Jerome of Manga UK sounds off about licensing restrictions

Re: Jerome of Manga UK sounds off about licensing restrictio

I get the impression that the UK industry's way of coping with 'competition' from streaming services is to get the shows removed from the streaming services rather than put them up themselves, nowadays. I bet someone reads this and thinks that their mistake was not forcing a UK block on AoT on CR to begin with, instead of getting the message that their potential customers just bally well want access to anime, legally and preferably on as many platforms as possible so they can pick the best option for them.

The US companies get it so much better, with multiple platforms and dual audio catalogue streams and a basic understanding of what 'simulcast' actually means (hint: it's not uploading the episodes four days late with no communication). There have been so many times my anime-curious friends have asked about some show or other they want to watch in the hope that I'll tell them how to do so legally. The UK isn't even trying to attract them as customers (and I don't see why I should help with that when companies like Manga UK aren't catering for me as a customer either any more, so I just send them to the titles Crunchyroll has on offer).

R
 
Re: Jerome of Manga UK sounds off about licensing restrictio

During the Anime Industry panel at May's MCM London Comic Con, as Aniplex, Manga, MVM and AllTheAnime were all there, I did put forward the question of whose responsibility is it to get shows like Attack On Titan and Fate/Zero, that are on the US Netflix library, onto the UK one. The answer I got was a simple "it depends on the individual license" - well, there's a pretty good chance that unless FUNimation are sitting on the rights for the likes of Attack On Titan, that at least one company on that panel has the pen that's authorised to tick the boxes and write the squiggly things on the dotted lines.
Considering that All The Anime have managed to squeeze out DRM-free download-to-own options for some of their titles, I'm surprised that the likes of Kill la Kill and Space Dandy aren't on Netflix.

Netflix really is the service to go for, because unlike Crunchyroll, it really is a mainstream platform. I made an account earlier in the year and since then, I've had to make accounts for many members of my family and I constantly see the automatic Facebook posts about what even people I haven't spoken to for years have watched. If they already have access to Netflix, it becomes so much easier to say "Hey, give Breaking Bad/Orange Is The New Black/Attack On Titan a go and tell me what you think" than shoving a DVD/Blu-ray in their face or telling them to go to a website they've never used before.

Hell, when telling friends to watch Fate/Zero, I advise them to download the Hola plug-in and watch it on Netflix. I wouldn't have bought MVM's releases of Fate/Zero, Fate/stay night or the Saber cu-poche and commemorative plates if I hadn't first tried out Fate/Zero on Netflix using such a workaround.
 
Re: Jerome of Manga UK sounds off about licensing restrictio

If I might make an observation on the 'things will always be this way because' arguments - and this is a discussion I've been having in comics circles recently:

Any arm of business that decides 'Oh, well... we're not selling a great deal so we'll just have to chalk it up to our goods being a niche commodity' is going to die. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow. But it WILL die. Because niche commodities only ever appeal to a finite number of people, whose numbers are going to fluctuate over time. Diminishing returns dictate that it gets harder to sell the same product to the same people over time, and the best you can hope for is that sales hold steady.

Of course, you could always take a gamble and promote your wares.

In comics, a field I've been working pretty regularly as a letterer and pre-press guy over the last four years, an awful lot of people have shouted me down for making that exact same point. "Comics are dying!" they wailed... before keeling over and exiting the market themselves. "Promotion won't work! It's too big a risk!"

And yet, while those people have failed, that particular market has proved them wrong. Industry reports indicate that comics has been a growth industry in the last two years. And some of those publishers who have enjoyed financial success have done so partly because they promoted their material. They also found ways to keep costs down without sacrificing product quality, maintaining an attractive product at a price point the public is willing to meet.

While the specific details are obviously going to be different, anime as an industry could learn a few lessons here.

Anime can't continue as a niche thing any more than comics could. The audience, the consumer base, needs to grow. And that growth can be encouraged. Tell the public your product is out there, and a certain percentage of them, who aren't already fans, will check it out - IF the product and price are attractive. It doesn't have to be cheap - just affordable. And the product doesn't have to look like brightly coloured brain-cocaine to shift. It just needs to be desirable.

