in the us.

And hey, someone else likes Speed Grapher. Happy day.

mgosdin wrote:

The thing is that Audio, be it 5.1 Home Theater or classic Stereo, has to play thru speakers at some point and it is those speakers, with all their compromises and flaws that determine how good or bad the sound is.

There is definite truth to this, and if you have some real low end, ratty speakers then it really doesn't matter what's being pumped through them, it won't sound as it should. But if you have decent and up speakers, you can begin to discern some difference between lossy and lossless formats. I'm honestly not an audiophile like that, I find there to be some real good lossy 5.1 tracks out there on anime releases and otherwise (and when there are lossy audio options on BD their bitrates are usually upped to 640 kbps from the usual 488, more if it's a DTS lossy track so those tracks are a minor improvement over DVD counterparts) but there are some select lossless tracks that have blown me away with their depth, clarity and sheer punch, things that a lossy track can't do. I realize that not everyone is going to hear the full spectrum when it comes to lossless, but I have to side eye people that can't see... Er, hear the improvement in some basic areas in going from lossy to lossless.

I have a ton of appreciation for the anime companies that do go through the work to create a 5.1 track for their releases, particularly in action anime that .1 gives explosions, gunfire and the like the extra kick it should have. For something I really want it's not a dealbreaker at all if it's just 2.0, it was disappointing that BTOOOM! wasn't 5.1 but the lossless 2.0 track matrixed performed admirably.

Night Shift Nurses, hoo boy... That was some shit.

Eisenmann V wrote:

EyeOfPain wrote:

]When has Gonzo ever had a masterpiece?

Aside from gonzo being an English adjective in its own right, Welcome to the NHK and Gankutsuou are pretty well-regarded, and I'm partial to Speed Grapher.

I'd also add some of their original titles like Last Exile (expansive story with outstanding visuals for the time) and Solty Rei (sci-fi film noir with solid character development and no small amount of surprising emotional impact). Vandread was a fun hotblooded and sexy thrill ride, and Samurai 7 (one of the first HD digipaint anime) deserves some credit for ambition and budgetary risk-taking.

And when they were allowed to bring adaptations to a decent conclusion, they were able to do pretty well with Basilisk and Chrono Crusade, unlike the more obvious LN commercials hobbled by Author Existence Failure like Trinity Blood and Kaze no Stigma. Also, blame The Spirits Within for Final Fantasy Unlimited's botched ending, though admittedly it wasn't going to be masterpiece-caliber anyway.

Top Gun wrote:

I've yet to see any cogent argument for why material found "offensive" by some particular group should be persona non grata from a legal standpoint.

I've always found it strange that people seem to blithely accept the idea that the first amendment, as unambiguous as it is, somehow doesn't cover "obscenity". Things like that make me really fond of this quote:

Lysander Spooner wrote:

But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain—that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.

Well this week Answerman was very interesting to read. and Justin:

You wrote:

As for what format in which they're stored on a disc, these days you generally see 4 different kinds of audio tracks:

Linear PCM (Completely uncompressed, basically just a WAV file. Takes up a lot of space, especially in 5.1.)
Dolby Digital (AC3) (Lower quality, like an MP3, but takes up a lot less space. Supported by DVD and Blu-ray.)
Dolby TrueHD (Blu-ray only. The full quality of the WAV file, but compressed to a more manageable size. Still much bigger than AC3, however.)
DTS Master Audio (Blu-ray only. For the end user, pretty much identical to Dolby TrueHD.)

Thanks for the info, now I have a better understanding the difference between the audio format used in Blu-ray. Thank you so much. Very Happy

Regarding the digibeta:

you wrote:

The sad fact is that back in the 80s, nobody was really thinking too much about preserving higher quality versions of anime made for TV and home video. Sometimes the original film elements were properly archived, sometimes not. Sometimes the production company that made the show got bought out or went bankrupt, and so the film elements were scattered to the wind. In a few cases they were damaged.

It's impossible to tell what shows are genuinely lost forever in film form. American companies have long been told a specific classic show they're after has no good elements, or that the film has been lost, and then a brand new HD version magically shows up on Japanese store shelves a year later. I've heard gossip that "Show X had its masters lost in a fire," so many times, only to later be completely proven wrong, that I've stopped believing it. What, are Japan's anime film vaults just constantly burning to the ground?

Yeah this doesn't surprise me. Also the part where I bold and underline, yeah that's what I suspected before on another Answerman thread, they (the Japanese production) seem to look down on international anime fans most of the time judging from the elaborate excuse/lies.

Regarding OVAs:

Yes, I agreed with you on that judging from my observation.

you wrote:

To get back to your question, since OVAs are produced largely as a separate marketing event for a given franchise, they are usually a separate license for international publishers. However, what do those publishers do when there's just one episode? How do you justify the expense of a separate license fee for what's essentially a glorified DVD extra, one that is mostly filler and doesn't contribute anything to the main story? Sometimes the licensor doesn't even want to make it available outside of Japan. After all, the program is an important premium item for Japanese fans, and they risk cheapening it by letting an American company throw it on one of their already low-priced discs for free.

So without some way to package these OAVs into a compelling multi-episode volume, there's really not a good way to package and sell them to the US market right now. Perhaps that'll change in the future, but in the mean time I don't think anybody in the US would be too excited to buy a Blu-ray with a single episode 25-minute OAV on it.

I can understand why OVA are not picked up a lot, sometime the price of licensing can be ridiculously overpriced, also I heard of OVA being Japan-exclusive and not avaliable to be license outside of Japan (again, this show Japanese production look down on their international non-Japanese fans).

About the hentai manga and hentai censorship: Yes, I can understand why some hentai have to be censored in the US, I have no complaint about it.

But this got my attention:

you wrote:

When we licensed the now-legendary Night Shift Nurses, we had a lot of meetings as to what we should do with it. For those who don't know, it's got poop in it. Lots of poop. I honestly think it was more of an attempt at shock humor than titilation, but frankly if people really did find that exciting, I don't want to know.

But to finish telling the story... We released Night Shift Nurses with all of the poop scenes cut out, which amounted to about 20 minutes of footage for 3 episodes. And it was HUGE. It was one of our hottest sellers in years. Emboldened, company head John O'Donnell decided to toss his lawyer's advice aside and release Volume 2 uncut, and with all of the stuff we cut out from the first disc added as a bonus. It sold, albeit not as well as the first one, but at least all of the shock and awe it inspired online was amusing to watch. And no legal issues ever came of it.

no comment over this.

Anyway, love this week Answerman, keep it up Justin. Smile

scriver058 wrote:

Night Shift Nurses, hoo boy... That was some shit.

This post win, you get 1,000 internet for this. Laughing

kevinx59 wrote:

And hey, someone else likes Speed Grapher. Happy day.

Speed Grapher is awesome!

IanC wrote:

kevinx59 wrote:

And hey, someone else likes Speed Grapher. Happy day.

Speed Grapher is awesome!

count me as a Speed Grapher fan too, I love how it predicted the 2008 financial crisis

I'm glad Justin answered the audio question, but the classification helps reaffirm some of my thoughts on the Fate/Zero audio and the changes for the english audio of Railgun. I guess funimation thought the more action pack Railgun season 2 was not worth the extra effort. Fortunately, Fate/Zero had an awesome English dub cast to make the price worth it.

Hopefully Justin posts more of his past dilemmas in awkward situations, as they are very entertaining.

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