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The Business of Anime
buckminster writes "Planet Tokyo's Talking Anime Business Blues is a great roundup and analysis of recent articles detailing the behind the scenes aspects of the anime business. By all accounts 99% of Japanese anime never makes it to America. Some of the arguments why might surprise you. There are still many in the industry who believe that fan subs are killing the anime market in the US."
Some of the arguments why might surprise you
I always thought it was the soccer moms against 8 tentacles in a vagina...
Is the problem with Anime in America:
A) Japan doesn't export enough Anime
B) Fansubs are killing the business
C) Not that many people in the US are actually interested in watching movies where the women are portrayed as children with blue hair, guys are always "cool" (in a Japanese-thinking sort of way), everyone's eyes go huge and bug out, saliva is everywhere, all the characters overreact, all monsters have tentacles, and the story lines are shrouded in inexplicable nonsense/lack of backstory?
Raise your hand if you've seen Street Fighter Alpha: The Movie? C it is then.
It has always amazed me that the Japanese can be amazing animators, yet consistently hold to the same tired cliches in all of their animated series. I understand that the Japanese think that underage girls are the height of sexual prowess, but it just doesn't jive with American ideas of how life actually is. I realize that an Anime fanbase exists here is the US (and in many other countries), but this fanbase is not a tremendously large majority. It's enough to keep Cartoon Network's night time programs in business and that's about it. The majority of people tune it out despite the occasional gem like the Ghost in the Shell series. (Which I think is significantly better than the movie, BTW.)
That being said, the article doesn't quite clarify the difficulties in actually creating an English sub for most anime movies. Dubbing is definitely difficult and expensive, but subbing is a relatively simple task. If most DVD movies came with english subbing (as American movies tend to come with Spanish subbing), then many retail companies here in the US would take care of the issues of importing from Japan. No special marketting or foreign shipments required. (This is similar to the Fanicom imports from way back when. That stuff was big business.)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
... but aren't the fansubs happening mostly because the anime isn't commercially available in the US? If so, then make it available, and the fansubs go away... Unless I am missing something?
loganavatar.com
im sorry but some shows would have even gotten popular if it wasnt for fansubs. Like for example Love hina, Azumango diaho, and Naruto owe all of there popularity in the USA due to Fan subbers who brought it to the community in america first!
"to be like god we make our own dolls to play with, but what does that make us, but dolls for god to play with?" Ikari,
If it weren't for fansubs, much of the commercial direct-to-video business wouldn't exist. Broadcast is too limited, even the cable & satellite channels that get it seem to want to dumb down anime.
That said, many people do seem to use fansubs as a crutch such that it does not support the creation of what they watch.
There are still many in the industry who believe that fan subs are killing the anime market in the US.
I think it has more to do with the fact that it looks very cheap and chintzy in comparison to traditional animation.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
there's just not enough tentacle pr0n to keep american fans happy.
nah, just kidding. seriously, one would think this is a classic example of supply vs. demand. anime is so obscure to the general public and its such a niche market, is it worth it to the japanese companies to export? what with the licensing issues and the like in the u.s., if they don't have a solid distribution company state-side, as the article mentions, the artists may not want to be bothered by it since they don't want to be bogged down by the business side of things...
Those big eyes just creep me out. Big eyes are biologically wired into our brains to mean "BABY". Seeing characters that look like 5 year olds - but hearing them speak with adult or teenage voices is just creepy. ...and all the stuff about tired cliches, underage girls...yeah - that too.
I think if they would have given the anime to a series like MST3K for anime, they would have had a much grander audience..... of course it would probably have ended up on something like the Spice Channel for G33KS.
Cliff Claven
K.E.G. Party Chairman
Founding Leader of: Koncerned for Egalitarin Governance
First, a little background. I was born in '82. So I grew up with anime flavored cartoons like Thundercats and Transformers. I remember my friends later on telling me how great ampire Hunter D and Akira and Ninja Scroll were. I think most of the adults from my generation were not ready to accept a feature-leangth cartoon that wasn't geared towards children. I'll call them the Disney generation. My parents grew up with Winnie-the-Pooh and the Jungle Book and Sleeping Beauty. I had Voltron.
....'Course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.
My friends and I were more of the opinion that if it ROCKED, it didn't really matter what it was. Then CGI got really big when TRON came out, Nintendo took over our lives, and everything had that touch of anime. It just became a part of our culture. The Playstaion consoles have solidified this with all those that were born after me. Ask any 10 year old about Pokemon or Yu-Ji-Oh or MegaMan and he'll talk to you for DAYS.
So it doesn't come as much of a surprise to me that Anime is coming over here to stay. Look at Princess Mononoke....it was proven to Hollywood that it can work with the right translation and voice cast. I expect to see much more in the future....especially after Final Fantasy: Advent Children hits in September.
"I drank WHAT?!"--Socrates
I can understand why you would need a fan on a submarine, they do get a bit hot and sutffy. But what has that got to do with Anime?
Pay $20-60 per on DVD (general Australian rates) to see an anime where the episodes are only worth watching once? And do that 13 (or 26) times? Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhh.....
Well, I know that if I see an anime and like it, if it is licensed, I will buy it on DVD if it's brought to the US.
I dunno where they're getting their facts, but most people I know are like this.
-SaNo
Considering the state of animation that North American audiences have been exposed to is it any wonder? Yes Anime is intricate, but how does it relate to what we want to watch. For a while animation was Disney, WB aimed at young audiences. It wasn't until things like The Simpsons which had a older target that animation != Saturday morning cartoon.
Maybe people aren't buying it because anime isn't worth the money.
Sure I enjoyed it when I was younger, and to be fair some of it is pretty good.
I won't even argue that people don't buy it, I know many people who do.
But I don't think the market of people willing to pay for it is large enough.
There will likely continue to be a number of smaller importers and grey market imports, for a while.
Of course when Video On Demand takes off a bit more, we'll have international VOD and then we'll have the same stuff available everywhere.
dvd
More like these would do well I think.
It seems all Anime has some crazy-voodoo-magically-mystical-psychic-makes-no-s ense-brain-f*ck to explain the whole plot to every story which can get kinda annoying.
Think Matrix 2 and 3.
You're right. They need to come out with some new anime, change things up a bit. Maybe they could use pink hair or they could do something that involves both girls AND tentacles. That would certainly revive the industry...
There are a number of shows I would have never thought to buy if I hadn't seen the fansubs of them, Scrapped Princess, Gunslinger Girls, RahXephon and Love Hina to name a few. Watching so many new shows as they air in Japan also helps me to give recommendations to friends looking to pick up new anime, I know what is good, what is bad, and what shows are usually about.
Fansubbing isn't killing anime any more than airing it on TV does. Because if you air it on TV, people don't buy the DVDs, they just record it. On the other hand, almost everyone who watches fansubs will buy DVDs of shows they like.
So what we've really got here is the same complaint as the movie industry. They can't get people to buy crap sight unseen anymore, and it's killing their business model.
I used to complain that most anime never got imported.. Now that I've seen more fansubs, I'm happier that so much doesn't get imported.
Seriously, following Sturgeon's Law, a lot of it is crap. Some of it would never make ANY sense, even AFTER they try to translate it. Some of it would offend our delicate American sensibilities. And then, some of it, even after it gets imported, gets its episodes shown out of order on a television network, really limiting the amount of storytelling the show can do.
The end result is, we're better off only seeing the cream of the crop.. Trust me.
99% of Japanese anime sucks.
A lot of what does manage to come over is dumbed down for the 8-13 crowd.
Simplified dialogue is traded for formerly complex situations. "Constipated west-coast surfer dude" is the voice-acting style preferred by many dubbing companies.
Maybe if they stop trying to pander to a young audience and put proper effort behind importing these into the United States. I mean, Princess Mononoke was very well done and its content was intact.
Anime doesn't have to be exclusively for kids!
That all geeks must love anime. I'm glad 99% of the stuff doesn't make it here - why? Probably because it's crap. The story / dub quality on the anime on adult swim really sounds like it was done by a bunch of middle school students - the "plot" lacks form and any amount of depth for an adult to take seriously.
I'm 25 and in the prime of my geek life - Where is the appeal in Anime? I can't even take the art form seriously after it's been bastadized and role played to death by 'hardcore' geeks. Sorry, I just dont see the connection between anime & my technology based lifestyle. If anything I can relate to american cartoons (family guy, futurama, etc.) than anything else.
I can't connect with some guy named Onimaro that discovers he can shoot laser beams out of his nipples, because the ghost of his great aunt told him he could while he defeated the skateboarding ghost pirates from another planet. That's about how far out and abstract some of this stuff is.
Today is the last day that my anime store, Otakurama, will be open. I've felt pressure from many directions over the years, but the two biggest factors working against my business are 1: competition from mass market retailers like Best Buy and Borders, and 2: piracy.
Number 2 is a big one--I would guess that at least half of my customers download anime from bittorrent. I've had hundreds of people tell me, "oh that series is great!" before it's even come out. Of course, once they download it they don't want to buy it.
The only anime that sells in my shop are the most popular titles. Anything cool but unusual just sits and rots on my shelf.
A smaller (but important) factor is that anime publishers change the prices of their products so quickly that discs 'expire' while sitting on my shelf waiting for a buyer. Six months after the last disc of a series comes out they release the entire box set for 50%-66% off. That causes orphans to clutter up my inventory.
*sigh*
Bye-bye, Otakurama
"There's companies that are just so cool that you just can't even deal with it," - Bill Gates, about Google
Anime is horrible and annoying and wish it would disappear along with all of it's fans.
The problem with your statment is that MOST anime doesn't have tentacle monsters raping 4 year olds. People have this stereotype that a lot of anime is gross and unwatchable when it really isnt. Now, there is a lot of crap anime out there, but there are also a LOT of really good anime. Most of which at least rival anything that comes out of the US in terms of quality, story, and un-lame-ness :/
-SaNo
think about just how many anime DVDs have you purchased recently compared to the number of shows you've downloaded for free.
This is the same flawed logic that the RIAA, MPAA and BSA use. The correct question is:
How many anime DVDs have you bought only _after_ seeing a large part of it for free?
For me the answer is: several dozen discs. I've bought a couple other anime discs based on other criteria, but with only one exception the ones I bought before watching turned out horrible or mediocre.
Many times I saw them for "free" on television or by borrowing from friends. But if the owners of minor anime titles think they're going to somehow get those titles in front of me via TV, they can dream on. Far and away their best bet of getting new titles in front of me where I might make a buy decision is to make sure the first couple episodes are readily available on the Internet in an unencumbered format I'm willing to use.
Works for books too. I've made more than a few purchases after reading the first couple chapters online.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Too much anime is certainly cliched to HELL and back.
Blue hair. Check.
School girls with gigantic breasts. Check.
Everyone looks like they are 14 or younger. Check.
Big robots. Check.
Oversized, western styled eyes. Check.
Small overly cute inexplainable cat-like animals with blue fur. Check.
I mean, who is this stuff really supposed to appeal to? As an adult, I find that most anime is waaay to cheesy or childish for my likings. Clearly I'm not going to like Sailor Moon or the millions of copycats. The few good examples of what anime should be are few and far between. The first ninja scroll comes to mind as well as Ghost in the Shell. Cowboy Bebop was fantastic in so many ways. I did like Gundam and yes, even Gundam Wing was SPECTACULAR IMHO. The constant struggles over the validity of war were great in Wing. I also really liked Akira, though I thought the ending was entirely too bizarre and over the top.
