Beez Entertainment Discussion
- Thread starter melonpan
- Start date
Just a little question here,
Sorry if this has been asked before, there was talking about Gunbuster..
I don't know which part of Gunbuster this was on, but I just recently found that Bandai Visual edited one of the pieces of music that was a parody of a famous piece of music, in their R1 release.
I don't know what the music was called, or if it was in the first or second Gunbuster series, or wherever, but I know as Beez aren't just taking the Bandai Visual production, will this edit be carried over?
I also read around the whole subject and found that the edit was totally pointless, as the piece of music wouldn't have got a lawsuit put against them releasing it.
This kind of editing of music happens in a lot of English releases (see Beck, Speed Grapher, etc), and it's a real shame, but it's even more of a shame when it isn't needed.
Again, sorry if this has been discussed before.
Sorry if this has been asked before, there was talking about Gunbuster..
I don't know which part of Gunbuster this was on, but I just recently found that Bandai Visual edited one of the pieces of music that was a parody of a famous piece of music, in their R1 release.
I don't know what the music was called, or if it was in the first or second Gunbuster series, or wherever, but I know as Beez aren't just taking the Bandai Visual production, will this edit be carried over?
I also read around the whole subject and found that the edit was totally pointless, as the piece of music wouldn't have got a lawsuit put against them releasing it.
This kind of editing of music happens in a lot of English releases (see Beck, Speed Grapher, etc), and it's a real shame, but it's even more of a shame when it isn't needed.
Again, sorry if this has been discussed before.
The piece of music was a new rendition of the score of the song "Chariots of Fire". It plays about half way through the first OVA, If I remember correctly. If the first OVA does get a new proper release over here, I too would love to hear it. I've heard about several problems and sound effects problems and such with what happened with the R1 and would put off buying it straight away with them problems. >__< Saying this, I think I would have to buy it anyway. ;p
I never found out much that was missing from the releases of BECK.. I've heard a Beatles song is missing, Is that all? A lot of the copyrighted images (Coca Cola, etc) are also missing with it.
I never found out much that was missing from the releases of BECK.. I've heard a Beatles song is missing, Is that all? A lot of the copyrighted images (Coca Cola, etc) are also missing with it.
In BECK it was a single song towards the end of the anime. In the original Japanese version Koyuki gets up on stage alone and begins to render a version of the Beatles song, "I've Got a Feeling". FUNimation were unable to licence the song for the US release (for the English dub only, I think (but I haven't compared the broadcast or Japanese DVD versions to the scene) and replaced it with another song.Jayme said:
beez_andrew
Great Teacher
melonpan said:
This has already been answered - my apologies for being slow - things have been very busy the last week or so sadly!
Back to normal(ish) again though!
To clarify it doesn't affect the release from Beez anyway of Gunbuster 2! Am curious if it effected our FR release of Gunbuster 1 now though...
Hope you enjoy it Gunbuster 2
!
fabio de lunatico
Claymore
<a href="http://www.anime-on-line.com/xcart/product.php?productid=17502&cat=0&page=1">Anime-On-Line</a> seem to believe that Gunbuster 2 has been delayed until 7th April (though they also have the wrong cover art). Say it ain't so! All other retailers that I checked are sticking to the 24th March date.
I'd say that's about right judging by Beez's distributor:fabricatedlunatic said:
http://www.pinnacle-vision.co.uk/titles ... Label=B178
Hopefully it won't go any further than that.
fabio de lunatico
Claymore
Ah, crap. I can wait a couple of weeks but, as you say, I hope it isn't subject to further delays.
beez_andrew said:melonpan said:
This has already been answered - my apologies for being slow - things have been very busy the last week or so sadly!
Back to normal(ish) again though!
To clarify it doesn't affect the release from Beez anyway of Gunbuster 2! Am curious if it effected our FR release of Gunbuster 1 now though...
Hope you enjoy it Gunbuster 2
Thanks Andrew. We'll have to wait and see what comes of Gunbuster 1 then.
here's a toughy for you Andrew
Working in retail i've noticed the past few weeks that people are currently having to buy less with the current financial difficulties the USA and UK are having and with the threat of recession getting closer and closer
Has Beez started to feel any impact from this and have they even considered a plan incase a recession does hit, as i personally feel, this is a bigger threat to anime and anime companies than fansubs could ever be.
Working in retail i've noticed the past few weeks that people are currently having to buy less with the current financial difficulties the USA and UK are having and with the threat of recession getting closer and closer
Has Beez started to feel any impact from this and have they even considered a plan incase a recession does hit, as i personally feel, this is a bigger threat to anime and anime companies than fansubs could ever be.
beez_andrew
Great Teacher
Firstly my apologies for the delay in replying to this, it's a big question so while busy I didn't want to just slam together a speedy reply .
