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."

Comments

Closing my Anime store today

[lazuli42]

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

Re:Closing my Anime store today

[lazuli42]

Truly I'm not being disingenuous--My convention business will only be part time and I'm eliminating all DVDs from my inventory. Likewise, I will no longer stock anime music CDs. At one point 40% of my inventory was in DVDs. I can't wait until it becomes 0%.

Taking my show on the road will be part-time work for me. I'll probably make between 6-8k a year as a convention exhibitor which makes it a profitabble side venture but not anything I can rely on to pay all my bills. Yes, that means I'll be taking a part time job (I'll be taking university classes too).

Of course my home page puts the best spin on it as possible. I'm currently working on an 'autopsy report' to figure out what went right, what went wrong, and how to best approach the business in the future.

P.S. it's not sir

Re:Closing my Anime store today

[lazuli42]

So, what do you think the anime producers could have done to change the effects of piracy

In my opinion anime publishers needed (and still need) to do four things:

1. Release anime at a much better price point. I hated having to sell anime at $29.99 a disc, but considering some of the margins I had to work with I didn't have much wiggle room. Multiply that by 6 or 8 and you end up paying up to (or over) $200 for a series. In my opinion they need to charge about $3-$5 dollar an episode and pack 4-5 episodes on each disc. Currently, publishers like Geneon frequently charge up to $10 an episode (3 on a $30 disc). It's just too expensive.

2. Add value to the disc with extras like posters, stickers, lapel pins, pencil boards, and other collectibles. Those really appeal to collectors and can't be digitally duplicated.

3. Add value to the translations. ADV has done a nice job with some of their releases such as Excel Saga. The Japanese and English audio are there, but what's really excellent are the multiple subtitle modes which illustrate sign names, pop up information about puns or Japanese idioms, and generally inform the viewer on why the producers have added those elements to the show.

4. *CRACK DOWN ON PIRACY* A search on Ebay on any popular anime series will bring back dozens of hits for illegal pirate copies. 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. As a small store owner I have no power to crack down on the pirates myself. I've tried to call ADV, Geneon and Central Park to find out what their anti-pirate strategies are but I've never received a return phone call.

Maybe I should ask a different way: what worked?

1: Manga, especially in 2004. That was a huge year for me. However Barnes & Noble and Borders began to really stock their manga sections and that put a knife in the belly of my business.

2: Character goods like toys and t-shirts

3: Used anime. I didn't do a lot of business in it, but the margins are fat, fat, fat.

I agree

[ZosX]

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.

Re:Anime subculture

[Doc Ruby]

That's why Americans don't generally understand anime's unstated backstories, the iconic imagery, the standard storylines. It's not surprising.

What is still surprising is Japan's embrace of American pop culture, which is of course exactly the same kind of product as anime, with different forms and content. Maybe America's postwar pop culture is more universal, having been produced by and for a population from every global culture, including Japan's. Maybe Japanese culture has more experience of swallowing a foreign culture whole, especially after being "conquered" in a war. Maybe American culture resists influences from cultures other than the "Old World" of Europe and Africa. Maybe it was a unique combination of other factors. What exactly is the difference that makes American culture's foreign popularity a one way street? And does anime find any easier acceptance anywhere else outside Japan, or is America just like everywhere else, puzzling over peculiarly Japanese cultural references?

Fansubs++

[solios]

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?

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. :P

Can't comment on what you don't know.....

[Jtheletter]

I see at least four posts modded up to +4 and +5 right now that say the reason why anime isn't big in america is because of the odd japanese character stereotypes (ala blue hair, teen oversexed girls, way-out plots, etc). And in the next sentence these people also more or less state that they don't like most anime except for the stuff they see on Cartoon network. Can anyone spot the logical fallicy here? If we're admitting that 99% of anime doesn't make it here then how can you say that the reason is it's all too stereotyped - you haven't seen the other 99% to know!

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.