Don't get me wrong. I love the Japanese vision of the future. In a lot of ways, I think they are indeed the most foward thinking people on the planet, but even their concept of what the future will look like is now so cliched, it has become thouroughly predictable. I mean it was great 10 years ago when I first started watching anime, but now I look at the series that some of the anime channels are showing on cable and every single last one of them is terrible.
zosxavius photography
I would say the (mostle Chinese AFAIK) pirate DVD market is a bigger threat to the anime market in the US than fansubs.
Most fansubbers are hobbyists who can only subtitle and distribute a few shows at a time.
By contrast, the pirates are able to move at industrial pace, and get shows subbed, burned, packaged, and ready to ship almost as soon as they are shown in Japan. They rip stuff straight off the tv broadcasts. There are tons of shows that never get fansubbed that are readily available on bootlegged DVDs.
Plus pirated DVD's are dirt cheap and very easily available thru websites.
What's someone to do then? There were tons of great stuff released back in the late 70's and 80's that are either licensed by some US companies that simply don't care or will never see the light of day.
Reji Matsumoto released some really good SF stories around that time (Harlock, GE999, Queen Millenia) that have great stories. Because they now look "dated" no one will touch them. Compare that to Yamato (AKA Star Blazers), another immensely popular series whose US license holder releases crap quality VHS to DVD transfers and won't put a cent into improving the product.
Buying Japanese DVD releases or getting fansubs of the older stuff is the only way. Even fansubbers tend to go after the latest stuff and ignore the older material.
Some good stuff still makes it out, but most does not. Big boobs and big guns usually make it while great shows like PlanetES don't. At least PlanetES can be enjoyed as a fansub on the torrents.
What is alarming is that fansubs are getting more attention lately because they moved from low-volume tape trading to torrents. That's the issue. It moved from being a way to get free market research as to what was liked by US viewers to a way to kill a license when the entire series is available for free as "DVD Rips" or straight off of Japanese HDTV and usually without any "objectionable" material cut out or altered.
It's hard to compete with free.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
from the article:
Make no mistakes about it, fansubs are killing the anime market for the US. If you don't believe me, think about just how many anime DVDs have you purchased recently compared to the number of shows you've downloaded for free.
personally, i've downloaded about 30 different series in the last 6 months. i've purchased 3. that's 10%.
now, while 10% would normally sound bad, let's first look to see how many of those were licensed for release in the US -- oh, 10%. yup, that's right, most of what i downloaded has not been, and probably never will be, released in the US. if it is, chances are i'll buy it.
"how many anime DVD's have you bought after seeing fansubbed versions?"
None, since the common legal perception among the translators is that it is illegal to redistribute the fan-subbed version if the DVD [or any other form of retail] is available in the language. Unlike the standard pirate, most translators adhere to the law. Finding english fansubs of popular work [the article's 1% released in the US] is near impossible.
If you suddenly kill the fansubs and put everything on DVD, who knows what they're buying anymore. They just need a widely available Japanese tv channel already.
American voice actors are often terrible.
Well seeing as to the fact that I've never heard of any of them. I'd say that fansubs isnt a sure thing either.
Having been to Japan and having seen a good example of the 99% that doesn't make it to the US, I would rather think that it is not the US but the Japanese who are killing the US market for Anime. Honestly, the folks who make some of those flicks must need serious psychological help on a routine basis...*twitches*
As a semi-professional anime promoter, I can tell you that the market for anime in North America is as large as if not larger than the one in Japan. Anime is a HUGE moneymaker, and the article is fairly off-base.
Next month, in Baltimore MD, 22 000 anime fans will descend upon Otakon, paying as much as $50 a head, to celebrate anime. There are similar conventions on a regular basis all around the country and in Canada. Media Play makes a large portion of its profits from the sale of anime DVDs and manga. Waldenbooks (a mall bookseller) would likely no longer be in business were it not for its reliance on manga (Japanese comic) sales. (The market is so lucrative, they even sell untranslated Japanese comics).
As for the article, far more than 1% of anime make it to the US. Shows are being licensed at staggering rates by many many companies. Some shows are marketed to/released in the United States BEFORE they're debuted in Japan!
Fansubs are dying, but that has more to do with the fact that shows get licensed for US distribution almost immediately now, leaving little time for the semi-legal phase of the practice. (The industry turns a blind eye to fansubs released for non-licensed shows).
Even despite the shady dealings of many fansubbers, anime is wildly profitable, and its market is growing rapidly.
GeekNights!
Late Night Radio for Geeks!
All the responses in the thread so far seem to be along the lines of "Fansubs == GOOD" and this is the case to a point... why wait two years to see shitty dub of a series (with commercials) when you can see it now, fansubbed, without?
:P
If anything, fansubs underscore just how fucking awful most dubs are... though a bad fansub can be just as bad, if not worse. (my experience with GITS : SAC hit both extremes - great voice acting, but a few of the episodes I watched had to have been subbed by a fourth grader who failed english)
If anything is "killing anime" in the US, it's one or more of three things:
A. The price of DVDs. Why the fucking hell would I pay 25-30$ for four 22-27 minute episodes, 3-5 minutes of which are credits and intro sequence? This is even more ridiculous with shows like Naruto, which often have many minutes of flashback and shitloads of standing-around-staring-at-each-other.
B. Dragonball. It's a great example of everything that sucks about americanized Anime - overlong credits, overlong intro, overlong "NEXT EPISODE!" overlong "IN THE LAST EPISODE!" and shitloads of nothing happening in between. If you're lucky.
C. The complete gutting / hackjob done on several titles in the process of translating them to "fit" the US market. Who the fuck is going to watch a "cleaned up" series after you've already seen the original, undiluted, unedited version? Editing the series to fit a focus group audience is asinine.
Personally, I dropped my fanboy boner for japanese media a few years ago. I still buy Battle Angel trades, I'll watch the occasional series if it's actually decent (Bebop, Witch Hunter), and I've been waiting patiently for Appleseed V since the 90s.
Haven't seen much of interest actually make it into the US in awhile.
But then, it's been awhile since American comics have had anything interesting to say, either - with Cerebus and Transmetropolitan done, the comic shop is nothing but X-men and merch for whatever anime Fox happens to be running this season. It sucks ass, and I'll be damned if I'm going to spend money on crap.
But does it all look the same, with the gigantic Archie Comics eyes and the jerky never-fluid "5 frames per 2 seconds" animation? "Speed Racer", those card cartoons, and even "Howl's Moving Castle" all pretty much look the same. Is there some sort of diversity of style in anime? Compare this to US cartoons, where you have a very wide variety of drawing styles.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
just as MP3 distribution had become an indicator of musician (for lack of a better term) popularity.
If you have 1400 people salivating in a chat room for episode 4 of a unlicensed (in the US) series, that is data companies are going to look at when thinking about picking it up. They might even consider the 10 fat guys that show up at a convention dressed as the lead female character of the series.
I'm so glad I lost weight and now have a life.
If the companies want to use that data to stick buyers (usually teenagers and college kids) with $35 DVDs containing 3 episodes, chances are a backfire will occur and they will then download a ripped DVD, not a fansub.
Let's postulate a script written by the Anime people over across the Pacific that is specifically made to cater to an American audience? Something like...oh I don't know..."24" done in a realistic, gritty style....but anime. Something thought provoking, not utterly fantastic. Hell, I bet you could do a passable "X-Files" anime series, if you kept it believable. There's a market, it just takes someone willing to do it.
"I drank WHAT?!"--Socrates
MegaTokyo Rocks!
I download fansubs because the actual episodes are ridiculously expensive.
Pokemon is a bitch to find AND they charge an assload for it. I can't afford buying a whole season of it, yet a whole Simpsons season of 24 episodes is $40.
They're charging way too much. If they actually bring down the price to not take advantage of rich nerds, then they might see sales go up.
I don't want to see anymore of this 3 episodes for $10 crap.
Why so much fuss about Japanese cartoons? It's not like we get any of their movies or television either, so I fail to see why a dearth of their cartoons in the US market is surprising.
(Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
"I think it has more to do with the fact that it looks very cheap and chintzy in comparison to traditional animation."
Well see what happens when a company outsources it's marketing to a bunch of fans.
there are three things that have lead to Anime being as popular as it is today:
1) it being concieved
2) DVD
3) the internet.
The first is an obvious one.
The second finally brought the price into the reasonable range for most people. I recall buying Anime at $40 a VHS tape, and not being able to find some shows subtitled 9my preffered method of viewing). Along came DVD making it cheaper to mass produce in small quantities by reducing both the cost to make themedia, and much easier to ship.
The third one has brought many more people into the Anime fan category than anything else I can think of. Word of mouth can get you so far, but you do need to show someone the stuff before some people will get hooked.
I freely admit I DL anime that is not available here, and most places willingly remove the material if it gets a publisher here, but this doesn't stop too many people from buying the DVDs. The article states that they've downloaded more fan subs than they've bought: I can believe that, but I wonder how many anime titles they have bought without having seen them first. I am willing to guess that the number is fairly small. I am also willing to bet that most big anime fans do indeed buy the DVDs, as do I, and have them sitting on their racks despite the fact that they have the entire series sitting on their harddrive (I have bought the first three of the Full Metal Alchemist discs despite the fact that I have the entire series sitting on both DVDs and my HDD in fansub form).
Most of the Anime fanatics I know are used to spendinig obscene amounts of cash on anime, and are very willing to support their hobby. the notion that fansubs and the internet cause sales to plummet is like thinking that radio causes people to not buy CDs. I mean seriously how many people would go to the store and think "hey some band called 'Pissant five' just put out an album, I think I'll buy it." No most people hear a song on a radio and like it then they want to go buy the CD, they don't go out and buy a CD on the first day just becasue it came out! I mean you could end up with something God aweful, like Yanni or Ashlee Simpson!
Disney's has the rights to all of Hayao Miyazaki film's current in theater's if you can find one is "Howls Moving Castle".
The movie started in only 36 theater's but in the first week against along list of movies was ranked 13 and grossed as much as some main stream movies showing in 1000's of theaters.
The second week was boosted to a whooping 202 theater screens, as compared to say Madagascar which was in about 3,000 theater and pull in almost the same amount of cash as Howl's moving castle!
It has to be that the these media company's don't want to see oversea's works get more attention then their own?
Example Disney's Madagascar vs. Howls moving Castle. If disney had put Howls moving Castle in as many theaters as there other feature, they would have pulled in more then Madagascar!.
If get a chance and can find a theater near you, Howls moving castle is a good movie for the family. And you don't have to be an anime fan to enjoy's it.
Wise men speak because they have something to say, Fools because they have to say something!!!!
Most anime sucks. Just like most movies suck, and most games suck. So that takes care of 80% lets say.
What about the rest? Well, there's no marketing... Pricess Mononoke, Akira, GITS2... all of them had marketing behind them (as in tv commercials that aired in the states), anow now all three are very popular. If the Japaneese really want to sell the shit over here, it's time to advertise.
Go here for teh [sic] funny.
