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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."
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,
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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*
Yeah, because "Ed, Edd, and Eddy" is animated so much better than "Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex", and the stories are so much more interesting and insightful.
</SARCASM>
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
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.)
Y'know, I think you're being a little disingenuous here. From the front page on your own site, we find:
So it sounds to me like, rather than being "killed" by "piracy", you've noticed a change in the market landscape, and are adapting to try and meet the change. In other words, you're responding to your market rather than whining about the way things "should be."
That's the way it's supposed to work, and bravo to you, sir, for having the presence of mind to recognize it, and the courage to act on it. I don't imagine the transition will be at all easy -- navigating uncharted territory rarely is -- but the fact you're willing to give it a go, in my book, puts you ahead of the game.
Best of fortune to you.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
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 will admit that there is a lot of crap out there, but believe me we are not getting the 'cream of the crop'... Look at some of the crap that's shown on the cable channels over the last couple of years: Beyblade? Ultimate Muscle? Don't make me laugh.
What we need is some more of the decent animes like Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and Last Exile (That thank god has finally made it's way over here to the UK) to make their way over here with decent Dubs, accurate subs and decent prices... £20+ is NOT a acceptable for a DVD with 3, 20 minute episodes. Thats what, £180+ for a 26 Episode series? Ridiculous! And what about series like Inuyasha? Well over £1000...It's just not viable.
And besides, in my honest opinion, my experience shows that fansubbers generally produced a higher quality and more accurate translation that most of the DVD releases have. Why should we pay for something of lower quality?
Anime is extremely overpriced. I can buy the complete season of futurama for $40, if I try to buy the complete season of Cowboy Bebop (a very popular anime) it will cost over $100, probably closer to $150.
Its simply economics. Every anime I have watched in fansub all the way through, I have bought the series. Fansubs are the only thing that gets me to buy anime at all.
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 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
Well, as one example, why not COMBINE the used stuff and rentals. Like basically allow a customer to rent any used title. That saves and inventory. Now here's the kicker. If they decide they like something, credit the rental fee 100% towards the purchase. That way there's a lower barrier to entry to see if you like something, lower even than a simple rental, because if they decide to buy, the rental money isn't "wasted".
As another idea, have "giveaway" discs. Something like for every $150, or $200, or whatever they spend on videos, they get a free DVD. Make that free DVD the first one from one of the more obscure series, and again, it gets it exposure, and even if it's something they aren't crazy about , who's gonna argue with free? Plus, provided the stuff is decent, some percentage will go on to BUY the rest of the series. This could very well offset the cost of the "giveaway" DVDs, entirely.
TODO: Something witty here...
Do you even have a vague idea of what you're talking about?
:(), there can be dozens of typos per episode in a fansub. "90% of fansub groups" is a huge over-exageration, because well under half of the fansub groups out there even put out decent product. The amount of groups that can even HOPE to put out a typo-free script come in at around a dozen maybe, imo (possibly a few more; I don't watch as many fansubs as I used to - the quality and delays often depresses me, so I stick to series that are fully subbed by good groups).
First, let's comment on the Zeta boxset. YES, the subs are BADLY messed up. But do you even have a clue how badly messed up they are? The first half of the series had semicolon abuse. Not just an over-use of semicolons, but they even featured using semicolons instead of commas. "Bill, what are you doing?" became "Bill; what are you doing?"
Argh. That made me want to destroy the world.
Thankfully, I found the translation and the editing FAR more solid on the second half.
However, it is not true to say that "meaning is completely lost". It has been theorised that the script used for the subtitles was based on an old dub script (which was revised for the actual dub, since the dub is actually more accurate to the original Japanese dub), which means the subtitles display, if somewhat loosely on many ocations, what the Japanese is saying.
The number of times that's happened in a fansub with out you knowing it? Probably dozens or hundreds. If you knew Japanese well enough to comment on these issues, you'd have commented more deeply on the problem with Zeta's subtitles. I myself have said "Eh?" many times when watching fansubs, and I only possess the very basic of Japanese knowledge. The same can be said for R1 DVDs. If you're that good with Japanese, you'd realise that mis-translations are all around you -- and probably a lot more of them on the fansub side, too...
I think the center of the point is: people are human and people are different. Fansub groups are different and so are R1 anime companies. Essentially, human beings have different levels of skill, and different groups/companies have different levels of skill/care.
There's a great many fansubs that are well-produced. There are also a great many DVDs that are well-produced.
And, OH!?, you spotted some typos in the subtitles!? Which fansubs are YOU watching? It's not like there hasn't been any typos in fansubs. I mean, if you come down from those top-quality groups (which there are far too few of
I admit some ADV DVDs can be VERY bad, but boo-hoo. Speed-subbed Naruto is VERY, VERY, VERY bad. Go watch that, if you think it's so great.
And on money, that is more of a complicated issue, which I don't like discussing.
But the thing I have to ask is: what do American shows have to do with anime? What does it have to do with the price of fish in China? Nothing.
That's like complaining that buying PCs is too expensive when compared to buying motorcycles.
Anime is animated and comes from Japan. IT COMES FROM A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT ECONOMY. The costs involed in making anime in a different economy differ completely from an American show. Shall we also mention that the AUDIENCE differs completely? That anime is aimed at a TINY audience compared to the listed American shows? I'm sure if Geneon knew that Last Exile would sell HALF as much as Friends or something then they'd be happy to sell the boxset for $60.
I think at the end of the day it's VERY important to consider things on a global scale. Yes, there are bad products that have been released on DVD. But there are an equal - or most-probably even greater - number of bad products released as fansubs. Saying that EITHER fansubs are trash or DVDs are trash is just wrong, imo.
However, the quality of DVDs has been on a steady rise since the start of the anime DVD market.
Really, I can't stand people who're like "OMG, R1 DVDs sux! XXX DVD HAS A PROBLEM! FANSHRUBS FOREVA!"
R1 DVDs are l33t, a
"1. Release anime at a much better price point"
..."
:)
HEAR, HEAR!!!
Seriously, $19 for two eps? $30 for 4 eps? That's the REAL piracy!
"2. Add value to the disc with extras like posters,
PFFFTTTTT.
Not intersted.
"3. Add value to the translations."
This is key!!!
You've hit the nail on the head with this one!
Anime releasing companies take notes!
"4. *CRACK DOWN ON PIRACY*"
Crack down on the REAL piracy. People selling it on Ebay. Selling it on NYC street corners.
FREE-release fansubs are not killing it, they are actually FREE ADVERTISING!
"I have had dozens of "customers" who want to buy Cowboy Bebop, DBZ, or other popular box sets and only expect to pay $25 like they would on Ebay"
That's called free-market. What these people are telling you is that anime titles are WAY overpriced. You shouldn't blame piracy for that, blame ADV, GEneon, etc., for overpricing their stuff.
"3: Used anime. I didn't do a lot of business in it, but the margins are fat, fat, fat."
Dude, this is the SAME as the piracy you complained of! You're not selling the original, never-purchased-before disks, so you were undercutting YOURSELF!
Not to mention it's evil and immoral to give someone $5 for a used disk, then turn around and sell it for $15.