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Answerman - What Happened With Anime Sols?

I remember these based folks, unfortunately their crowd funding did not include a "just wanted to help, no rewards for me thanks" option Kickstarter campaigns have. I am not a merchandise person so unfortunately I had no incentive to donate money. It is a real shame since nobody else would touch Tobikage, Tekkaman, or classic Hurricane Polymar.

That Anime Sols' streams were all geo-locked was fully expected, as this seems to happen consistently with vintage anime. However as others have mentioned, the fact that the site would also not even accept international payments was perhaps a little more unexpected, and didn't really appear conducive to raising as many funds as possible for English-language releases of such particularly niche series.

MrBonk wrote:

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.

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.

I should point out that my family came from one of these Asian countries with a strong fear of failure in business, and I will say outright that I am quite disgusted with that line of thinking. I am also well aware that there isn't a hard-line, no-exceptions pattern of Asian businesspeople trying to not look like failures in any regard and American businesspeople having no fear of failure whatsoever (and I can cite many examples in the entertainment and political sectors in the United States of a single mistake ruining a person).

But I do not see any benefit whatsoever in a business culture where failing once means your life is over, given the high-risk nature of most businesses, and I have observed business culture in parts of the world for long enough to have seen a greater tendency for Asian businesses than western businesses to avoid people who have had notable failures. To have become a success without ever failing before is actually a bad thing, since such a person is limited in worldview, and when that person inevitably fails, they'll have no idea what to do and they'll fall way harder than someone who failed when they were still smaller. (Look at the official statement from Mossack Fonseca after the Panama Papers leak: As a law firm that's never had a setback of any kind, their reaction is of directionless hostility, confusion, and blame-shifting. And what a beautiful meltdown it is.) THAT is the point: Not that Americans do things better or Asians do things worse, but that the general idea to reject anyone who's failed even once is short-sighted at best and self-destructive at worst.

Ooh maybe I'll send that into Answerman: whatever happened to the Tasunoko/Sentai deal and why did we only get Casshern out of it new (and the previously released Gatchaman)?

Everyone will eventually make a mistake though, if not sooner then later. The way I see it, anyone who claims to have never errored is either a rookie or a liar, and having a liar on your business team is more dangerous than having someone who has made a major mistake.

In the case of the business partners of Anime Sols, I don't see anything wrong with a company having to switch gears when it becomes evident that the environment has changed mid-project. I would not consider that as either a mistake or an admission of failure, just an incorrect prediction. Nevertheless, when you're working on a major project, things won't go exactly according to plan, and thus you have to adapt and change parts of your plan. A good plan is a flexible one, and something that can't account for even something like a new venue for raising funds (which is the example samuelp used--his business partner refused to use any new crowdfunding sources because of a fear of looking bad) is not going to end well. (Frankly, I don't understand how these people got to where they are if they have never once had to revise their plans for unexpected events.)

In this uncertain economy, it's best to leave the adventurous spirit to the ones who can afford losing money and face. Anime Sols and its ilk are not ready for this.