The problem with the argument presented is that fansubs are also the only real marketing that anime has, with the exception of the limited number that make it to Cartoon Network. Furthermore, in my group of friends any anime series that we have watched in its entirety fansubbed and is later released at least one person purchases the series.(and often more than one)
Anime is largely different than any other show or movie available on DVD. Movies and American TV shows can be seen somewhere besides the the DVD, (movie studio, TV, On Demand...) to give a person the ability to make the educated decision about what to purchase. Without fansubs people are being asked to purchase Anime sight unseen which is a prospect not that many people are fans of.
Some studios have taken to affering cheap DVD's with the first episode or two for $5 or $10 which helps solve the issue. If I were the American distributer I would extend this by offering a DVD samplers with the first episode of 5 different series at that price. This would allow people to get a feel for a show prior to making an investment in it.
Most anime fails to connect with Americans because the two cultures have dramatically different requirements from their media.
Americans like their dotted lines in place. Japanese are much more forgiving of the unexplained.
At the same time, in Anime so much of the implied spiritualism is unexplained (if it really exists at all) that American's are just lost when trying to interpret it.
a heck of alot of inside jokes.
Starting with cultural differces just take alook at the whole tenticle porn genre... that came about from censorship laws in Japan.
There is tons of spiritual, historical and cultural based ties in anime that unless you have a background or understanding of the society you may miss alot.
As well there is years upon years of the stuff, and there is alot of inside jokes parodies and other things that feed off having previous seen what is being parodied or given tribute to.
Excel Saga is a prime example.
"I am a kernel in the linux army"
Let's postulate a script written by the Anime people over across the Pacific that is specifically made to cater to an American audience? Something like...oh I don't know..."24" done in a realistic, gritty style....but anime. Something thought provoking, not utterly fantastic. Hell, I bet you could do a passable "X-Files" anime series, if you kept it believable. There's a market, it just takes someone willing to do it.
That's actually a really good idea.. I fail to see why someone hasn't done this yet. Maybe the stories are interesting & quriky enough for japanese culture but I believe over in the US Anime would take if it was just a little bit more.. tame.
First, much of Japanese animation is aimed naturally at Japanese modern society because they are watching it first. Do Americans aim their animation at any audience but themselves first?
Second, fan subs are killing nothing and only increasing the fan base which would gladly buy the anime if only it would be exported in the first place. Some of them are insatiable gluttons.
Third, between Suncoast/et al carrying manga and anime, there is a "this is new and faddish" crowd above and beyond the hardcore anime fans being carered to.
Nice article, some incorrect ideas, and doesn't show probably as deep a knowledge of the American and western anime fanbase as could be had with a little research. OTOH, that knowledge might be found frightening and Japan might just go (in Japanese) "WTF is wrong with these people? And they think we're the eccentric ones? We should just stop sending our animation to them. They clearly aren't getting out of it what we intended and getting something else we didn't."
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
Anime is simply a medium, a way to put that sea of idea's in our heads into another persons head. The animation is usually good but the problem tends to be the story more than anything else. anime is especially good at expressing imagination, Akira, Ghost in the Shell, and a few others were visually stunning, had great imagination but often lacked depth. Others such as Spirited Away & GTO had good animation but that was just sugar on the cake, the y had great story's with real imagination.
http://my.telegraph.co.uk/dublinclontarf
Yeah, that's right.
The reason fansubs are popular is simple.
1. Companies like ADV (and for that matter "Geneon" which used to be Pioneer) wait until a show is popular in the fansub community, buy up the rights to it, and then rather than get on with the job of subtitling and dubbing it sit on it for YEARS before American audiences get the chance to see their "licensed" version.
2. As it would turn out, the "professional" translators at ADV and other places are usually not as good at translating the anime as the army of semi-bilingual teens/twentysomethings on both sides of the pond (in Japan and America) who can email each other back and forth to make sure that not only is the translation correct, they got the idioms right.
3. Even when a big Anime movie comes out - like Howl's Moving Castle or Spirited Away - the American companies don't promote it properly. Disney should have had Howl's Moving Castle showing as a full-scale release with advertisements all over every TV station. But Eisner wouldn't do it because (a) it would prove him wrong about the "death" of traditional animation and (b) he dicked it over because John Lasseter wouldn't resign Pixar with Disney.
In that kind of environment, the reason Fansubs are popular is because WE ARE TIRED OF WAITING FOR THE COMPANIES TO FUCKING DO IT.
We can accept that it takes time to translate - though the speedsubbing groups doing Naruto have it pretty much down to a 24-hour turnaround and they're no less accurate than ADV or VIZ.
We can accept that it takes time to record dubbing voices. We CANNOT accept that it takes them FIVE FUCKING YEARS before they're ready to release a single DVD with only two episodes on it.
Here's your challenge, ADV and the rest of the studios: Get it down to a six-month turnaround. Six months after you license the anime, we want to see it on the fucking shelf.
Then, if fansubs are still "killing the industry", maybe we'll take you seriously.
I suddenly realized how lame the American voices were - and inappropriate for their characters.
Except for two of them, they were totally off in the English dub, and spot on in the Japanese voice choices.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
With the exception of the Wired references, the other references seem to have come from a recent Business Week article.
6 /b3939013.htm
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_2
Ne?
Fan subs don't kill, they open it far more.
Here is what kills that market for Anime in America.
1) Horrible voice, voice do not match the character, and the voice acting _always_ sucks. Sometimes it sounds worse than a bunch of high school students being force to do the voicing.
2) Cost. lets say you have 50-100 total eps with only a couple on a DVD, they are selling them way to costly. They should be able to pack 10 to a DVD and sell them cheaper.
2.5)Space, Who wants to store that many DVD's? It is worlds easier having a 250 gig drive holding every single anime than it is having a room dedicated for each DVD holding 4-5 episodes each.
3) Changing content or censoring things. They often change the words completely, and cut out scenes. I want the store as how the story tellers said to. Heck, every Anime that I've bought that had subs and dubbing, the words and meaning clashes.
Sell me 26 eps for $20 and 2 DVD's and I'll be buying a lot. (and get rid of the garbage DVD bloat menu)
- Goof
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive
False analogy.
TV isn't equal to DVD.
TV:==analog hole
Fansub:==Digital hole.
"They can't get people to buy crap sight unseen anymore, and it's killing their business model."
*calls up trusted japanese friend*
Hey is [particular japanese anime] any good?
Yes it's very good.
Well can you send me one. I'll reminburse you.
Gee and to think there were wasn't successful content industries until the internet came along and saved us all from "crap".
The only way it is accurate is if you count the vast collected body of anime that has aired since the 1960s, which still wouldn't put it at that.
If you pick a recent calendar year, say 2003, there were about 100 anime series released on Japanese TV. Of those, looking down the list I can pick out 45 that I know have been licensed in the USA, and I'm probably missing a few. A lot of the rest is ultra-kids' stuff and truly bad anime. We are getting the better half (although, as noted earlier, using 2003 as an example, there were some true gems like Twin Spica that have been overlooked.)
The way I see it, you have to look at the anime industry from a macro view. It grew slowly but steadily throughout the late 80s and early 90s, but then in the late 90s and the last few years, it exploded. What happened? Did kids have more money? Did Dragonball, Pokemon, and Sailor Moon on TV set it off? There had to be something.
I personally don't think it's a conincidence that anime in the US exploded the same time that easy access to the internet did, including fansubs. I'm not defending piracy, but I think that had the industry remained closed per comparable MPAA standards, then Anime Expo this weekend in Anaheim might have 500 attending instead of 30,000.
GITS:Stand Alone Complex does cover exactly the same high-concept material, but it doesn't really pick up steam until several episodes in. The first few are floating stories that are mainly about character establishment.
Is it better? It has more time to delve into characterization and backstory. The arc themes are the same as in the movies, so it's hardly groundbreaking. Depends what you like, I guess.
all we had were copied VHS tapes of horrible quality, and we liked it! Not to mention the commercially available tapes were $40 each, and the dubbing, well, let's just say it has improved greatly over the years. If you think the dubbing sucks now, you have NO idea.
SYS 64738
I have seen a number of original anime series and then have seen them licensed and brought over to the western world only to sit and wonder if its the same show I'm watching. A large percentage is translated poorly and the voice acting is so bland its just not worth watching, either that or the shows are cut to shreds either due to its graphic nature or adult themes.
I'm not completely against dubs and there are indeed a few companies that have done a rather good job of "porting" anime into english (Hellsing from Pioneer).
I just believe that if companies want to get my hard earned cash out of my pocket to get their DVD or pay for access to a subscription channel then _please_ keep the show in its enirety and save what makes that show work. Don't Rip its guts out.
The comic strip from VG cats sums it up perfectly IMHO
http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=145
Nuf said
Having watched numerous imports thanks to my college's midnight anime club (tho I'm still a newb by msot of their standards, some of those guys learned to speak japanese from watching so much anime!!) I can say that, yes, a ton of it is full of those stereotypes, but honestly, have you watched american cartoons lately? Fully half of it is spinoffs of PPGs and Pokemon. Look, you have to sort through a bunch of crap to find the gems like GITS, Akira, Evangelion, Lain, etc. but that's true of any genre. You can't just say 'well the 1% to 5% I've seen has all these stereotypes so the rest must too!' Part of the issue is that alot of the hardcore anime american audience do enjoy those types of anime (otaku anyone?), so that's what they tend to demand and therefore is what gets imported. As far as fansubbing goes I think as others have said the problem will mostly go away when the studios just realize that the fansubs exist because of demand - provide that product and the fansubs will go away, or move on to the next thing the audience is demanding.
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
My main reason for getting fansubs over released US DVDs is the quality of the actual subs. The dubbing is horrible, that goes without saying, but not many people mention what an awesome job these subbing groups really do. The best go into so much detail, in many cases explaining what certain things mean(culture clash) and also translating text seen in the background. This can make keeping up with the story hectic, but well worth it in my opinion. I'm surprised these licensed DVDs aren't using stolen subs from these groups. Until the actual licensed stuff is better (not just as good) than the fansubs will I switch totally to licensed DVDs. They just aren't as polished.
...for mediocre quality shows. At least, that's how I've heard it described.
Let's face it, whether it be anime, tv, movies, or games, probably 10% are great, 30% are mediocre, and the rest are not worth the time of day.
With the top 10%, they could be the most pirated shows of all time, but will still do amazing numbers at retail. Think Star Wars ep III, The Incredibles, Halo, or Evangelion. These are franchises that fans will spend oodles of money on, and even the most rampant piracy could not render them unprofitable.
The problem fansubbing brings is with the mediocre shows. I've rented and borrowed games and movies that I wanted to try out, but afterwards would not have a hope in hell of spending $20-$50 dollars for, because they simply were not that good. I was/am a big Evangelion fan, and that was one series I had no problem dropping the bucks on. I dont really follow the anime scene anymore, but I'd imagine most anime would not be able to pry $20 per disc out of my wallet nowadays.
Fansubbing can indeed generate excitement around a lesser known series, and I'd go so far as to suggest that some series' North American popularity was built on fansubs. But unless the show is of exceptional quality, I'd imagine most people would not be inclined to buy a pricey DVD set for a ho-hum show having already seen it.
If a publisher has to spend X dollars to distribute a product while competing with a free (and illegal) source of the exact same thing on the internet, unless there is some reason to expect brisk sales (like a large rabid fanbase), then it would not be a stretch to decide you may be financially better off not releasing it at all.
