Forum - View topicAnswerman - What Happened With Anime Sols?
|
Goto page Previous 1, 2, 3, 4 Next Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
| Author | Message | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
TonyTonyChopper
Posts: 256 |
|
|||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
LightYapper
 Posts: 131 Location: Somewhere on Earth |
|
|||||||||||
|
I've never known Anime Sols existed before reading this article. I think they attempt to introduce potential new fans to obscure old things like Dear Brother and Creamy Mami via kickstarter, but couldn't work it out because of restrictions. I appreciate their effort and motives, but they could've worked better. Still, I feel like watching these two now, and I'm guessing some streaming sites have them already. Too bad for AS.
|
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
|
DmonHiro
|
|
|||||||||||
|
Well, yeah, it's true that except for the shows that got funded, nobody really cared about the others. I mean, think about it. If there isn't enough interest for a show to even get raws online, let alone fansubs, do you really think people care enough about that show to justify licensing it? Did anyone really think stuff like Hurricane Polymar has a sizable fandom?
|
||||||||||||
omiya
 Posts: 1827 Location: Adelaide, South Australia |
|
|||||||||||
Considering the numbers of AnimeNewsNetwork.com forum readers and anime fans in general who are outside the USA, having a plan for a release that would be available for order from anywhere with suitable payment and shipping methods would be helpful (even if through existing forwarding services like tenso.com or fromjapan.co.jp). |
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
|
|||||||||||
|
It's tough for an indie company to pop up in any established field (except for food). But until the official explanation, I wondered why they never had their shows available in major venues. I've seen plenty of start-up companies sell their stuff only on their website (I take it they don't have the means or connections to put their stuff at any retail chain), and they tend to fall apart before long because no one had heard of them.
I have to wonder if that's due to regional rights. Perhaps Anime Sols was able to only get the rights to the United States specifically.
Must be pretty jarring compared to the way American and European companies are run, where directions can change drastically even late into a project, as long as the public doesn't know about it yet. (If the public DOES find out about it though, like with Duke Nukem Forever, they're in deep trouble.) This "cool Japan" concept is very strange to me. I'm always interested in learning what people of other countries think of the United States, but personally, "cool Japan" comes off to me as culturally myopic. Americans buy Japanese cars and Japanese video games (but to a lesser extent now than before in both cases), but anime is not some huge thing. Is "cool Japan" a concept created in response to the diminishing role Japan is playing in the world market?
Considering all of the attempts to sell Astro Boy to the Anglosphere where the original Alan Ladd dub was the only successful one, I am pretty certain the Osamu Tezuka name means nothing to most people outside of Japan, not even anime fans. Most of the people I've met who are into works of Tezuka are not even anime fans--they're either animation fans (in general) or film scholars.
Well, there are a few fansubbing groups in China and southeast Asia, and a few here and there in the United States, who also do bootlegging (the most famous example being Star War: Backstroke of the West), but I'm guessing that's not what you mean.
An audience for something like Hurricane Polymar would have to come from outside the normal anime-watching group. The two most likely groups to support them would be those who learned about Polymar through Tatsunoko vs. Capcom and media historians and/or enthusiasts who would like another older TV series added to their collection. The latter group is key here because they are a niche but dedicated bunch of collectors. After all, who else was buying the season DVD sets for The Goldbergs (Sanka coffee plugs and all) or The Price Is Right? |
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
EricJ2
 Posts: 4016 |
|
|||||||||||
Pretty much: Even despite their own home demonizing of it, they realize that the West recognizes Japan as a brand name for their pop culture more than it recognizes them for cars and electronics. And now the government wants to nationalize that sales interest, despite not really having that much of a grasp of it themselves--Responsible adults don't do that sort of thing, you know.
We know Tezuka from Astro Boy and Simba...er, Kimba on iconic/historical value, and Black Jack for its frequent revivals, but lesser Tezuka is seen by the wider anime community as....a bit goofy. 
While there are some who might want Bagi finally immortalized in a sub/dub version, others might think it was a bit too silly.
Talking about the new industry, where you have to crowdfund and license a series before you work on it in your fansubber's garage. For obvious reasons, it brings up the same concerns that big companies use when they gauge the sales figures for a big rollout of a dubbed series on disk, and just because there's a smaller scale doesn't mean the same rules as the big boys aren't at play--You now have to show before you can sell.
