Forum - View topicHey, Answerman! - Made To Hit In America
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inuhime
 Posts: 33 Location: Windy City |
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I've spent quite a bit on my Inuyasha collection. Back when the show first started airing in Japan, I bought the first gashapon set on ebay for nearly $100. And my best 2 cels from the show were $150 each. I even traveled across the country just to get one of them signed by Kappei Yamaguchi when he was a guest at Sakura Con. It was worth every penny just to meet Inuyasha's seiyuu. Although there's not much product coming out now, I'll still hunt for anything from my favorite manga/anime. And I'm currently planning to do a scrapbook with everything I've cut out from Shonen Sunday that was Inuyasha related.
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Sailor S
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Huh, I guess I forgot about last week's question. My most expensive purchase of a single item was an Akari (Aria) Azone figure. Cost $800, plus whatever it cost to ship her back home to the US. I was visiting Japan at the time, and so I sent back a couple massive boxes full of figures that I bought when I was in Tokyo, so I have no idea what the shipping would have worked out to. Thankfully the dollar was much stronger against the yen, getting over 100 yen per dollar, because that same figure would have cost me over $1000 today. Well worth it though, she's a real beauty.
And I sure hope Brian is wrong about his predictions for the future. Not so I can laugh at him, although that would be a bonus, but because I refuse to embrace the idea of this digital world too many people are harping about. I like physical media. I like limited editions, collector's editions, worthless trinkets, ect, and I don't want to see them disappear ever in my lifetime. |
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N.R.
Posts: 232 |
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I live in Asia (but not in Japan). among all the American series mentioned in the article only South Park and Family Guy air here. South Park is great fun and everybody love it. Family Guy...I don't get it and so does my friends. I think it's so U.S. focused you cannot understand it unless you live in the U.S. as opposed to Southpark which touch on more global trends.
So do Japanese see those American shows? Well I lived in a university dormitory in Tokyo for a year and none of my Japanese friends ever watched Southpark. They did know what Southpark is (they had no idea what family guy is). I invited them one day to watch the Soutpark episode Chimpokemon with me (specificaly because they could relate to it) and we had loads of fun with that episode. |
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supercreep
 Posts: 526 |
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That's my thinking. There is no way that I would drop $225 at once, but spread out like this it is so much easier to handle. |
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Deadwing
 Posts: 174 Location: North Augusta, SC |
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I've never really splurged for some super-expensive limited edition. I did buy the collector's box for a few series, which usually contained some kind of neat extra, but those usually only cost like $10-20 more than the regular edition. Probably the most expensive single I bought was the Tenchi Muyo "Ultimate Edition" OVA DVD box set, which cost $120 (and that was in early 2001; that's over $150 in 2011 dollars).
Don't worry. He is. Physical media is going nowhere anytime soon. Even ignoring the weaknesses of digital distribution (which, let's face it, only has one real advantage over physical media: convenience), the sales figures don't exactly spell gloom & doom for physical media. Home video (DVD & Blu-ray) sales have barely declined, and the small slump is likely the result of the economy. Video games are still dominated by physical retail releases, which collectively sell hundreds of millions of copies a year. Sales of paper-and-ink books are still strong and relatively steady even with the rise of e-readers. Even the CD is holding its own against mp3s in the now decade-long era of the iPod; physical releases of music still outsell digital, at least in terms of total dollar revenue, even though total music sales continue to sag (popular music is targeted towards kids, after all, and younger people are more likely to own mp3 players than older demographics, and they often only buy the singles they're interested in rather than whole albums; music is, for now, back to being a single-driven market as it was before the Beatles). Interestingly, vinyl records, while still a very small portion of the market, are experiencing a resurgence, with sales spiking over the last several years. Long point short, physical media will continue to be around for the foreseeable future, and the market will continue to offer both physical and digital content. Anyone who proclaims that physical media is on the way out is living in a tech-geek fantasy world. The earliest I see a digital-only future being plausible is when Generation Y is all old and grey, or in other words not until well into the latter half of this century. |
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PurpleWarrior13
 Posts: 2025 |
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There are some American animated series that become popular in Japan. According to an MSNBC article, Spongebob is popular in Japan. Since many American shows are simulcast over there in Japanese and English, many parents use Spongebob as a way to help teach their kids English.