First off I have to say that I am a big anime fan. I wouldn't consider myself a fanboy in the sense that I don't have posters or a collection of toys or other items. So I am enthusiastic but not obsessive.
Here's what I think is good about anime...
Besides the artwork which is often amazing, anime breaks from american animation entertainment in a number of ways. Anime covers a large number of genre's. We tend to get the magic and sci-fi imported the most, but it explores many subjects. The target age groups for anime are much wider, from children to young adults (possibly even older). This allows anime writers to have more sophisticated plots. It also allows them to explore violence and sexuality much more than american animation. I could go on, but I want to relate this back to the "american penetration issue".
So here's what I think is limiting the american market growth. As mentioned above anime is very different from american animation so right out of the gate anime has to contend with american expectations. Most adults and young adults don't think anime is aimed at them and some would be embarrassed to let others know that they enjoy it. So the good stuff (the more sophisticated, adult oriented) titles get overrun by the kiddie stuff which muddies the perceptions more.
The overdubbing for most anime (excluding Miazaki and Cartoon Network) is god awful. It ruins the experience of watching. Bad acting can easily ruin a perfectly good title. This has let to the popularity of subtitles with fans. Unfortunately during the VHS era of anime distribution the subtitled versions were more expensive to purchase despite their lower production costs. In the DVD age the titles (which contain both sub and dub) are often more expensive than average american DVDs. So the perception is that the distributers are screwing their fans.
Couple the above situation with the lack of availability and delays of importing new titles, a vibrant fansub culture has arisen. My limited experience (in the VHS era) with fansubbing has shown that the majority of them follow these simple rules. Don't make a profit off the sale of tapes. Discontinue sale of titles that have distribution. Now I haven't studied the numbers and statistics about fansubbing but I find it hard to believe that these people are causing the death of anime. Their purpose is to make available to non Japanese sepaking people the titles which may never get imported. I am sure that there are the fileswapping types who are ignoring those rules, but that is a given with or without fansub. So I will make a minor plea to not vilify fansubbers as fileswappers because there is a distinction.
Of course there exist all the pro file swapping arguments, "they wouldn't have bought anyway", "its good advertisement", "fans will buy it even if they get it for free too". I won't go there because it's been done before.
So here's my conclusions. I think there is a huge market in the US for anime that hasn't been tapped. A large marketing effort needs to be made which helps the average american understand that anime is more "adult" and varied in subject. Titles need to be imported faster and cheaper. Fansubbers are not killing the market.
Did You Know that hentai is a teensy piece of the anime market in Japan, but a huge whorebanging chunk of the anime market in America? Fun fact!
They make the tentacle porn for pervy Americans. No, I don't know why we don't make it here ourselves. But I know that the place for tentacle rape is conservative, Christian Amerikkka, as you say, Mr. Cube.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
"Disney's has the rights to all of Hayao Miyazaki film's current in theater's if you can find one is "Howls Moving Castle"."
You seem to have forgotten the DVD market. I've never seen his work at the theater, but I have seen it on DVD. So the fact that it isn't hitting every theater in God's creation, isn't as important as it use to be.
It seems like you simply haven't been exposed to some of the great Anime out there and are using the poorly dubbed filth on Cartoon Network as the basis for your argument. Sorry, but if you think Anime is "Dragon Ball Z" or "Sailor Moon", clearly you need more exposure to it.
However, this isn't entirely your fault. A lot of this ignorance has to do with American culture in general. One of the major reasons that 99% of the anime out there isn't shown on Cartoon Network is because it doesn't conform to what's "socially acceptable" in the United States. Great shows like Outlaw Star were first stripped of their original voice acting, and then butchered of entire episodes because they revolved around "adult" material that the fat cats at Cartoon Network did not consider to be appropriate for children.
A lot of the anime out there would most likely shock 80% (figure pulled out of ass) of American mothers to tears. There would be so many lawsuits and complaining that Cartoon Network would run into a corner and try to disappear to protect itself from the hordes of broom-weilding angry mothers.
Over the years American children have been steadily conditioned into stupidity and happy fairy tail lands where battles are not fought by people but by little creatures called "Pokemon", and I'll be damned if I ever see a single speck of blood on ol' Pikachu even though he was just smacked by 200 tons of solid rock.
Americans would best understand the nature of Anime if they thought of it as "cartoons for mature people" (even though a lot of it is watched by children in Japan). My suggestion to you would be to search Netflix or something similar (or *cough*bittorrent*cough*) and grab yourself a few DVDs of shows and movies like "Princess Mononoke", "Full Metal Alchemist", "Hellsing", "Cowboy Bebop" and "Spirited Away".
Best. Webhost. Ever. Dreamhost.
Ethical fansubbers -those who take steps to halt distribution of their work after the series are licensed- do no harm to the anime industry, or if they do any harm at all then it far outweighs the good. Time and time again they have provided the industry with valuable predictors of what will sell in the US and what will not. They generate buzz as little else can.
Unethical fansubbers -those who continue to distribute their work after the series has been licensed, or worse still deliberately sub series which have already been licensed- usually only harm the industry. There are a few cases where there may be overriding moral concerns, for example subbing unedited versions of a series which was only released professionally in an edited form, but these are exceedingly few and far between. Episode 18 of Kareshi Kanojo no Jijou comes to mind: Gainax refused to license the unedited version, and so it was released edited. I've not actually seen fansubs of that series since it was licensed, however, and I know of no other immediately-obvious examples.
Digital fansubbing has, admittedly, been a problem. Before digisubs, it was more or less reasonable for a fansubber to assume that his or her work would no longer be distributed after a series was licensed. With digital fansubs, however, this is no longer true, and piracy has increased dramatically as a result. I remember in the early days of digisubs, when a group called the Techno-Girls refused to allow their work to be distributed digitally, citing piracy fears. At the time I called them elitist, and I stand by that accusation, but I must concede that their prediction was correct.
IMO, there's more wrong with anime cliches than the superficial (and not omnipresent) features you mentioned.
There's the "confession of love" scenario, with its endless (and very overused) methods of prolongation, for one. I'll take a dozen blue-haired catgirls rather than one more "zutto suki" interrupted by a passing train.
Then there's the nonchalant big-brother figure character whose emotional range goes from "dispassionate carefree" to "mildly anxious"... constantly spouting off his "yare yare" and such... Never will this man dare appear to take things seriously unless he is in a mortal struggle, and never will his aloof persona crack until he is on his death bed.
The thing I've discovered about anime is that quite a lot of it is crap. Some of it is unspeakably, abysmally bad, posessing nothing beyond the formulae established for it by more energetically-produced works. But the thing is, some of it is actually quite good. The good works are in the minority, though, swimming in a sea of garbage. In this I think it shares a lot in common with movies and TV in the US.
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
Well, some anime anyway.
But the stuff is just way too expensive. Some of the DVD's are $34.99, and I'm simply not willing to spend more than $25 on a single DVD... but even then I will only buy those DVD in series which I already know are good. Ones I have downloaded and watched and want high quality copies of. Like Dragon Drive. They're tricking out the damn things, but I'd have bought the whole set the day it came out if they would just release the damn thing. Now, if the DVD's were $19.99, well I might snap up some which look somewhat interesting on the box. Hollywood seems to get this, but the anime companies think their sales won't go up if they charge less, so they charge more to make a profit, but that just ends up driving customers like me away from experimentation.
If you download a bunch of fansubs and compare them to the corporate releases.... there's a painfully obvious difference in quality... the fansubs are SO much better... it's a wonder that the corporations producing the licensed subs can't simply pay the fans a pittance and release a quality product....
Indeed! I never got 'got' anime or D&D, despite some of my friends going on and on about how wonderful it was. I guess it goes to show that we're not all one big homogeneous demographic.
(Then again, every one of my geek friends loved "Firefly".)
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
FACT: anime sucks, end of story.
Show me some good marketing for an Anime show. What, you've never seen an ad on TV for ANY anime boxset? How are you supposed to sell something you don't market!?
How come the Manga's seem to be translated and pushed out the door asap and sold here while we must wait eons for the TV show? Why buy the DVD when you can read ahead at Barnes and Noble?
If a handful of people can manage a WEEKLY turn around for fansubs, why can't a funded corporation hire those people plus a few more to do so with a Dubbed version?
Fansubs aren't killing the anime market, the lack of marketing and smart thinking is. I can tell you right off that certain studios make better and more popular anime than others. If that anime is based off a highly successful manga it goes to assume that the anime itself will be popular. Why can't a company just read the VERY obvious writing on the wall and strike a deal to do their own FOR PROFIT fandub with only a week to two week turn around?
If an anime is licensed, a fansub group won't touch it. The faster the American Anime Marketers take their heads from their collective arses, read the Japanese market signs, and license and release it, the sooner and more rewarding their bounty will be.
To those who say that "Oh, well how can you tell our American market will like it?" I say this, "If you like anime, odds are, you have the same taste as most Japanese who like anime. When was it you liked something that did horribly in Japan?"
Our market simply waits too long.
Personally I watch anime on a daily basis, the vast majority of which I have bought through the standard licenced outlets. I do have a good number of "bootleg" disks but when the dubbed copies come out, I buy the legal disks as well (unless the show really sucked). I don't do fansub, but I'm seriously tempted so as to see the latest shows. I would happly subscribe to a legal fansub service in a heartbeat so as to get new/obscure shows faster.
Why do I watch anime? The diversity of the shows as well as the high level of plotting. I can watch a complex science fiction epic one day and a late Edo period drama the next. Frankly, the good anime titles completely blow away US television for the level of plotting and characterization. Short of B5 or Buffy US TV simply can't do multi-episode multiple story arcs. Having just finished off the first season of "Magical Knights Rayearth" I was astounded at how a kiddie series could incorporate such a complex plotline, killer ending and strong characterization. Also, anime is one of the rare sources of Xena/Buffy strong female protagonists .
A) Madagascar is a Dream Works movie, not Disney B) Disney only put Howl's in 36 theathers because that was the best median number given how ticket sales did on Spirited Away two years ago. C) Just because a movie is in more theaters does not mean it will produce more money (see the example of Madagascar being in 3000 and still pulling in the same as 202). What would be more likely is that the otaku who traveled to see the movie on those 202 screens would have been much more spread out, and you would have seen a much smaller gross-per-screen number
I run an anime club in Florida. Florida has 4 good sized anime conventions a year (3000+ attendees.) Our club has about 1500 members. If it weren't for fansubs there would be a very small fraction of anime fans and releases.
Fansubs are the primary avenue we find out about series, become attached to them, and subsequently buy them as they are released. We're ravenous. We buy the dvds even if we have the fansubs. We buy action figures, posters, art books, etc. Most of the members are college kids without a lot of money, and they still buy.
I can't tell you how many times I've been at a convention, talking to directors of american releases (usually voice actors themselves,) or employees of distribution companies about fan subs. The vast majority download them and watch them themselves. Their take on it is "don't buy them, don't buy bootlegs, don't seek them out after the show is licensed and airing/available here."
I can't think of any better marketing research than looking at what's popular in fansubs.
Yeah, some people will download a fansub, and not buy the show. Some maliciously, some not. Most cases people just check the show out, don't like it, so don't buy it.