Taking this part first, in reality there are only two real options for selling products (physical ones anyway, digi only is of course a whole new kettle of fish):
- Through high-street, internet and dedicated shop (optional for the last one)
- Through a dedicated online shop only or primarily.
Basically the amount of work taken to get anime to the retailers like Play.com etc is the same as that of high street shops like HMV. In our case we use a dedicated sales team at Pinnacle, the cheaper alternative would theoretically to be handling sales ourselves (an INCREDIBLE extra weight of work especially building a good working relationship up, which can take upward of 5-10 years) and dealing with a smaller volume of them such as just play.com, HMV.co.uk etc.
The answer to the question of Joe Average buying anime on the street - theoretically the answer is yes. People are exposed to anime sometimes without knowing so as kids so when they hit their teenage years and have enough disposable income for DVDs or such every so often - they may pick one up as it catches their eye (due to exposure in the past etc). That's at least the theory - maybe it's more true for the original UK Pokemon generation exposed to anime on channels like ITV more than others though. Sales figures will probably answer that though as a new generation reach the age they may buy DVDs etc.
Definitely - unlike the TRSI model or BV USA one, who's website sales were already prominent or pushed as their primary distribution channels - we have worked with Play.com, HMV, Amazon, Zavvi etc. That would mean a massive campaign to raise awareness of the Bandai site, one that may well not pay out in the end as you lose even remote potential for people to pick up titles casually in the streets. While the more vocal fans such as yourselves may find it - what of fans who may buy their anime from Forbidden Planet, HMV or such but are not particularly into the community scene? There would inevitably be a drop in buyers just due to it not being as widely available anymore.
In effect, you'd be cutting new fans not up on the whole fandom out of the loop possibly. While this does not seem a big thing keep in mind what often makes money is only done by getting a lot of units out to retailers so you have as wide a net as possible. There's always going to be returns of X% (say 30%) of returned stock from every retailer, that still means 70% stuck and was either sold or kept. Reduce it to a model that uses only your own site then you need extremely high unit sales to make back any kind of profit on a title, even if the release came at the same RRP you got in the high street.
The downside to running both models in parallel is if you run a massive PR campaign about how cheap your dedicated site is for your titles - other retailers will take notice and understandably refuse to take as many units from you, if any, as effectively you're interfering with their sales then to an extent. It's a rather prickly game of swings and roundabouts ±_±!
Regarding TV advertising, while an ad in a magazine like SFX for example may cost upward of £1000 for an A4 page, imagine the cost for TV! You're into big figures, almost as much as production costs. While it may boost awareness, you almost certainly would make a loss on it unless done in collaboration with a game tie-in or such.
While it is true BVUSA has not done a bad job of running their online shop (barring gripes from many about prices) by offering a 100% authentic Japanese release - the US market is much larger so you can guarantee that even a small wedge will be happy to buy the BVUSA releases (especially those who know the cost would be about the same to import it from Japan without subtitles or shiny extras). In the UK you may have that but very very much smaller, look at how many people complain if you release a title with 4 episodes at 19.99, imagine if that was 2 episodes and you got a flag, or artcards with it vs those who'd buy it!
I do respect the BVUSA model a lot for what has been done as it's a shining example of at the very least, without getting everyone bogged down in a price argument, it is well designed, has company blogs and offers extra incentives to buy on almost every title! I'd be insane to say I didn't think it would be nice to have that kind of style site open for business in the UK at standard UK price rates ^^;. Sadly it goes back to what was said above really, sales to other companies almost has to take precedence as they are often willing to take more units total by far than we could guarantee in sales via a dedicated site!
That's a nice idea again, though at present the UK market really isn't strong enough to support such a style to be honest. It works when there is a title that fans recognize and adore, that you can guarantee at least 2000 units sell through, If you look at the release of City Hunter complete in France for example. All 140 episodes, over 21 DVDs or so, with a massive art book and amazing case to boot (got one sitting here on my shelf from work) - that retailed for circa €379. In France that shifted considerably more than 2000 units, but say we took an imaginary series of similar length and for argument's sake popularity to the UK, did similar with a £300 price tag. How many would pay that for it to make it profitable?
It's a difficult one again and it's my hope that eventually such a style is possible - but treating the market as exclusively that would be a bit harsh to the fans who enjoy the anime but don't want an expensive++ release too! In many ways best to always offer a cheap alternative too so the collectors can get the limited release, whilst those not so fussed don't have to feel pressured into getting it.
Last I checked our warehouse we had a few left of each - they haven't done greatly but not badly either. But the thing is it's not a matter of price on that title - what it does have to do with is that Manga released a dirt cheap double pack of the films before their license ran out! So a lot of the UK who wanted it bought it already, any higher price than it was already set at would likely have scared off fans looking for the LE release even sadly.
