The News Thread (for news that does not need a thread)
anime_andrew said:
I think some of it is likely part of a coordinated campaign from some of our shadier competitors in France (definitely not KAZE or Dybex anyway) - as we've taken a lot of classic titles they used to sell cheaply (as they didn't pay royalties to Japan) and are releasing them properly.
(Tardy) frenchfag here. Got here through twitter today.
Let's get this straight : there's no plot on the continent to discredit the French branch of @anime, even from IDP/Déclic, Black Box or anyone else. They brought it on themselves.
Last year, just before Japan Expo, Monsieur Littardi, your French associate, was all high and mighty, doing interview everywhere on the web and even on television and saying that he came back to the business of Japanese animation because the Japanese producers asked him to (sic) and that @anime was all about ending the mediocrity of anime edition in France and that it had a price. He even tackled some of your competitors in the process. The result ? Probably the worst debut for an anime editor in France since Anima. I think we can count the number of @anime release that didn't have a problem on the hand of the Baron Empain, or even on Django Reinhardt's. Nearly every major release was flawed in a way or another.
Attack on Titan and Kill la Kill ? No next episode preview and the subtitles still had translation mistakes and typos that were on the Wakanim subtitles. KLK got even more typos in the process. Cat's Eye ? No opening, no ending, no next episode preview and even no chapters. I don't think I need to remind you what happened with Gurren-Lagann. And this week we discovered that Space Dandy's french subtitles are messed up on one episode... Even technically good releases may be flawed, like the third Madoka Magica movie's box which is a little bit smaller than the first two's, it may seems a minor flaw but as it is a collector's edition it clearly shows some disdain in its confection.
I know that nowdays QC is a very overrated thing, but still. If you want to place yourself on the high-end niche of the anime market, you can't allow yourself to sell so much flawed products. I'm sorry, but when you're selling a 26 episodes TV series for 150€, you should not have even a minute of it from that comes from an upscaled PAL DVD.
And there were some other annoyances, like the fact that over here every @anime crowdfunded edition could be found at retailers for less that what was asked to the backers a mere few weeks after their release. Even _your_ Patema Inverted ultimate edition. Which clearly shows how much contempt the french team have for their most loyal customers.
Of course there's also a bunch of haters who simply don't want to pay more than 25€ for a 26 episode series. but they're clearly the minority. Most of die-hard fans over here are willing to pay the price for quality editions of their favourite shows and were waiting to see what you would propose.
And why did we complained to you and the UK team ? Because when we asked @anime France for some answers, they mostly ignored us, or we were given some arrogant answers like when Monsieur Littardi said on twitter that not having the op, ed and previews in Cat's Eye's blu-ray was not a problem as nobody watches them anyway.
That's where we are now. @anime France's reputation over here is that they're a bunch of assholes who don't care about anything except the money. And it's deserved, because they didn't do much to avoid it. You must know how trust is hard to build and easy to lose, well @Anime France will now have to start back from scratches as every ounce of goodwill french fans were ready to give them is now scattered, but they repeatedly showed that they simply didn't care. And it will be a long, a painful and an ungrateful process. But as I wrote earlier, they brought it on themselves.
Well, that's it. I hope I helped you to better understand what's going on here and that you will be able to help improve the situation. Because as much as I don't care for @Anime france right now, I'm also hopping that a competent anime publisher will come to be as the French market is really really in a sad state right now.