Common sense comes in here. I've raised this point before - why no greater promotion of mecha shows when big-money, guaranteed-hit Transformer movies were in the cinemas? When raising this, I've been told 'But giant robots don't sell'. And I say... really? If Paramount can make record profits on the noisy, racially insensitive and plot-free nonsense Michael Bay has been knocking out, then somebody somewhere should be able to sell a few extra Gundam DVDs. All it takes is saying, in the right places 'try this - you might like it.'

And I do believe that the Japanese end of the industry needs to wake up somewhat to the fact that they could push their product better on foreign soil. Making your product almost impossible to turn a profit on for licensors? Not clever. Denying an eager audience access to shows for entirely stupid reasons, as sometimes happens? Not clever. Sitting back and saying 'overseas sales only account for a little'... also not clever, when you could take steps to turn that 'little' into something more meaningful.


This may come off as something of a rant, and it may seem idealistic. But honestly, pricing is a problem. I'm seeing something I love being turned into a rich man's pasttime lately. And that's just a stupid way for anything to go if you've got a product you want to keep sellling.
 
Re: Jerome of Manga UK sounds off about licensing restrictio

HdE said:
Common sense comes in here. I've raised this point before - why no greater promotion of mecha shows when big-money, guaranteed-hit Transformer movies were in the cinemas? When raising this, I've been told 'But giant robots don't sell'. And I say... really? If Paramount can make record profits on the noisy, racially insensitive and plot-free nonsense Michael Bay has been knocking out, then somebody somewhere should be able to sell a few extra Gundam DVDs. All it takes is saying, in the right places 'try this - you might like it.'
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How much promotion do they do these days? I see adverts when I flick through MyM and Neo, but they are basically advertising shows with their articles and reviews anyway and adverts in a magazine aimed at fans does not bring in more fans.

I recall the reason I looked at buying Full Metal Panic was because I saw a half page advert for it in Gamesmaster Magazine, do they still do that now or was that just an ADV thing?
 
Re: Jerome of Manga UK sounds off about licensing restrictio

why no greater promotion of mecha shows when big-money, guaranteed-hit Transformer movies were in the cinemas? When raising this, I've been told 'But giant robots don't sell'. And I say... really? If Paramount can make record profits on the noisy, racially insensitive and plot-free nonsense Michael Bay has been knocking out, then somebody somewhere should be able to sell a few extra Gundam DVDs. All it takes is saying, in the right places 'try this - you might like it.'
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But cartoons (which aren't western made comedies specifically pitched at an "adult" market) are for kids, HdE. That's the barrier we still haven't been able to clamber over in decades. For most adults not already into anime, trying to sell them Gundam isn't like trying to sell them the Transformers movies, it's like trying to sell them Transformers Animated. And that's a much harder sell.
 
Re: Jerome of Manga UK sounds off about licensing restrictio

Rosencrantz said:
How much promotion do they do these days? I see adverts when I flick through MyM and Neo, but they are basically advertising shows with their articles and reviews anyway and adverts in a magazine aimed at fans does not bring in more fans.

I recall the reason I looked at buying Full Metal Panic was because I saw a half page advert for it in Gamesmaster Magazine, do they still do that now or was that just an ADV thing?
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The only non magazine advertisement I remember Manga doing was for Akira and Ghost in the shell on the inside of PSP Movie cases, not for other anime films, but for things like 'Bad Boys', but haven't seen anything recently like that.

Which is a shame, those films, along with Ninja Scroll, did well outside of the normal fanbase and I thought Attack on Titan would of been the next big thing and that we would of seen Manga advertising it everywhere, especially as it's often called 'Japanese equivalent to the walking dead' on Amazon.
 
Re: Jerome of Manga UK sounds off about licensing restrictio

Whatever the hell is responsible for the extortionate pricing of Blu Rays like Gundam Unicorn needs to be stopped. I don't mind being patient and waiting for a well dubbed release as long as the price is reasonable.
 
Re: Jerome of Manga UK sounds off about licensing restrictio

ayase said:
But cartoons (which aren't western made comedies specifically pitched at an "adult" market) are for kids, HdE. That's the barrier we still haven't been able to clamber over in decades. For most adults not already into anime, trying to sell them Gundam isn't like trying to sell them the Transformers movies, it's like trying to sell them Transformers Animated. And that's a much harder sell.
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I don't think it's necessarily THAT hard a sell. I mean, when I was a kid soaking up the chatter in my GCSE art class, way back in 1993, a big part of the appeal of anime was that these weren;t just cartoons, but animated shows where stuff of lasting import ACTUALLY HAPPENED.