Oh, whew, THAT Goldbergs! (Not the poseur 80's-fakie ones who make real 80's survivors' teeth grind.) 
But no, I'm with Dmon on this one: In the VHS days, fansubbers were basically the MOD model, who might be lucky enough to dig up a rare LD boxset of Queen Millennia, fansub it, and put it on their "trading" list for the website readers who wanted to search down a copy, much like Warner Archive could print one or two copies of an obscure 30's or 70's movie for its niche audience who wanted the physical disk. But if you're going to Kickstarter or otherwise crowd-fund (am I the only person who doesn't really trust non-KS crowd-fund sites, or think "no one else has heard of them" enough to raise the amount?), it's All or Nothing: You MUST find at least 100+ people who want it, and have every intention of committing. That's what Disney thought wouldn't happen when they commissioned a survey for a bilingual Princess Mononoke and it did; that's what AnimeSols was counting on to happen for Yatterman and Pastel Yumi, and it didn't. To the point where you start generally wondering what made them think it would. We love Discotek for being "the big fan company" in that they can dig up the little classic titles a "little" fan company would want to go after, but they know enough to do it the Big Company Way. It's hard enough getting someone to watch an old rescued classic like Dragon Half, but if you're big enough to make alliances but not big enough to run your own streaming site, you're big enough to get it on Crunchyroll. |
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
|
tamahime
Posts: 3 |
|
|||||||||||
|
Like many others here, my biggest problem (and it ended up burning me big time) was their utter lack of communication. Delays are understandable, and the explanation samuel gives here makes sense. But when it mattered, at that time, NOTHING was posted to twitter or their site to update people, and they ignored emails and tweets asking for status. What are people supposed to expect?
I found out about them late, but in time to back Oniisamahe Set 3 and order the first two sets as well. They said the disks would ship three months after completion of funding. After four months I asked what was up and they said it would ship any time. After six months I asked again. No response. Asked repeatedly through email, web contact, and Twitter. Finally I charged back after nine months and no response to any inquiry. From my perspective I had sent a not-insignificant amount of money to a crowdfunding platform I'd never heard of for a company I'd never heard of who had basically disappeared, from all evidence. Next thing I know I found out the disks had finally shipped to backers, and they were shutting their doors and burning the inventory. It was impossible to have come late and get a copy of set 3. So once again, as it has been since the days of the Technogirls fansubs, I am still without a copy of the final third of one of my favorite series. I tweeted them one more time to see if I could by any chance still get one, but as expected, no response. It seems the business model wasn't really sustainable based on the information here, and I would certainly never fault anyone for trying something ambitious, especially with a noble goal of preserving lesser known and older art. But the execution of the plan that they *did* have should have been a lot more respectful to and engaging with the backers. Samuel, I would still pick one up from you if you happen to have a box of set 3 stashed away somewhere.  Or if anyone else has a copy they are done with you would have my undying affection, which is of course priceless. :3
|
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
|
Fronzel
Posts: 1906 |
|
|||||||||||
|
Let me question some more of Anime Sols' strange actions;
1. Running The File of Young Kindachi Returns. This was framed as a response to criticisms that AS only had old stuff that no one cared about, but I think they were offering new stuff that no one cared about. The original anime series isn't even fully fan-subbed. It's true that it seems to be episodic enough to ignore any past stories but its relatively low profile was not going to help. I attended the AS panel at some Otacon or other and the presenter accurately described the show as Detective Conan but somewhat less childish but then it's worth noting that Funimation couldn't keep Conan going as a commercial venture in this country either, and that was with a lively fabsub community that only got killed off by Cease & Desist letters and Crunchyroll. How's an also-ran in the schlock mystery genre going to do better than that? 2. Selling a high-priced figure for Magical Emi. I think about six people paid a couple hundred dollars for a rather nice-looking figure based on yet-another magical girl series. They put up I think three episodes of the show but surely they weren't trying to gauge interest in that with a very expensive bit of merchandise? 3. Trying to sell Tezuka merchandise. Opened and quietly failed was a funding drive for cloth bags and rubber stamps and stuff. Once again hardly anyone cares about Tezuka in North America and who wants to pay a fairly high price for a bag made out of cheap material? The pictures of the zero-enthusiasm Indians who were apparently to make the stuff was unintentionally funny. I wonder if this this was imposed on AS by the Japanese company as a prestige thing (paid for by other people!). |
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
|
samuelp
Industry Insider
Posts: 2231 Location: San Antonio, USA |
|
|||||||||||
Perhaps not surprisingly all 3 of these initiatives came from Japanese members of the committee and not myself. Good on you for paying such close attention though! Wasting my time on pet projects like these was definitely a problem, but you have to keep all the partners happy... |
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
GVman
 Posts: 729 |
|
|||||||||||
Hurricane Polymar (to my knowledge) ran on the site because folks voted for it on that poll AS ran. According to that poll, there was a sizable fandom. Either a bunch of Italians voted on the poll for whatever reason, or people thought they might like it and wound up not. Either way, it sucks. I really liked a bunch of the shows they were pushing (especially the original Tekkaman; that show was great), but I'm generally the last guy you want to go to for the popular opinion.
