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NGK wrote:

See this?

I think this kind of news for this industry will be commonplace. The only way for this kind of bleeding throughout this industry to stop is to hope & pray for congress to pass SOPA and PIPA swiftly this year!

That'll do more harm then good. Lack of promotion anywhere for niche series. That'll hurt sales EVEN more!

Rukiia wrote:

I swear, the excuses have gotten so old.

Yep, I agree. Apart from basically Aniplex, the price of Anime has never been as affordable as it is now. Even with the economy in dire straits, there's no reason to think that people cannot afford current prices.

Heck, a middle-class teen should easily be able to buy one boxset a month with just their pocket money. I remember when it was triple-figures for one boxset, and I probably had it easy compared to those folks who got into Anime in the VHS days.

enurtsol wrote:

Hmmmmmmmmm.................. One of their supervisors was an officer in the same club with me.............. Good luck................ Confused

Ouch. Knowing a person involved always brings it into perspective.

Lynx Amali wrote:

NGK wrote:

The only way for this kind of bleeding throughout this industry to stop is to hope & pray for congress to pass SOPA and PIPA swiftly this year!

That'll do more harm then good. Lack of promotion anywhere for niche series. That'll hurt sales EVEN more!

If I hadn't seen Madoka Magica fansubbed, I would never have pre-ordered the limited edition Blu-ray/DVD/CD sets. Even if there were a legal stream, chances are it would've been geo-locked.

Mannnnnnn, losing more than half of the company is pretty bad, I hope they can stay afloat. Good luck MB!

dtm42 wrote:

I probably had it easy compared to those folks who got into Anime in the VHS days.

*raises hand* I was one of those folks who grew up with having to scrape up $30 for a single VHS tape. Anime hyper

But ya, folks nowadays have it easy. Drives me up the wall when they bitch about the prices for Anime. I never had the pleasures of streams nor complete series boxsets for less then $20. DVDs were especially expensive when they first came out. They were almost priced as high as Japanese imports are currently priced now. Trigun's complete series boxset, the Pioneer release, was priced at about $200 if I remember correctly. Same with Evangelion *shudders at the memory*

NGK wrote:

See this?

I think this kind of news for this industry will be commonplace. The only way for this kind of bleeding throughout this industry to stop is to hope & pray for congress to pass SOPA and PIPA swiftly this year!

That's like saying "lets use this nuclear bomb to deal with the bed bugs problems in NYC."

fuuma_monou wrote:

NGK wrote:

The only way for this kind of bleeding throughout this industry to stop is to hope & pray for congress to pass SOPA and PIPA swiftly this year!

How exactly does that work? Stopping piracy won't necessarily increase sales of media enough to save the industry. In any case locking down the internet to stop piracy is overkill, like saying the only way to ensure public safety is to declare martial law.

Agreed, plus, SOPA goes past just stopping piracy.

Also shutting down the internet would also mean, no legal streams.

The problem is the people who refuse to buy or watch even the free legal streams for various reasons. Some of them absolutely horrible, others, more understandable.

Some of these people who only pirate you could pay them to get anime, and they still wouldn't do it.

Am I the only one who feels the panic over this is a little reactionary? Yes, it sounds scary to hear that Media Blasters lost 60% of their staff. It's a little less scary when you read the article to find they only had 15 non-freelance employees to begin with, have offered to let the 9 or 10 people who were cut to continue on freelance and have no plans to decrease on releases. It's not unusual nowadays for companies to operate with a bare bones full-time staff supplemented by freelancers. The same thing unfortunately happened to me with my last job. It sucks for the people who were laid off and my heart goes out to them, but I'm reluctant to take it as a sign that Media Blasters will be gone within the month.

NGK wrote:

See this?

I think this kind of news for this industry will be commonplace. The only way for this kind of bleeding throughout this industry to stop is to hope & pray for congress to pass SOPA and PIPA swiftly this year!

SOPA is really designed to help big shots like Disney, Sony and Warner Brothers quash out bootlegs of new Hollywood blockbusters, not help Media Blasters save its meager thousand or two projected sales of Squid Girl and Bakuman.

The market's a bad place for independants right now anyway, and Media Blasters has a multitude of problems - poor distribution, little to no QC on live action titles, and if their co-produced stuff like DEATH KAPPA and SMASH CUT actually turned a profit I'd be shocked.

I'm sure we'll see more Media Blasters titles in 2012, even if it's just a few holdovers - remasters or Blu-rays of catalog titles. I'm not convinced that I'll be able to say that for 2013, though,

Well one would have noticed there web site was not up to par ever.

One can hope that there is still some money to be made on the digital end of things for anime in north america.

RadicaLElly wrote:

Am I the only one who feels the panic over this is a little reactionary?

You mean as in over-reacting? No, you are not the only one. The headline does not help, either ~ we don't know how many of the 9 are still doing work for Media Blasters on a freelance basis, but the article suggests that some number will be.

Quote:

Yes, it sounds scary to hear that Media Blasters lost 60% of their staff. It's a little less scary when you read the article to find they only had 15 non-freelance employees to begin with, have offered to let the 9 or 10 people who were cut to continue on freelance and have no plans to decrease on releases.

Someone reading the headline but not reading the article closely would think that none of them have any work from Media Blasters anymore.

Quote:

It's not unusual nowadays for companies to operate with a bare bones full-time staff supplemented by freelancers.

Its not unusual for two-year commercial colleges to do most of their teaching with part-time, class-at-a-time teachers.

Quote:

The same thing unfortunately happened to me with my last job. It sucks for the people who were laid off and my heart goes out to them, but I'm reluctant to take it as a sign that Media Blasters will be gone within the month.

Actually, for the same degree of success with their releases, it makes it less likely that Media Blasters will be gone within a month, since it cuts their overheads. And it allows them to be pickier with their license pick-ups if they need to be.

I just got my blu-ray double-dip on with Moribito and Twelve Kingdoms, so I'm good for now, but I wish they'd announce something in regards to Zetsubou...

NGK wrote:

See this?

I think this kind of news for this industry will be commonplace. The only way for this kind of bleeding throughout this industry to stop is to hope & pray for congress to pass SOPA and PIPA swiftly this year!

The real problem is, laws and acts are not panaceas for the problem the industry faces. Let's not kid ourselves, no act or law will stop piracy (which in some form has existed for centuries despite laws against it) anymore then current existing laws prevent other crimes from occurring.

A better use of energy is to focus on ways to help the industry make a profit (within a world where piracy does and will exist) in a fashion that does not become overly burdensome or costly to the customers, which would only serve to breed more piracy.

The last time MB laid people off, I fell for the "better buy stuff now before it's too late" stuff (ANNCast was even doing it) and ended up overpaying for some stuff. I'm not pushing any panic buttons this time, though I do hope for a TRSI MB sale because there are a couple of things I'd like to get. Actually, I already own quite a bit of their product, including some of the live-action stuff. In a few cases I've bought stuff from their table at various cons for more than what I would have paid online because I liked the idea of supporting a company that's from this area (NY Metro Area). Also, how many companies are there that you can have a nice chat with the CEO at the sale table (as a friend of mine did at NYAF/NYCC in 2010).

Although I had a few issues with how they handled Destroy All Monsters I hope they can get Godzilla vs. Megalon released soon, maybe that will sell for them. In any case I hope they stick around.

Sad to see this happen.
Best of luck to those laid off in this latest round.

Speaking as a former employee, For those of you thinking that MB is going under, remember that 5 or 6 employees is how the company started. It's a plucky company and they've got some great licenses.

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