Hello!
I must have a complete blind-streak just now as I went straight to introducing myself and somehow missed this post altogether! Am so sorry - as you can see I'm posting on my Saturday here - working from home = bad everyone!
Starting off with DanIMe-sama's post and working my way along (be ready for quite a few replies!):
DaNiMe-sama said:
Well, I've seen a new member called beez_andrew recently browsing the forums, and it would be really nice to have some real contact with a representitive from a distributor because that seldom happens on any UK forums I've seen.
To my knowledge I'm the first person who actually runs the marketing and PR for any of the anime companies in the UK to throw themselves into the lions den so to speak on more than a one-off basis! None of us have _much_ time in our days so as you can see I'm doing this in my out of hours stuff! It's a nice to be here though as you it's you guys who keep everything ticking really!
DaNiMe-sama said:
So, basically, I'm wondering quite a few things really, I know I could talk about lots of anime series, but I want to focus on FLCL, because it isn't tied to a specific US distributor, i.e. it doesn't go directly to any UK distributor.
Firstly; is this even a possibility for being released in the UK?
All I can say on the FLCL front is that it's a fantastic title really - one I have a lot of respect for and would
love to see in the UK!
Given the nature of the UK market it only has room for titles coming over that are over 2 years old and not released in the UK before for one of two reasons:
i) It's an incredibly good title that has been overlooked by a whole fanbase in the UK that hasn't imported it, or people would have incentive to buy again (like access to remastered copies or such).
ii) It's a title that has retro value and people fondly remember from their childhoods.
FLCL I would say fits into category (i) pretty neatly! However since it is a title that isn't tied to any one company in the UK with a US counterpart - that makes it trickier.
Whilst I can safely say it isn't on Beez's lists just now - that is definitely not to say that it's ruled out for UK release as there are a fistful of companies in the UK (three to mind) who have a broader remit for where titles they are likely to take from. So I would cross your fingers on that one guys, I know I'd love to see it in the UK personally!
DaNiMe-sama said:
Secondly; with the recent announcement of AnimeCentral, and it showing a lot of Beez' shows, how possible would it be to get FLCL on TV. Not just on AnimeCentral though, I mean a terrestrial channel. I wonder about FLCL because it seems to be accessible to lots of different types of people as it includes popular culture (albeit Japanese most of the time), vivid animation that would capture anyones attention.. and music that is popular in the demographic that FLCL targets.
That's a pretty deep question really actually - from experience on this topic (there have been murmurs about some titles going terrestrial wise before that never really got past initial talks) I would say very difficult. This is mostly because soon there will be no such thing as terrestrial TV anymore, I believe there's a cut off date lined up when everything switches to digital - so soon every channel is digital.
Rephrasing the question to how possible it is to get it onto one of the big name channels is similar - even if you hold in your hands a good deal of AAA titles per se, your odds are difficult as channels like the BBC have a certain commitment to types of shows it wants and how many are produced in the UK. This means the kind of animation desired is either shorts or stand alone features like Belleville Rendez-vous (off top of my head) or childrens animation. Both of which most anime series don't fit under sadly (try telling channels that Panda-Z's battery-eating episode is safe for children to watch nowadays for example, it's not something I can ever do with a completely straight face!).
What I would say though is channels like AnimeCentral and the Anime Network block on Propeller TV though are carving the way for the big people like SKY to take interest and start thinking "Hey, this anime lark is pretty interesting - maybe we should find a way to incorporate it into one of our channels...". Now _that's_ when the answer goes from "very difficult" to a better answer I would hope
.
So the short answer just now is it's about as easy as persuading anyone that £20 is a viable selling price for a DVD
.
DaNiMe-sama said:
Lastly, and this is a totally different topic. With Bandai Ent starting to release manga in the US (Eureka Seven, Witchblade, etc), how possible is it for Beez to go into releasing manga? There are a lot of manga titles out there that are currently not planned for a UK release, and probably never will be. Not only that, with the recent surge of announcements of 'light novels', it can be assumed that they are becoming very popular, and of course, the whole Japanese book interest in France, and the rest of Europe is quite massive, with the French market often releasing titles before, or even without a US release. (Probably having a better release in some cases, with the edits made in US releases). I know this is kind of a futile question, but anything is possible.
In theory - it's a feasible idea and you would think it would be easy wouldn't you? There's no region locks or encoding issues there - it's surely a matter of taking the printed copies and shipping them over after getting the rights?
I actually have evaluated how feasible this has been for a while now - since I started the job over two years back now. The fact we see manga now in bookshops and even magazine shops in airports now is an amazing feat. Almost solely thanks to the amazing work that people like Dennis at Tokyopop has put in to make it viable in the UK - with people like Tanoshimi and Gollancz not to mention Simon and Schuster joining the fray after.
This means it would be incredibly difficult to join that market now without a really solid set of releases behind you and a lot of other factors needing to be taken into account. So right now it's still at a stage where we re-examine the concept periodically as well as our options.
It's also a culture question really, in France it's perfectly acceptable to be an adult who loves to read comic books still - for example the massive Virgin on the Champs-Elysées has a whole large section devoted to comics and manga! So there has been a manga industry there longer - meaning they pick series up very quickly and start translating and releasing quicker because they have a market there who will buy each volume quickly! An example being Samurai Deeper Kyo (a guilty pleasure of mine), in France they're finished translating it and releasing it! In the US they're up to Volume 22, with the UK just releasing them playing catch up.
Give it some time and if the UK market continues to grow then the UK may start seeing a similar trend in manga, though cost wise I would imagine it is a similar problem to DVDs!
DaNiMe-sama said:
On the Haruhi note, I know the anime release for Haruhi seems to be quite a bother with all the different involvements of different US companies, so how possible would it be to release the extremely popular Haruhi light novels? I'm sure novels are cheaper to license than anime (although translation costs would be high).
Haruhi light novels are a seperate story again! Theoretically it depends on what the license holder feels, how much of a market there is for them and the translation costs. Translation isn't the issue so much as the cost of the license vs demand not being matched really sadly. So you'd more often than not make back the costs as light novels are not really easily sell-able to anyone who isn't a fan of the series given very often the quality of the light novels.
So the answer is - possible theoretically but not very likely for now really sadly
.
I hope those answer your questions - I'm really sorry for having taken so long!