Ayup. I believe they stated in an ANNcast episode that the cost of doing all the legal legwork of digging through tons of paperwork in several languages from decades ago to ensure that some TV station in Portugal didn't buy exclusive licensing rights to the show in that nation was too high. samuelp, I believe I've thanked you once before, but I have to thank you again for ensuring that Anime Sols, while it was around, had one of the least-bloated video players I've ever seen online. It was about the only streaming site I could ever use. |
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
|
Lord Geo
Posts: 2545 Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey |
|
|||||||||||
Also, Discotek did admit that they actually considered licensing Hurricane Polymar after doing the 90s OVA, but stated that it was unavailable for licensing at the time. Most of us thought it was due to Sentai's deal with Tatsunoko, but then we found out that it was Anime Sols. Sadly, I'm going to bet that Polymar's lack of success on Sols didn't really encourage Discotek to give it a try of their own. |
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
|
MrBonk
Posts: 192 |
|
|||||||||||
Japanese and their Hubris and lack of humility. Sometimes that place is just mystifying. I mean how hard it is it to admit you were wrong about something, or something is the wrong approach and simply fix it or change direction? I do this all the time at work. It's just part of the flow man. You don't just let the ship sink like an idiot.
As do I. I rarely ever watch streams. Especially with the playback problems, compressions, bad pull down judder. |
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
|
leafy sea dragon
Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
|
|||||||||||
Which is ironic considering how you're supposed to look as humble as possible when in public. I'm just following the pattern of how east Asian companies work from the countries that I DO know a bunch about the culture of, but if it's like them, there is a lot of shame in admitting you've made a mistake when you're in charge of a project. And even when you're not. One misstep is enough to end your corporate career and permanently mark you as "that person who screwed up in that project" even if the project winds up being successful. After all, Gunpei Yokoi was kicked upstairs for creating the Virtual Boy, even though he created the D-pad, the Game Boy, the Metroid and Kid Icarus franchises, and was the person who decided to move Nintendo into video games. You screw up once, you're done. This difference in thinking is the cause of a lot of friction between western companies that want to partner up with Asian companies (most commonly for Chinese manufacturing). Most western countries have the idea that anyone could fail at something, but they should pick themselves back up and try again only with more wisdom. (Ray Croc, for instance, had nothing but failures until his mid-40s when he met the McDonald Bros. and visited their hamburger restaurant.) But oftentimes, when they try to find an Asian industrial ally, the Asian company heads cannot trust the western businessperson because they find out that the westerner has failed in the past. They only want to find a business partner who has never seen failure. |
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
Triltaison
 Posts: 724 |
|
|||||||||||
It wasn't impossible. I was too late to pledge for any of them, but I bought all three sets from Rightstuf. It would have been in the summer or during their holiday sale (since I only made purchases during those two seasons), and the last set came out in April. So there were a few months where it was available. |
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
|
ajr
Posts: 465 |
|
|||||||||||
|
Thank you for further elucidating, Sam. Regardless of the profit-generating capacity of AnimeSols, it was an intellectually illuminating venture that helped further show the shape of that particular region of the anime industry. Thanks.
|
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group