Very important to every aspect of media piracy in this information age:
Just because someone "steals" something over the internet doesn't mean they would have bought it had they not been able to download it.
I've seen tons of Anime, and the whole issue is with cross-culture. Americans are NOT Japanese, and the reverse is equally true. I know, that's a shocker, huh?
That's the key here. When you have to sit through 20 minutes of voiceovers explaining WTF a Jujin-kai is, or who the hell that Japanese mythologic dude was, what he did, how he failed, and now the universe will implode (or some odd shit like that) you lose American Audiences. No audience, no sale = no broadcast, leaving it to either DVD release or fansubs. Add to that the Japanese prediliction for panspermia in every freaking spaceopera and tenticles everywhere else, you get people a little freaked out.
I've seen anime that won awards (lots of them), and without a doubt the only one worth a shit was Akira. So I bought it. The other one I bought was Chôjin densetsu Urotsukidôji, because it's damn funny, gory, and insane. But even it succumbs to the issue of a voiceover dialog that goes for ever.
If the Japanese want to sell us more anime, and I bet they do...just ask 'em...they have to do a bit of a better job at crossing the culture gap. It's as simple as that.
And the original article is off base. Fansubs aren't hurting the market, they're expanding it. Especially when you can't get certain stuff here even if you pay to import it specially. Given the option between official DVD release and a fansub, most rational people will go DVD provided they aren't insanely priced. But if there's no DVD to get at any price...guess where they look? Same thing goes for the new Dr. Who. Nobody around where I live is showing it so I had to snarf the whole season off of BT. Bummer for the cable stations that were too stupid to pick it up, excellent for me. I won, they lost, move along.
I think the industry is shooting itself in the foot.
I would buy much more anime if most disks had 5 or more episodes per DVD.
I do download a naruto and bleach, and I could see myself paying $0.50 an episode (and gladly uploading till I got to a 1.00 share rating)
But to pay $25 for a disk with 3 episodes. Give me a break, after I skip the intro and endings thats 60 minutes of content. I expect a 'movies worth'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification
Despite the fact that anime is wildly overpriced in America, with some 26 episode series costing as much as $200 or $300 after you've collected all of the eight to ten DVDs in the series (what casual fan would pay for this?), the quality is still very low.
Take the $200 Zeta Gundam box set, for instance. You can see in every single episode that the subs are off. In one scene, a character looks at a giant robot with surprise and clearly says, in a heavy Japanese accent, "Gundam... Mark II?!", but in the subs, he says, "It's a Gundam?" And sure enough, if you change the language from Japanese to English, the dubbed voice says, "It's a Gundam?", because that's what fits the character's mouth movements. This means that in a $200 box set, no one even bothered to spend the money on proper subtitles, and in longer conversations, you can see that the meaning is completely lost in the translation. In another scene, a character making a longer speech says the word "Newtype" three times, but the subs never even mention it. Kind of important when the entire series revolves around newtypes and many characters' personalities are defined by the fact that they're a newtype.
The number of times that's happened in a fansub? Zero. In all of the fansubs I've watched, I've never seen as many blatant mistranslations as I have in a DVD box set from Bandai that I paid $200 for. And the same goes for other companies, as well. Obviously no one even spellchecked ADV's Bubblegum Crisis 2040 DVDs, because there are at least five or six typos in every DVD's subtitles. That's the sort of thing that would never get past 90% of fansub groups, because they'd be afraid of looking like idiots, but ADV and Bandai don't seem to be very afraid of making you feel like an idiot for buying their product.
So between lower quality, a higher price, and a generally narrower selection of titles, it's not really worth watching US anime DVDs. Not just versus watching fansubs, but versus most other things you could do with your time.
If you don't believe me, think about just how many anime DVDs have you purchased recently compared to the number of shows you've downloaded for free. ... and there you have it. The old "you *would* have bought it if you hadn't downloaded it" argument.
... gee I don't know ... watched TV, surfed porn, ordered a pizza, gone out for a beer, played Halo, taken my girlfriend to dinner, smoked a joint or any number of other things (which don't include paying for "______").
As if the only two options are 'getting it for free', or 'paying for it'.
Personally for me, I can easily say that if I hadn't downloaded "______" for free, I'd probably have
But hey... that's just me.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Wouldn't the sales increase if the kids didn't have to spend THOUSANDS of dollars in an anime series?
How about a couple hundred (at most) for an entire 25 chapter series?
I mean, it's like "oh! Amelican people vely lich! ^_^ ret's chalge them thousands of dorrals! We're be lich!"
I know, i'm exaggerating the assumption (the phonetic problem is real, tho). But isn't the price *exactly* what we're complaining about the RIAA?
Your argument would hold water if "Madagascar" was, indeed, a Disney film. However, "Madagascar" is a DreamWorks production (Disney's bitter rival).
A far better example would be Disney's attrocious handling of Mirazaki's "Spirited Away", while at the same time over-hyping their own flaming bag of poo, "Treasure Island". The real egg on Disney's face was when "Spirited Away" won an Oscar, while "Treasure Island" could only be awarded "Worst Disney Animated Feature, Ever".
If you listen closely to that segment of the Academy Awards Ceremony, you can hear a little "Boom" in the background. That was the sound of Uncle Walt breaking the sound barrier while spinning...
The same could be said of US television and film. Look at the current US Box Office:
This is hardly very original stuff. Even Batman Begins, though fairly good, hardly breaks very much new ground.
Similarly, a lot of anime is cliched. It seems to be human nature that the masses tend toward the mundane, and the studios gravitate toward the tried-and-tested.
That said, there are some pretty interesting and original anime out there, if you know where to look. I'd even go so far as to say that anime seems to come up with originality more often than western media; certainly more often than western animation.
Haibane Renmei, an anime that revolves around the relationships of a group of children born from eggs with wings and halos, is fairly original. As is most of the work from Studio Ghibli; Grave of the Fireflies, Howl's Moving Castle, and so forth. Wings of Honneamise, an alternative-universe tale about a space-race between two superpowers, does without schoolgirls. And if you liked Ghost in the Shell, Patlabor is an anime in the same vein.
Personally, I'm looking forward to getting my hands on Steamboy; when was the last time Hollywood did an alternative Steam-Punk universe?
I'm not saying that anime is in any way superior to western media. Just that it isn't necessarily made entirely up of cliches - at least no more than western films and TV. Perhaps even a bit less.
I don't know how many get Anime Ntwork OR on Demand, but its opend my eye to a whole bunch of series that I had not heard of (I.E. GetBackers, Gantz).
Just realise the reality of the situation..... There is no reality.
By all accounts 99% of Japanese anime never makes it to America.
WTF ARE YOU SAYING?! That Dragonball Z and pokemon aren't the end all, be all of anime!? Don't be screwing with me now.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Well most Anime is lousy. But there is still hope as it grows.
There are many anime TV series available and coming out at an astonishingly low price, some are competitive with even the least expensive American TV series on DVD, 24-26 episodes on a licenced DVD set for $30 or less street price. These are basically "reprices" or repackages.
What pays for the licence is the first round of single discs, once they get what they think they can, often they are released to a complete box.
Also, you need not pay SRP. If you shop around, you can get DVDs to your door for 40% off SRP.
In short, it pays to shop around a bit.
I do think that $0.50 an episode is being pretty stingy. While more than nothing, all it really shows is that the series that you say you like have effectively no value at all, at that price, it would probably require tens of millions of watchers to pay for the production, and it wouldn't pay for a quality production.
"Uploading" doesn't help pay for the production of the content you like either.
i recommend this movie http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0245429/ it hasnt got cliche's and its PG so safe for kids too. watch it with the japanese dialogue and use subtitles. it really makes a difference to the feel.. it would be spoilt with the cheesy u.s voice actors audio track.
Doraemon rocks.
And I also liked/grew up with the following (not anime though)
Robocon the house robot afraid of cockroaches. He had lots of robot friends.
Go 5 - precursor to what the Power Rangers came to be.
Kamen Rider - was remade in the states in the 90's with a kid. This was about yet another motorcycle riding hero with a secret identity. This hero was a grasshopper.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
Screw them
They bring crap over here like Naruto and Zatch Bell.
They sit on their collective arses while GitS Season 2 airs.
They make it damn near impossible to figure out which volume on Kenshin I need to buy next. (Must read number from edge of box, Bust Buy doesn't have it in stock. etc...)
As someone else mentioned, they release the box set a few months later, at a substantial discount.
Fan subs were the best thing to happen to Anime business. Look at how many people hated the Artic Animation Fansubs of Orange Road, and went out and bought the DVDs and LDs of the TV series. I'm one of them.
Without fansubs and HK bootlegs, I would have never seen a descent copy of Five Star Stories.
Fscking cartoon network needs to put stuff like Initial D, that doesn't fall into the the "Anime is for children".
They need to cut deals with the Japanese Studios to get stuff while its current in Japan. They can beat the fan subbers, in quality and speed, but they need to make it a cooperative effort with the Japanese.
Oh wait, the US isn't a big enough market for them to worry about.
A better comparison would be an actual feature-length animated film from the States, not some cheesy cartoon on Nickelodeon that you specifically picked out to bolster your argument because you're an anime fan. Your argument is hardly convincing.
And to be quite honest, I'd take the animation in that Ed show over a lot of the anime out there, which all looks choppy and the same as the anime from ten years ago. At least Ed is different and visually unique.
"It seems like you simply haven't been exposed to some of the great Anime out there..."
Not necessarily. I used to be in a relationship with a fanboy that insisted he could make me like Anime if I just saw 'the good stuff.' So I watched hundreds of hours of 'the good stuff' with him. Note that I am not a 'fan' of American or European film/shows, whether animated or live, either: I only care about how well-written it is, not what media is used to present it.
Just to name a *few* we watched movies and/or full runs (all available seasons) of: Lain, Mononoke Hime, Nadesco, Slayers, Ranma, Evangelion (multiple endings), Kuroshin, Oh My Goddess, and a lot more I can't recall the names of. We watched it subbed, fansubbed, dubbed, both at once, and I agreed to try reading the manga. Basically, I did precisely what all the fans keep insisting will magically convert somebody.
It didn't work: I not only wasn't impressed, I thought it even sillier that people were claiming that these shows were "deep" and "complext" given it perhaps on the level of what I'd expect a twelve-year-old to understand in any other media form. Yes, the art was pretty, if you happened to like that style of art -- but the dialogue, plots, characters, metaphor, and so forth were sub-par.
Not surprisingly, though, when I told fans this and offered to give them detailed critical analysis of why, they shrieked "you just hate it for no reason because it's Anime!" No: I didn't like it because it was still at the complexity level I'd expect of a child, and gore/explosions doesn't make for maturity in my book.
Yes, my mistake on the Dream works.
I thought about added that to my post that it is not sure bet but I think it is a good chance.
Yes anime freaks will drive a long way to see an anime. But there are a lot of casual anime fan's who if the film was playing close by, would go when other wise would travel some distance. Also if it was in more theater would be the more ad's to pump up interest in the movie.
I know a lot of people who do not like anime per say, but would watch movies like what Hayao Miyazaki makes and movies like Ghost in the shell.
Wise men speak because they have something to say, Fools because they have to say something!!!!
by your analisys, French movies and music are created for the French market only, Russian movies and music are created for the Russian market and so on. Obviously that is not true in today's global marketplace. t.a.t.u. is a major example of a Russian pop group that was a world wide phenomenon.
