Wouldn't normally atm but I'm procrastinating so here's a reply
!
Oh a booklet, odd thing, if I wanted a book, I'd buy a book, since I want an anime series (completed) I'd rather just get an anime series.
I know I'm showing my age a bit, all the artwork, interviews and other things that will be in booklets/books or whatever, used to be on disc extras and this was on a DVD, not a Blu Ray.
That's a legitimate point of view, but unfortunately is a changing one. Standard edition sales are on a constant decline year-on-year not just in anime but in all media sales and moving more to where Anime Ltd have been for the last 5 years there. Anime standard editions are slower to decline but it's happening nonetheless alas.
We still include what we can on the discs though of course and remain passionate about physical media though (wouldn't have started doing vinyl projects otherwise!)
I've been happily haunting this forum for years, this is the reason I finally joined, Why? I know approvals blah blah blah and we're only a small company, surely this should be getting less often, not more as you learn the pitfalls, quirks etc
Unsurprisingly we remain only a small company and actually the more we grow, the more people's responsibilities do too. Between three people in production (one of which is me, who shockingly has much broader tasks to do running a company and one of the other two also cuts our trailers among other tasks) we work really hard. As you'll see further down stats wise, the work as a team really does pay off over time too despite the amount we all juggle!
Were the delays? You bet there were delays - we're the only people who handle the volume of custom editions that we do vs other territories which takes a huge amount of time, money and effort to do. If this were standard editions only then sure I'd say it's a system and you get into that groove but simply put it's not just that for us.
I'm not even going anywhere near the packaging problems (your lie in april part 1) or the disc issues, that seem to happen with an unerring regularity.
And how many companies have gone as far out of their way as us, in anime or generally, to correct problems when they arise at our own expense
? The reputation tends to hang around though on that frontier primarily because we actually stop to acknowledge faults and fix them. Taking your example a 2016 one, which also is a terrible example as it was a pretty complex problem that even the printers couldn't foresee as apparently nobody had mixed that varnish on a digi and rigid at the same time.
It doesn't "excuse" things happening in the first place of course, but it's important to address and improve on them when it makes a difference
.
Before everybody jumps on me, I know MVM and Manga/animatsu aren't perfect either, at least with them you can (kind of) plan ahead for what you want to buy, I'm sure AL tries to, something isn't right if you keep doing the same things wrong though.
This is an interesting point actually as it's very much subjective vs objective. Subjectively I totally see where you're coming from especially if the shows you wanted last year were delayed repeatedly (sorry if so).
On the other hand from an objective point f view - every year we actually do push ourselves to improve though with internal meetings at the start of the year looking back. We're not always going to be moving the particular way every single person would like at any given moment (in general we go for the middle ground of trying to do good generally, with all the things that can backfire in that mix).
With some hard data (albeit simple stuff) it's possible show we're mixing things up / trying to improve annually . Below are the number of new SKUs we have released year on year with the same three person team working in production:
- 2015: 33 SKUs
- 2016: 79 SKUs
- 2017: 127 SKUs
If we were doing things the same, with the same team - is there really any way we'd grow year on year
? Now it may not always go the way everyone would like and more delays happen than we'd of course like but every year we do spend time looking at what we could do differently. This one is no exception to the rule.
Hey ho, hope this was insightful to some
. Will go back to my box now for another few weeks as am super busy!
Best,
AP