Powerpuff Girls was also popular in Japan (including the original series, I guess the anime remake also did decently). I do know that the Japanese cast totally switched towards the end of Season 4 when the series was moved from TV Tokyo to the Japanese Cartoon Network (but the original cast dubbed the movie and the Christmas special according to the Japanese Wikipedia). The original Scooby-Doo series was also successfully localized in Japanese, including a few of the spinoffs (All 3 Scrappy-related series minus 13 Ghosts), and 3 movies (Zombie Island, Alien Invaders, Cyber Chase), and the Japanese VA also voiced the gang in their cameos in the Japanese dubs of Johnny Bravo and Batman: The Brave and the Bold. Though to be fair, Scooby-Doo didn't come to Japan until about 10 years ago, though the original series did have a brief run over there in the 70s. The two theatrical live action films were also dubbed and released to theaters in Japan (with different VA who usually dub for the particular live action actors). The reason why it's so rare for American cartoons to get onto networks like TV Tokyo is because Japanese broadcast standards restrict the showing of non-Japanese programming (similar to Canada's broadcast standards). However, the first 105 episodes of the original TMNT were shown on TV Tokyo (which is considered very unusual). Almost all current Cartoon Network shows get localized in Japanese, and the Japanese Cartoon Network is pretty much a simulcast of the American network when it comes to programming, although it also shows The Simpsons sometimes. I'm not sure how popular the Japanese Cartoon Network is though... (more info on the Japanese CN here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartoon_Network_Japan) and here: http://www.cartoon.co.jp/) Another thing, apparently the Charlie Brown specials are very popular in Japan (the new US DVDs even have the new Japanese audio). There are many Japanese dubs of them though, but "Snooby" is an iconic character in Japan (the Japanese Wikipedia even features a picture of a Japanese statue of him on his page). The specials themselves have multiple Japanese dubs though (some feature Masako Nozawa as Charlie Brown, and a couple even had Megumi Hayashibara as Marcy, although the new Japanese dubs use real kids). The Simpsons Movie's Japanese dub cast celebrities as the characters (such as "Becky" as Lisa Simpson), but apparently the show is popular enough for the fans to get angry and successfully campaign for the movie to get redubbed with the TV series actors for the DVD release. Though pretty much every major American animated film does make it over to Japan, such as Pixar and Dreamworks films. As for creators having involvement in English dubs, I know the director of Utena flew to New York to supervise the English dub production, and hand picked the subtitle translator. He also apparently nick-named his car "Rachael" (after Utena's English voice actress Rachael Lillis). According to the audio commentary for the second One Piece set, Eiichiro Oda approves of FUNimation's English dub for that series. There's also that rumor that the director of "You're Under Arrest" was so satisfied by the English dub of the original series, he made the Japanese voice actors watch it, and he told them "THIS is how you should sound!" I know Hayao Miyazaki had a VERY negative response to "Warriors of the Wind" (a heavily butchered English dub of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind), and reportedly wanted fans to "erase it from their minds". However, he later recommended that fans of his films watch them in their native languages (this is of course after Nausicaa was redubbed). |
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mike.motaku
 Posts: 160 Location: Indiana |
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I hope physical media doesn't go away anytime soon. The "downloads are the wave of the future" crowd seem to overlook the simple fact that not everyone has the same access to downloads they do or, quite frankly, want to. I work on a computer all day. The last thing I want in my leisure time is to spend even more time on a computer. I don't even have internet access at home for my PS3.
Heck, there are even some people I know who refuse to let go of their VHS collection. |
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TitanXL
 Posts: 4036 |
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I'd say it's more high-speed internet isn't really a common thing yet. Downloading a 25GB+ BD isn't really a viable option for most people when they can just go buy or rent a disk. Let alone if you want to get a couple of movies at once. Network infrastructure needs updating first... especially in other countries. |
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PurpleWarrior13
Posts: 2025 |
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I never thought about that. I know several people who still have dialup (though apparently broadband has officially become the most popular way to get internet in the US last I checked). About 80% of the US has any kind of connection. I guess I agree that physical media will be around, at least for a while. I believe that streaming and download-to-own (via iTunes, PS3 store, etc) will continue to be to be around "in addition to" formats like DVD and Blu-Ray. Instead of physical formats being the singular way to watch movies at home (non-broadcast), it's just going to be one of the options. DVD/BRD rental outlets such as RedBox and Netflix are REALLY popular right now (seriously, every time I pass a RedBox, there's ALWAYS someone using it)! |
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Alan45
 Village Elder Posts: 9841 Location: Virginia |
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Not all broadband is created equal.
 I technically have a broadband connection (DSL) but I get significent buffering on a Crunchyroll SD stream. I suspect that in order to watch an HD stream I would have to allow an hour or two for a single episode.
In addition my computer screen is fairly large at 23 inches, but my TV is 46 inches. In order to get my computer output to the TV would involve several hundred dollers of hardware and a steep learning process. I'll stick with DVD/Bluray media for the bulk of my anime watching for the forseeable future. |
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hissatsu01
 Posts: 963 Location: NYC |
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Just about every video card made today, even the ones that are $30 - $40, have multiple video outputs. The "steep learning process" consists of telling your operating system what you want to show up on the second monitor. Just about every LCD and Plasma TV sold in the past few years has a VGA input. The arcane piece of equipment known as a "cable" is necessary to connect the computer to the TV, and can cost upwards of $10 depending on its length. These don't seem like insurmountable challenges. |
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Polycell
 Posts: 4623 |
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To download a single-layer BD image in thirty minutes takes a ~50 Mbps constant downstream rate. Digital distribution becoming the primary method won't happen until corporate titans start offering super high-speed internet widely and for prices that don't require selling your soul and a kidney. Given that it seems nearly every city in America won't tolerate phone or cable competition, that seems unlikely.
Maybe the march of wireless tech will at least render video cables obsolete, though. |
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TitanXL
Posts: 4036 |
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Yes, that's one of the biggest misconceptions. "Digital Distribution is the way of the future"? Yes, it is. Near future? Heck no. We're looking at about 20 years down the line. |
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loka
 Posts: 373 Location: Pittsburgh, PA |
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Heart-braking cancellation: Yubisaki Milk Tea*
Heart-braking hiatus: Fujoshi Rumi* -- might be cancelled, I dont know. Heart-braking abandonment by creator: Kyouhaku Dogs -- to continue work on that pile known as Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu *the English releases Coping procedure: read scanlations and point out the lack of release on industry and company polls / questionnaires / surveys. |
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Asterisk-CGY
 Posts: 398 |
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Ah yea that was a bad loss for me. I bought two of those volumes. Granted TP's translation was obviously bad, so sparse. Yay for the internet though. And on that note, I would say any BIG name in publishing will try for that "personal application" thing, but SMALL and INDIE publications will favor the open source/unlocked file format. And I feel these smaller publications will be able to make a living for themselves, around the major publishers. And unless this IS the one time that this industry moves away from the direction of what technology goes, they will have to favor more general use, or else the internet will just have to supply that demand until they do. So again, thank you internet. |
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