If what you say is true, then why is the USA exporting Spears and Star Wars around the whole world? I grew up in Europe reading French comics and USA sci fi books and watching Jap anime (Kimba the white lion). Now I live in USA and mainly listen to J pop and watch anime since I cannot stand USA pop entertainment.
What do you mean by "many"? 1 million? 10 million? 20? How many "many" will be enough for you?
I know some British kids who ONLY watch anime and listen to J pop and will not watch any Disney crappolla.
Isn't this nice? When asians pirate American stuff, it's stealing, but when Americans pirate Asian stuff, they're just helping the owners of that stuff.
Better, Faster, Cheaper.
it's too hard to compete with.
so DON'T.
contact the best fan-sub groups, and HIRE THEM.
not only will you get folks that love the work, and so will probably do it cheap; you'll remove their illegitimate products from the 'market'.
The fansub thing seems to have relatively little to do with the current anime market here in the US.
Back when ADV, CPM and Viz were only serving a niche market, the success of fansubs was necessary to rate how well a series would get adopted here in the US.
Hell, some of us have had fansubs on hand even before the internet became a household thing. There were entire communities devoted to archiving and duplicating fansubs on VHS... and you were grateful if it was a crappy 17th generation copy with fuzzy images and scrambling glitches.
The problem right now, is ADV and the rest got lucky due to a fluke in our culture that turned anime into a fad for a few years. Due to this fluke, ADV and the rest grew uncontrollably to the point that their niche market can no longer sustain them. Now that the fad of anime in the US is on it's way out, these compaanies are going to be struggling to stay afloat.
If anyone is suffering from this, it's the consumers still buying products from these companies. Costs are higher than ever on new anime and the quality of work done on these newer titles is far worse than when these companies only served a niche markets. If this doesn't drive an otherwse faithful customer to piracy, I don't know what else will.
8==8 Bones 8==8
Thanks for NOT treating it as flamebait/troll (unlike the AC troll who also responded), and thanks for giving me some pointers on other anime to try.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
As many have been pointing out, alot of anime that reaches america are full of Blue hair, oversexed teenagers, chibiness, etc.
Note, I said "anime that REACHES america". I should be even more specific to anime that actually reaches television. There is alot of anime out there that doesn't follow the the standard stereotypes. What most people think of when they think of anime are the follow: Sailor Moon (older anime generally has more of the cliches then newer), Pokemon (a bad example of anime as is. It hasen't had a truely new plot since the second season), Yugioh (hacked until it died, entire first season cut out of the english version), Digimon (I presonally like digimon but it still isn't a good example), and Dragon Ball Z (Horrible anime. It would have been better if the plot were condensed down by 200-300 episodes).
Some good examples of anime that have actually reached america (and are far less known outside of anime circles) are: Ghost In a Shell Stand Alone Complex (great plot, animation, etc. The only "fanservice" (ie, big titties), is the Major), Samurai Champloo (new on tv, airs at almost midnight though. Cowboy Bebop - Bebop + Hiphop + Samurai = Samurai Champloo), and "Now and Then, Here and There" (a great dark drama, deals with many major social issues. Only on DVD), FLCL (Aired briefly, has a really good dub), and more.
The main problem facing anime in america is that they target the majority of televised anime towards the wrong audience. They target it about 2-5 years too young. A good example of this is One Piece. One piece is a great anime with an semi-interesting plot and is just generally funny (and it has pirates and pirates are cool). However, they air it on saturday morning and all that implies. They cut out all the blood (its about pirates, so ofcourse there will be quite a bit of blood). They cut out all the profanity (actually, alot of anime have quite a bit of profanity in it). One of the characters smokes and they turned it into a lollypop. There is more but I have to keep in mind my blood presure.
Alot of anime would buy more anime if they didn't do such a hack job of translating it. As others have mentioned, why buy badly translated anime when you can get a free version that is (on average) better translated then the paid version? Another point is that when the DVD comes out, usually anime fans will buy it just because the video and audio quality is better. I personally prefer dvds over downloaded for just that reason. Granted, there are those who won't buy anime and will just download it, but most of those wouldn't buy it even if it wasn't available free. thats my $.02 on the matter.
Speaking is NOT communication
i sorta skipped around.
most honest people do the "right" thing and buy the dvd when it comes out in US.
but some people, the same one that listen just to mp3s and burn games and download roms, dont.
i RARELY, if ever, buy a dvd. my justification, if it is one, is that you can tape record the episode on tv, why bother getting the dvd (unless it has extras).
Naruto, right now, is one of the most popular anime and manga (comic) series in Japan. Over 200 chapters of the comic, and over 150 episodes of the anime have been produced with no end in sight. The plot entails the adventures of Naruto, a young ninja boy, as he uses his mystical powers to get into gigantic episode-spanning battles. The anime has become a huge fan favorite in the US, especially with anime fans who like mindless action, but considered themselves too 'otaku' (geek) to enjoy the thoroughly mainstream Dragon Ball Z (Naruto's creator lists DBZ as one of his influences, and it's quite evident).
For well over 2 years, each new episode would be digitally released with english subtitles almost less then 48 hours after it's airing in Japan. But in mid February of this year, the anime series was licensed in the US by Viz and fansubbers quickly stopped releasing new episodes in respect of Viz's copyright.
One would predict that the Naruto fanbase would be overjoyed that their favorite series would now be available, on DVD, in america. But to the majority of Naruto fans, Viz was the enemy. To them, they had a right to watch Naruto for free. After all, they had 'supported' the series for years. Who is Viz to barge in and charge them $25 per DVD just to see if their favorite character survives another fight?
So the series continues to be fansubbed, openly, and will probably continue to be fansubbed even after the region 1 DVD's actually hits US shores. This different from the fansub community of 10 years ago. 10 years ago, 5th generation VHS copies of analog TV broadcasts with Amiga genlock subs were hoarded like gold. Fans celebrated the licensing of ANY series since ANY new anime was good for the industry.
ADV, another US anime company (which was founded by anime fans), recieved similar backlash when they demanded that licensed but unreleased titles of theirs be removed from a large anime bittorrent site. They were portrayed as enemies of the anime community.
Thankfully, Naruto will also be airing on Cartoon Network, AND Naruto shirts will soon be sold at Hot Topic boutiques nationwide. Eventually, as those people not 'otaku' enough to spend Friday nights at home spamming fansub channels with "Is Naruto 165 out yet" catch onto the series, the anime elites will migrate to something else.
Sure it has its own style/structure, like movies vs books, but it's just another mass-produced medium that suffers from problems that any other mass-produced medium has, such as "crappiness."
Hollywood pumps out movies like crazy. Unless you're a die-hard movie fan, IMO, most movies suck or are only average. There's only a few per year that I consider great. The same goes for books. And the same definitely applies to anime. I used to download anything I could find that seemed interesting (and wasn't licensed yet). Yeah...that became very inefficient very quickly. Even with being more selective or reading reviews (and there's far too many of those), it simply took too much time investment to sift out the gold from the garbage.
The point is, I don't think it's fair to overgeneralize anime as being cliched, nor is it fair to say it's always of higher caliber.
Maybe, just maybe, it's because most anime sucks? Something people seem to forget is that it's just television. Nothing special. Much like the TV programming in other countries, there is, occasionally, a good show. But usually it's mundane, run-of-the-mill stuff. Also, a lot of the shows (particularly the more comedic) have a lot of jokes that make no sense in any other language.
I paid $250 for the full Rurouni Kenshin set on DVD... only to find out that the losers don't even have a Stereo Japanese (or English) soundtrack.
I guess I'm just spoiled. The $7/tape Fansubs I purchased 8 years ago on VHS were in stereo. I absolutely love the opening/ending songs on every episode of Kenshin (and Kodomo no Omocha, and Jungle Guu, and Last Exile).
This purchase may be the greatest reason I have watched more and more anime for "free" from NetFlix and BitTorrent. I purchased Last Exile (release here by Geneon) after watching it via BitTorrent and NetFlix... and all I can say is Geneon is lightyears beyond Funimation, VIZ, U.S. Manga Corps, etc.
If all releases were like Ghibli films (Spirited Away), Last Exile, and Haibane Renmei... high quality, wide screen enhanced video with stereo Japanese (and English if you like) soundtracks with good quality video compression... I would be buying far more anime. As it is, I want my money back for Kenshin.
You know, I live in Lafayette, IN. I am friends with people who attend anime conventions like ACEN. I do use bittorrent to download anime. I look all over for anime shops to buy good japanese DVDs with subtitles OF THE EPISODES I HAVE ALREADY DOWNLOADED! I travel to Indianapolis regularly. In fact, for about a year, I went there at least once a week. I even recently went there to buy a vehicle. Yet, I have never heard of your store.
Surely being in the business you have to know that college and high-school kids are going to be your biggest market. Here I am at Purdue University, a very large Big Ten university, only 45 minutes away from Indy, and I have never seen an advertisement on any of our bulletin boards for your store. I don't make it to Bloomington very often, but it's not that far away from Indy either and I am willing to bet you advertised there as much as you did at Purdue.
Im not trying to insult you by what I said above, but I am actually a little upset. The day I find out about an anime store near me that may have a potentially good line-up of DVDs, I find that it's closing. For god's sake, advertise! Most kids I know around Purdue go to Chicago frequently for things like movies and concerts and shopping. Indy is a lot closer than Chicago and I know way too many people into anime around here. You missed your target audience.
I know one of the major arguments is that college kids have no money. Don't let that white lie discourage you from taking their money. They haave more than they know what to do with (most of them, anyway) and they WANT to spend it. I work full time, yet I am amazed at how often these kids can afford to go out drinking. I can't afford to drink that much and I don't have any major expenses (minus a car payment and rent.) Your audience consists of the two Big Ten universities flanking your city as well as the other universities nearby: Ball State, ISU. You need to reach out to them as if you are local to them because in the eyes of college kids, you are.
And hey, any chance you may stay open two more days? I get paid once a month and that happened today. I see your website hours are Mon - Sat 11-7. It's too late to make it there now and actually do any shopping in your store. But, I can leave straight from work tomorrow or even go down Saturday. I'll tell my anime friends (er, read "friends who like anime") and we'll get down their and buy shit.
Seriously.
...That's usually because the people who watch them have a rudimentary ability to follow and understand concepts.
...But that's one series... ...Oh, nevermind. Roll on the flames.
Take a step back. Remove America from the picture.
How many countries OTHER than the US and Japan enjoy Anime?
Answer: quite a few.
After glancing over most of the rest of the comments, a few things keep jumping out at me.
1) The plots were too confusing.
Blood: The Last Vampire. Completely sudden entry into the world depicted within, little or no background story. Yet it explains itself very well. The main character is a girl who is told by the government to kill targets who are supposed to be these creatures (the name eludes me at the moment). She gets more targets. She goes to kill them. Insert basic horror movie plot.
I've seen more than one person that watched it be completely confused by that film. Still escapes me as to why.
2) The Japanese think 14 year old girls are the sexiest thing going.
Well, given that the usual audience for anime is 12-16 year olds, it figures that they'd use characters that would appeal to that age group. Duh.