That being said, sales were encouraging enough for me want to try another title in such a release fashion in future if the chance came up!
I completely agree that LE sales do well - although as you say the music examples really don't correlate to anime sales (as much as every marketer in the field wishes they would!!) Done well a LE release can do exceptionally well, for us Haruhi LE's will almost guarantee a sell out as we're testing the water each release will be limited to 500 at present to test the waters. Personally I'd like to work on more LE's in future though and build up our experience on releasing such works though - so watch this space.
In the end I think that comes down to the concern that while there are undeniably people who fit into the category of collectors in the UK - there's not enough willing to pay at the necessary price point to make back costs of production etc for any sufficiently collectors edition release. That may well change in the near future and the sales of titles like Patlabor LE have certainly not discouraged me from considering options for titles in future, take the Haruhi releases as an example!
Very much so, viral is very much the way to go in future to an extent provided you are engineering enough! Watch this space for more on it, but just look at the effect one Neo advert had on the internet when no company's name was stamped on it for example.
Hope this helps a bit anyway - a lot could work there, such as collectors releases become far more collector's - but sadly it may be a while off evolving that way yet ^^;!
.melonpan said:
Taking this part first, in reality there are only two real options for selling products (physical ones anyway, digi only is of course a whole new kettle of fish):
- Through high-street, internet and dedicated shop (optional for the last one)
- Through a dedicated online shop only or primarily.
Basically the amount of work taken to get anime to the retailers like Play.com etc is the same as that of high street shops like HMV. In our case we use a dedicated sales team at Pinnacle, the cheaper alternative would theoretically to be handling sales ourselves (an INCREDIBLE extra weight of work especially building a good working relationship up, which can take upward of 5-10 years) and dealing with a smaller volume of them such as just play.com, HMV.co.uk etc.
The answer to the question of Joe Average buying anime on the street - theoretically the answer is yes. People are exposed to anime sometimes without knowing so as kids so when they hit their teenage years and have enough disposable income for DVDs or such every so often - they may pick one up as it catches their eye (due to exposure in the past etc). That's at least the theory - maybe it's more true for the original UK Pokemon generation exposed to anime on channels like ITV more than others though. Sales figures will probably answer that though as a new generation reach the age they may buy DVDs etc.
melonpan said:
Definitely - unlike the TRSI model or BV USA one, who's website sales were already prominent or pushed as their primary distribution channels - we have worked with Play.com, HMV, Amazon, Zavvi etc. That would mean a massive campaign to raise awareness of the Bandai site, one that may well not pay out in the end as you lose even remote potential for people to pick up titles casually in the streets. While the more vocal fans such as yourselves may find it - what of fans who may buy their anime from Forbidden Planet, HMV or such but are not particularly into the community scene? There would inevitably be a drop in buyers just due to it not being as widely available anymore.
In effect, you'd be cutting new fans not up on the whole fandom out of the loop possibly. While this does not seem a big thing keep in mind what often makes money is only done by getting a lot of units out to retailers so you have as wide a net as possible. There's always going to be returns of X% (say 30%) of returned stock from every retailer, that still means 70% stuck and was either sold or kept. Reduce it to a model that uses only your own site then you need extremely high unit sales to make back any kind of profit on a title, even if the release came at the same RRP you got in the high street.
The downside to running both models in parallel is if you run a massive PR campaign about how cheap your dedicated site is for your titles - other retailers will take notice and understandably refuse to take as many units from you, if any, as effectively you're interfering with their sales then to an extent. It's a rather prickly game of swings and roundabouts ±_±!
melonpan said:
Regarding TV advertising, while an ad in a magazine like SFX for example may cost upward of £1000 for an A4 page, imagine the cost for TV! You're into big figures, almost as much as production costs. While it may boost awareness, you almost certainly would make a loss on it unless done in collaboration with a game tie-in or such.
While it is true BVUSA has not done a bad job of running their online shop (barring gripes from many about prices) by offering a 100% authentic Japanese release - the US market is much larger so you can guarantee that even a small wedge will be happy to buy the BVUSA releases (especially those who know the cost would be about the same to import it from Japan without subtitles or shiny extras). In the UK you may have that but very very much smaller, look at how many people complain if you release a title with 4 episodes at 19.99, imagine if that was 2 episodes and you got a flag, or artcards with it vs those who'd buy it!