Neon Genesis Evangelion, though, uses just 14 year olds. But it explains why. Because all those children were born on the day of the Second Impact. Ba-bum.
3) The plots are too repetetive.
Really?
Compare the Gundam Wing series to the Endless Waltz OVA.
Or the GitS film to the GitS:SAC series.
Or Princess Mononoke (a Studio Ghibli production) to Spirited Away (also a Studio Ghibli production). While both of these are fantasy films, the storylines are vastly different. Yet they're made by the same company. And they're in the same genre. Sh[l]ock horror.
In reality, anime is vastly varied. Sure, within a series they might use the same concepts over a lot. But what entertainment show can say that they don't? *cough*Star Trek*cough*
Spatial Anomaly.
Subspace distortion.
Away team trapped.
Prime Directive violation.
Infection.
Invasion.
Repeat.
So let's compare that to something like Dragonball Z, since everyone seems to be using that as one of the main examples.
Fight. Train. Subplot. Fight. Train. Fight. Train. Fight. Subplot. Character death. Train. Train. Fight. Character revival. Train. Fight.
And so on.
Goten Xiao
I rarely post a simple "Wow, I agree" comment, but wow.
You nailed it. These comedies are about the last years in which you weren't held responsible for your actions.
Piracy is clearly the big thing. And maybe fan subs are part of it. People start by buying anime in the store. If they like it, they are often disappointed by the subtitles. So they hear they can get a better, fansubbed version on the internet.
After a few times of this, they simply stop buying stuff and get it off the internet. It's cheaper and you have less to lose. Lets face it, anime quality varies greatly.
I know the stuff still sells a bit in stores, I see places still stock it. But I'm not sure that will last.
I do realize another factor is that anime is getting mainstreamed in many places (around here, San Jose area most of all), so the smaller retailers will go away. We had a fantastic LaserDisc store for years in Cupertino, California. When DVDs came out, they did even better, as the lower prices led to more sales. But when Target sells a DVD for $3 less (or even below cost for major titles on the first day), specialty stores simply cannot compete.
They should sell the series over the internet. Get it here before the pirates can flood the "market" with free versions.
You have probably just haven't seen the right show... Have you watched for example Evangelion, Gundam Seed, Fafner in the Azure or Wolf's rain?
If the answer is no, please at least watch one of them... Other series I can recomen, description taken from anidb.info
Gunslinger Girl - A secret Italian government organization takes seriously injured girls, patch them up with artificial body parts, and "conditions" them to be assassins. Each girl is paired with an older man, and they work together as a "fratello" - a brother-sister unit. This moody show takes a look at these girls, and their different relationships with their supervisors.
Elfen Lied(US title: Elvin lied) - The diclonius, otherwise known as a two-horned human, are mutants of the human species, may well be the next step in human evolution. The diclonius have horns and strong telekinetic powers represented by "arms". However with this great power, they can easily destroy the human race. Fearful of their power, humans quarantined the diclonius into secret research facilities to study. However, in a freak accident, a enraged female diclonius escaped, killing many guards in the process. Interesting enough, the female escapee appears to have suffered amnesia after her escape and floated to Yuigahama of Kamakura city. There, she meets two people named Kouta and Yuka, who name the female diclonius "Nyuu", and decide that they all should live together.
Legend Of Galactic Heroes - The story of two mighty space empires is told from the viewpoint of two `heroes`: Rheinhardt Von Museal, Admiral of the Galactic Empire, and Yang Wenli, Admiral from the Alliance of Free Planets. Both men are military and tactical geniuses and are born survivors. The ambitious Rheinhart has the goal of getting enough power to be able to free his sister from her obligation as one of the Emperor`s Court ladies. He is fairly ruthless in this which is tempered only by his aide: Siegfried Kircheis. Yang is a pacifistic man who, when necessary, will do his duty even if it means fighting against an enemy fleet (since he is a *soldier*, after all). The drama between these 2 men is played out against a backdrop of great space battles, inept commanders, frightened soldiers, personal relationships, corrupt politicians and the workings of two space empires at war with each other. This is a space opera on a very grand scale.
God,root what's the difference? I read slashdot, there for I errr... am stupid?
As in, it goes right over their head.
"It" being anime, of course.
As in, the typical Joe and Jane Sixpack are just too ignorant, be it willfully or otherwise, to comprehend anime.
The more of this stuff I watch, the more I discover its depth, its multilayer structure, its "certain somethign" which puts it on a plane above most crap made here in the USA.
I wonder if anime does better in Europe, where minds are freer, and where people don't cling to millenia-old dogma, as much as they do here. At least, that's the impression when I went to the UK, France and Italy.
I, for one, welcome our new anime overlords, and will stand and assist them on their assimilation of the planet.
No, really. Have Brain, Will Travel.
And there's nothing wrong with beeeeg anime eyes... kawaii! n.n
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
The biggest obstacle to anime becoming big in the USA is the companies that are selling it. A lot of them "Americanize" the shows before they release them. Examples that come to mind are Cardcaptors / Card Captor Sakura and Mew mew Power / Tokyo Mew Mew. Sometimes the subtitle and dub tracs on DVDs will have major differences. Fansubs do a far better job of putting in features like multi-colored text, cultural notes, translation of signs, ect.
Most video rental stores don't carry anime. Stores that sell anime don't have a clue as to what to do with the anime that they sell. They mix adult titles and regular titles together. If a store does have seperate adult / non-adult sections they don't make much of an effort to accurately sort them out. Stores don't put any effort in to having a complete selection. They will sell only 3 of the 4 DVDs needed to complete a series. They won't sell some popular series or they get it in sock months after it has been released.
Without fansubbers there would be no anime market in the USA. Fansubbing is what made anime popular. Also fansubs are just about the only advertising that most of the licensed stuff gets.
Even people that have qualms about downloading MP3s may not feel bad about downloading an anime that isn't available here in the forseeable future. Liscence holders can't complain about lost revenue if they don't even offer the product.
what? 99% doesn't make it to the US? Wow.
I've worked with Anime News Network for 5 years in a number of positions. Currently I'm a translator, although I used to be in a number of other positions. Due to my positions and the required knowledge of the medium, I watched over 1,000 different series and films during that time.
To the best of my knowledge, there are currently about 1500 distinct anime films/series licensed for distribution in the US, and another 1000 that were licensed but whose licenses have expired or have vanished into obscurity. If that's 1% of the total commercial anime output in Japan, then there must be something like 250,000 different series in Japan since the birth of modern "anime" with Tezuka's Tetsuwan Atom (Astroboy).. that was in 1963. That means Japan needed to make around 6000 titles PER YEAR.
Uh.. No, that's definitely not true.
Even including the lost experimental/pre-war material, anime didn't become a profitable commercial venture until the 1950s in the form of feature films. Anime didn't air on TV until the 1960s, and the direct-to-video market didn't begin until the 1980s. The 80s saw a boom in direct-to-video production, but that collapsed in the 1990s. TV animation blossomed in the 1990s because computers replaced painters and in-betweeners.
If you look at anime seasons in Japan, about 2/3rds of current shows will be licensed and released within the next 2 years. Within 5 years, we should expect over 80% of *currently airing* series to be released in the States.
Surely you can't say 99% hasn't ever been seen in the US. Whoever said that number was either delusional, or misleading. I wonder who the source is...
present day... present time... hahahaha...
They expect all their media to be in English, and laugh at others who speak English with an accent. White American males, in particular, can't stand a non-white male lead in a movie.
Meanwhile, other countries, such as Japan and China, consume American media watching subtitles, with white actors.
We have a double standard here.
First of all, something like 1% of the fansub community does work that's any good. The sad thing is, atleast 5% of the fansub community tends to do a better job than the US companies that license the shows. I myself almost refuse to buy American anime DVDs. Besides the fact that the translations are crap, and at times utterly ridiculous, they also encode the DVDs horribly.
I have Japanese DVDs that have two episodes, no extras, and no English soundtrack, and use MORE of the DVDs' capacity than the US releases with FOUR EPISODES, extras, and additional English audio.
If American fans are buying less anime, it's because they don't want to spend hard-earned money on CRAP, imagine that. Fix the problem not the symptoms.
Example:
Soukyuu no Fafner just came out in the US, the Fafner robots are named Mk. Elf, Mk. Sechs, Mk. Vier, Mk. Drie, and Mk. Nicht. (Those are just the ones I can remember off-hand), as you probably noticed, with the exception of Mark Nicht, they're all german numbers. These correspond to the numbers on them in roman numerals. The folks over at Geneon have taken the liberty (Read: A long walk off the pier of wtf?) and are calling Mark Sechs 'Zexs'. Between that, and their overall flaky transliteration, it was enough to make me boycott Geneon once and for all.
And for the last goddamn time, you Pioneer rejects, -chan does NOT translate to prefixing the subject with 'little'. LEARN JAPANESE.
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
Herein lies the problem with the industry and the power of the consumer.
The industry is facing obsolesence because it is not satisfying the demands of the fans. A recent paper on copyright I read stated that without a commercial alternative, people will find a way to satisfy their demand though illegal it may be. Consumers are less worried about the legal repercussions of their activities and more greedy nowadays.
Consumers have more power to create those works should the industry fail thanks to the internet and all the programs out there such as Bittorrent, VirtualDub, Xvid and Substation Alpha. If I want to watch the latest anime out of Japan, I don't go to US companies, I go on the internet to the latest and greatest bittorrent site. Fans are creating computer files with subtitles within a day of the show airing. Name one US company that is even considering how to compete with that.
So here is the challenge to the anime companies - Create a commercial alternative to fansubs or face irrelevance in your business models.
Why not? Temuera Morrison could shoot her in the back too :)
Not Free SF Reader
"I mean, who is this stuff really supposed to appeal to?"
You had me at, "School girls with gigantic breasts. Check."
Look at your list again. Take the average release time.
Oops. That's just the "G" list.
How's about that year and a half for Angelic Layer?
How's about the year and two months for the Appleseed movie, only for them to show it in a pitiful number of theaters?
How's about a full year for Azumanga Daioh?
Wow. And that's just the "A" list.
You just proved my point FOR me. For every one that gets a decent turnaround time, there are way too many that they drag their feet on.
Anyone who thinks that fansubs kill the US anime market is a moron. I would never have watched anime if it weren't for fansubs. While I have yet to buy any anime, I might in the future if I ever have an excess of money.
what sig?
Who is that, anyway?
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
As I said, this says it all: http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=145>
Fansubs aren't harming the anime business in america, much less killing it. Overpricing ($25 for two 20 minute episodes for example) and horrid dubbing and story mangling are killing it.
One example. Before One Piece was liscensed for the US, I'd seen fansubs of it up to episode 120 something. Great anime. Saw 3 episodes of the liscensed version on tv. ACK! It's SO SCREWED UP!!!! Ok, I am not a subs or death fanatic, I like a lot of dubs (Gokudo is one of my favorite dubs.) and even think some dubs have better voices for some characters. But that GARBAGE they are trying to pass off as One Piece is Embarrassing! What did they do? Hire a blind monkey to randomly throw feces at reject voice Hactors to pick them? And those "little" changes in the stories is gonna start biting them in the butts before long (I think it's around episodes 60 or 80). The more you stray from the original, the more screwed up it becomes as the story developes. They obviously forgot that non-amercans sometimes use such obscure story techniques as plots, subplots, foreshadowing, and character development.
Ok, I've ranted on that long enough. To sum it up with the short version:
Fansubs created and sustain the american anime market.
I like subs and dubs both, when well done.
The morons releasing the "official" versions have been screwing up the dubs.
A bad or inappropriately translated version will harm the anime market.
I love anime, and want to see more of it.
Watashi Wa Otaku.
http://www.absoluteanime.com/
One of the reasons I like fansubs so much is that they don't assume that you're completely ignorant of Japanese culture. For example, they leave suffixes like -san and -chan on the ends of names. True, most non-Japanese probably wouldn't understand any suffixes beyond -san (thank you, "Karate Kid"). I didn't either, at first. But after watching a bit of fansubbed anime it was quite easy to figure out what they meant. And that does a lot for helping the viewer to understand subtle relationships between characters.
I mean, if someone calls her brother nii-chan vs. nii-san vs. onii-sama vs. ani-ue, it makes a huge difference. But how do you translate that? Answer: you don't You can't. At least, not in any way that doesn't leave it sounding stilted. Not in any way that preserves the subtleties of the relationsuip.
And maybe it's just me, but it just seems . . . wrong, somehow, to see Yamada-san translated as Mr. Yamada.
Fansubs aren't killing the US anime industry. There's actually a discussion thread somewhere on animenewsnetwork.com's forum about it, and there are pages of people who say they discover new series' through fansubs and then buy the licensed copies or at least get rid of the fansubs when a show is released here.
:D
Now crappy translations, rewrites, and senseless cuts... THOSE are killing anime in the English-speaking world. If you're seriously a hardcore anime fan, just learn Japanese and skip all this BS. That way, you can just download raws and not even worry about it!
for all the people who are complaining about a $30 dvd, please remember:
in Japan you're lucky to get 2 episodes on a DVD for less than $30. True, there's a lot of free stuff (pita ten's brilliant models, unpublished illustrations etc) but that's an hour's content. The only company that's ever really tried that is ADV with the Gantz release. They aren't going to do that again as it makes no improvement or detriment to sales.
Voice acting costs. By the time a show is dubbed, you've spent major money, never mind marketing, manufacturing, authoring etc. Fan subbers are fast and free because they use video editing software (and I'd suspect 75%+ of that software is pirate) and their own time. Fan dubs rarely happen as there is no point really. The glory is in the first release of an episode, not saying: hey look, me and my buddies gave $character a voice.
While you may wait 6 months for a DVD, us brits usually wait another 6 months on top (for classification, format changing and region code change) and end up paying £16-20 ($25-$32) for the priveledge of no free promo stuff, no nice boxes, just a long wait.
So think yourself lucky, it could be much worse
Baka Drew
People are complaining about piss poor sub/dub jobs... why doesn't the commercial anime licensees just pirate the translations from the pirates?
The real reason is hidden and not many folks see it. The answer is that the USA companies are trying to setup a different business model than in Japan, and fansubs are proof that it's not working.
In Japan Anime is broadcast on television for free (or a trivial amount for the cable station). Japanese viewers watch the show and then have the option to buy it or not on DVD. There are several results of seeing it on TV: (1) they might find it sucks and decide not to buy it; and (2) the intrigue on what the show is about and what not is gone, so there is always "less" of a desire to buy it; and (3) they might simply record it onto their HD-DVDR recorder and watch it again instead of buying the DVD.
Because of these events, the Japan Anime industry has structured DVD's differently: First, the industry charges more $ for the Anime DVD's in Japan. This is because less people want to purchase the show due to the aforementioned reasons. So to merely break even they need to sell the DVD's for more $. Second, raising the prices of the Japan DVD's still doesn't bring in enough to break even, so the studios release the DVD's with 1 or 2 episodes on them. So, in Japan you'll pay $40-50 for a DVD with 2 episodes, whereas in the USA you'll pay $14.95 for a DVD with 4-5 episodes including dubbed content.
So what are the USA studio's doing wrong? They are trying to force us to buy the entire show on DVD before we can even see it. So we must pay $300 to see **1** entire 26-episode anime, whereas people in Japan can see **all** anime for free. American viewers obviously don't like this proposition so we watch fansubs, as a substitute for Anime on Tv in Japan.
So what is the solution? Simple. Simultaneous broadcast. Show the anime in America and Japan on TV at the same time. Also, Satellite TV allows subtitle streams and multiple audio streams, so we could have a Dubbed in Japanese and in English along with subtitles.
There is something I did not mention though. Advertisement $. When anime is shown on television in Japan, they rake in a good bit on commercials during the anime. When people watch fansubs, potential advertisement $ is lost. So if anime was shown on television in the USA during the same time it was broadcast in Japan (well give or take a few hrs because of the time difference) then the American companies would generate $ through commercials. Also, the potential viewing base is much larger than in Japan so not only would commercial's bring in much more money than in Japan, but mainstream anime on TV would bring in more fans to Anime who would potentially buy the DVDs.
Finally, I know what some will say... that anime is already broadcast on TV in the USA. That's a half-truth. First and foremost, ALL anime in the USA broadcast on TV has been broadcast years prior in Japan. So it's not new anime, it's simply anime new to American TV. What's the problem? Here's a statistic I made up, but it's probably true: at least 50% of people who have already seen the anime via fansubs aren't going to watch it again on TV, especially dubbed in english and hacked up (i.e., anime in japan has tons of great cuss words and boobies and blood, but that's a no-no in the USA). The problem with this is that many hardcore fans, the fans that bring new people to the Anime medium, aren't going to bring their friends to watch it on TV if they've already seen it and it's all hacked up for USA censors and mother's who have no life but complaining about shit.
Additionally, when all the anime is available via fansubs, very few will pay $15/month for ADV's anime-channel which half of the time broadcasts dubbed crap that no one watches to begin with, and irregardless of whether it's dubbed/subbed, it's broadcast at least a year after Japan.
So the simple point is, unless anime is broadcast in both regions at the same time (give/take the time difference) the anime market in the USA will always fall victim to fansubs, and will never realize it's full potential.
Yep. I've seen Blood (rented on video) and Evangelion, (on tv), no idea which versions or by who, but have seen them.
Akira was showing in independent cinemas in the late 80s for example, tons of student types etc. had seen that.
We hard grown up watching Kimba, Marine Boy, Battle of the Planets, etc., etc.
I am certainly no anime nut, however, I'll rent or watch something if it looks interesting.
Vampire Hunter D, Ghost In The Shell, Cowboy Bebop, for example, or even just silly fun stuff occasionally like Gunsmith Cats (some of which again was on tv).
Not Free SF Reader
The think that worders me is why Japanese DVD normally haven't subtitles, even in Japanese itself.
I think adding an English subtitles track doesn't cost very much, and permits english readers to BUY the original DVD instead of forcefully use fansubs.
This maybe will impact the sublicensing on
other countries, but the sublicensed version
could have dubbed audio or different extras,
and has to be of good quality.
I downloaded marmalade boy because it had a funny name (I'd never heard of it; I was expecting it to be ass, and was just planning to kill a few spare minutes). Immediately after reading the fansubbed version, I went out and spent £40 on the paperbacks. I'd like to see someone explain how a jump from never hearing of something (£0) to buying the whole series (£40) was bad for the industry :P
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
Lots of disturbing posts on this subject.
First of all, the US DVD prices are incredibly low. Paying $25 for 4 episodes is so ridiculously cheap that the complaints made seem foolish. I realize it's high by American standards, but compare this with what Japanese DVDs cost!
Amazon.co.jp sells Ghost in the Shell: SAC 2nd Gig DVDs, with two episodes per release, for 6300 yen. That's roughly $30 _per episode_!
Meanwhile, Amazon.com sells the US release of four episodes a volume for $23. Bit of maths, and we suddenly realize that in Japan, anime costs 500% more than in the US. _Without_ subtitles and extra dubs.
Someone might argue that the Japanese get to see all these fabulous shows on TV first, but this is a silly argument. Most anime (excepting Naruto and other popular kiddie shows) is shown after midnight on cable channels, and I'm pretty sure not everyone has a subscription for these.
Then we have the statement that 99% of anime doesn't manage the trip over the ocean...
Today, in 2005, four out of five new anime series are licensed before half of the episodes have aired on Japanese television. The remaining 20% usually get licensed within a year of the first episode.
Most likely, this "99%" figure includes all anime produced before the year 2000, which makes it fairly meaningless. Are we really supposed to demand that American companies pick up obscure cartoons from the 1970's, animated in 5 frames per second? It's just not feasible, and thus the statement is retarded. Statistics used to get attention.
Next, digisubs: the way American licensors pick up shows these days, it's hard to justify the existence and practice of the hundreds ( http://www.animesuki.com/group.php ) of fansub groups out there. There really is a lot of e-penis contest going on with the releases, not to mention political disputes between groups.
However, not all anime does get licensed. There are cases like Pita-ten, a show which I personally adore, which is yet to be picked up for the US market, and it took ages before Hajime no Ippo finally had a release as Fighting Spirit. These shows have both been subtitled in full by digisubbers, for which I am grateful.
Obviously, you do not read enough about the rest of the world to know what you have written is bullshit.
I wonder what the current trend of japanese anime studios INCREASING prices for licensing is doing to the anime community.
Japan knows that anime has blown up in america. It only makes sense to raise their prices.
Does this price increase trickle down to the consumer?
What about the trend of American companies PRODUCING the animes directly. ADV and Geneon have had their hand directly in a few animes these pass 2-3 seasons. Geneon's products came out well, but ADV's are kinda...blah.
These animes are pre-licensed, which makes them kind of "off-limits" to the fansubbing community.
Still....fansubbing will always continue to be the leading edge of the anime community. It is the barometer to the current tastes and trends of what is hot and what is not.
An anime is a good license to buy. Why? Because theres a HUGE fandom thanks to the fansubs. It creates the hype, it creates the buzz. And you CANT BUY THAT.
Take away fansubbing and what will you get? Companies will choose what to license based on their own tastes and interests.
How can a company sell a completely new anime to no fanbase? Its has to market a new product by itself. Some people will buy it, some people wont. Will anime companies create samplers? Will the only place to preview new animes only be in anime conventions? It will cost them more money and if they are unsuccesful, they will fail.
The fansubbers I know take pride in getting it right.
I've met ADV's group, face to face. They have no pride. All they care about is shoving crap out the door as fast as they can.
And they're not even good at THAT.
Got to agree here. It seems like a standard formula for anime series that the first half dozen episodes don't really have anything to do with the "real" plot of the story. They are usually filled with introducing the main characters and describing the world inwhich they live. The plot only starts being revealed once the audience has had time to become familiar with the world. Last Exile, Boogie-Pop Phantom, Witch Hunter Robin, Big O, and GitS are just a few examples of how this formula plays out.
what's really killing the US Anime market the most is dubs. Seriously, if companies like ADV stopped wasting their time and ressources on fucking dubbing and sold only subs:
1) Prices would drop due to lower costs of localization, which would be a very good thing because Anime is way too expensive.
2) Releases would be faster. Fansubs prove that quality subbing can be done in a matter of days, and those guys are only doing it on their spare time! Companies have no excuses.
In that case, it would be funnier by virtue of its unoriginality.
Meta-Modded accordingly.