I do respect the BVUSA model a lot for what has been done as it's a shining example of at the very least, without getting everyone bogged down in a price argument, it is well designed, has company blogs and offers extra incentives to buy on almost every title! I'd be insane to say I didn't think it would be nice to have that kind of style site open for business in the UK at standard UK price rates ^^;. Sadly it goes back to what was said above really, sales to other companies almost has to take precedence as they are often willing to take more units total by far than we could guarantee in sales via a dedicated site!
melonpan said:
That's a nice idea again, though at present the UK market really isn't strong enough to support such a style to be honest. It works when there is a title that fans recognize and adore, that you can guarantee at least 2000 units sell through, If you look at the release of City Hunter complete in France for example. All 140 episodes, over 21 DVDs or so, with a massive art book and amazing case to boot (got one sitting here on my shelf from work) - that retailed for circa €379. In France that shifted considerably more than 2000 units, but say we took an imaginary series of similar length and for argument's sake popularity to the UK, did similar with a £300 price tag. How many would pay that for it to make it profitable?
It's a difficult one again and it's my hope that eventually such a style is possible - but treating the market as exclusively that would be a bit harsh to the fans who enjoy the anime but don't want an expensive++ release too! In many ways best to always offer a cheap alternative too so the collectors can get the limited release, whilst those not so fussed don't have to feel pressured into getting it.
melonpan said:
Last I checked our warehouse we had a few left of each - they haven't done greatly but not badly either. But the thing is it's not a matter of price on that title - what it does have to do with is that Manga released a dirt cheap double pack of the films before their license ran out! So a lot of the UK who wanted it bought it already, any higher price than it was already set at would likely have scared off fans looking for the LE release even sadly.
That being said, sales were encouraging enough for me want to try another title in such a release fashion in future if the chance came up!
melonpan said:
I completely agree that LE sales do well - although as you say the music examples really don't correlate to anime sales (as much as every marketer in the field wishes they would!!) Done well a LE release can do exceptionally well, for us Haruhi LE's will almost guarantee a sell out as we're testing the water each release will be limited to 500 at present to test the waters. Personally I'd like to work on more LE's in future though and build up our experience on releasing such works though - so watch this space
.melonpan said:
In the end I think that comes down to the concern that while there are undeniably people who fit into the category of collectors in the UK - there's not enough willing to pay at the necessary price point to make back costs of production etc for any sufficiently collectors edition release. That may well change in the near future and the sales of titles like Patlabor LE have certainly not discouraged me from considering options for titles in future, take the Haruhi releases as an example!
melonpan said:
Very much so, viral is very much the way to go in future to an extent provided you are engineering enough! Watch this space for more on it, but just look at the effect one Neo advert had on the internet when no company's name was stamped on it for example
.Hope this helps a bit anyway - a lot could work there, such as collectors releases become far more collector's - but sadly it may be a while off evolving that way yet ^^;!
beez_andrew
Great Teacher
Ushio said:
It should not go any further than that, terribly sorry for the delays everyone. Basically there was an issue attaching BBFC certificates to the titles in the warehouse + delays from couriers.
Very sorry for the delay guys!
beez_andrew
Great Teacher
Ryo Chan said:
Very good observation - and I think everyone has started to feel the pinch sadly. Nobody is buying as much DVD wise as they used to for any number of reasons.
The best plan for recession etc to be honest is really just not doing anything stupid with releases as far as possible, weather in and release what you know will sell relatively well etc. In a way fansubs may be part of the threat indirectly but by far they are not the main part of the recession.
In away - anime and gaming share a bizarre inverse relationship. Many anime fans are also gamers, so while the Next Gen gaming boom is going on, sales are rocketing for games + consoles, people spending on those are less willing to shell X quid out on their favourite anime!
Sadly that means, by signs of how the games market is going then the recession for anime may well last for quite a while, maybe as far as 3-4 years!
In summary - personally I'd say we're feeling the pinch as much as everyone is at present and everyone is looking at ways to tide themselves over really ^^.
Here's a question... When are you going to give the masterer/producer/manufacturer of your DVDs a slap?
I just bought disk 9 of Eureka Seven and i'm bloomin sick of buying Beez disks that are out of audio sync, not to mention the fact that the interview with Crispin Freeman has no audio 'whatsoever'. :x
Still, at least it's not bad as disk 6. I'd rather have an entire disk out of sync by a small amount than have a single episode out by 2 whole seconds, even if it is annoying.
-Edit- Sorry if that came over as a bit harsh, i'm having a bad day and i'm a little piddled off, but the points still stand though.
I just bought disk 9 of Eureka Seven and i'm bloomin sick of buying Beez disks that are out of audio sync, not to mention the fact that the interview with Crispin Freeman has no audio 'whatsoever'. :x
Still, at least it's not bad as disk 6. I'd rather have an entire disk out of sync by a small amount than have a single episode out by 2 whole seconds, even if it is annoying.
-Edit- Sorry if that came over as a bit harsh, i'm having a bad day and i'm a little piddled off, but the points still stand though.