And, to be honest maybe the 'cartoons are for kids' thing isn't such a huge deal anyway. The biggest spending power has always historically resided in the 'teens to young adult' bracket. So perhaps that's the demographic to target. Promotion could always be geared towards stressing the dramatic strengths of the shows as well.

And by the way - EXCELLENT point from Rosencrantz, on the matter of WHERE promotion happens. Taking it outside the anime press, such as it is, doubtless increases risk. But it also has the potential to get fresh eyes on the material.
 
Re: Jerome of Manga UK sounds off about licensing restrictio

And on this:

NitroEx said:
Whatever the hell is responsible for the extortionate pricing of Blu Rays like Gundam Unicorn needs to be stopped. I don't mind being patient and waiting for a well dubbed release as long as the price is reasonable.
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Absolutely 100%.

I'll happily say that, as of this point in time, I really do feel that Gundam is one of the most appallingly managed franchises in Bandai's stable. MASSIVE potential to expand its appeal overseas. There absolutely IS an audience waiting to spend money on some of those shows. Plenty of comics fans have mentioned to me that it's something they're curious about and would like to investigate. Ridiculous prices and availability of the shows themselves is what kills it for those people.

To really pound my point on saleability on the head here, you simply CANNOT tell me a show like that is a hard sell. Sure, I see potential issues that could dissuade buyers - the length of some of the series, for example.

BUT: People will always want to buy cool stuff. And giant robots with angst-ridden pilots, in time of war, is a cool enough premise that you should be able to sell it with a little advertising.

Ironically, I believe Bandai Japan may have over-estimated how cool their franchise actually is, though. I don't care how amazing the animation is, or how iconic the franchise is - FIFTY QUID for ONE EPISODE of an OVA series is awful value. Absolutely awful. I've mentioned that situation to non-fans who have expressed interst, and they laugh at it. Derisively. As if they feel fans are stupid to pay that sort of money.

And, to be blunt, I can see where they're coming from.

I do believe anime has to compete with whatever else is cool and more in focus at any given time. You can buy three series of Game Of Thrones, for example, for a fiver less than one episode of Gundam UC at RRP.

That point may seem irrelevant to us as anime fans. But to non-fans and the mystical best known as the 'casual buyer', you had BETTER believe it's a big deal.
 
Re: Jerome of Manga UK sounds off about licensing restrictio

Game of Thrones is watched on TV by upwards of 10m people worldwide. Anime can compete with mainstream live action TV the same way a bug can compete with the sole of my shoe.
 
Re: Jerome of Manga UK sounds off about licensing restrictio

The thing about Gundam UC is that they aren't ripping us off. They're giving us the chance to participate in the very first wave of the release (Japanese home video) which is pretty much the only way an OAV series is going to make its money - and its obviously an expensively-made show. It's amazing they gave it a worldwide release and English dub right from the start. Since the episodes are long, I don't see it as paying £32 (the actual highest UK price I paid for all volumes until the last one) for one episode, I see it as paying that much for an advance copy of a movie of a series I love, which is a pretty good deal.

But if you don't want to pay that much for Gundam UC, you can just wait. Eventually a cheaper version will be available (the US is already on it, isn't it?) for the fans to whom it's not such a priority. Under the traditional system, you'd have been waiting the same length of time anyway because a day and date UK release of an OAV would have been unheard of.

And please don't compare RRP and actual selling prices. The RRP of season one of the mainstream GoT on BD was around £50 on its own, more than I paid for even the most expensive volume of UC in terms of actual selling prices. Just because GoT is mega popular and available for less because it has alternate ways of making money doesn't mean you can cheat on the maths :p

Personally I doubt the retro style of UC would ever have had mainstream UK appeal. Bandai know how well 00 and Seed and all the other Gundam adaptations they have sold in the UK in the past have done, both as 'premium' sets and cheap collections, and I reckon they have a good idea of the size of the Gundam audience here. Throwing money at marketing alone isn't going to grow that when most regular people see Gundam as a rip-off of the old Transformers cartoon with a funny name (my dad's opinion, which is a shame as he'd love the political aspects).

Edit:

Had to go on a train ride but I still have more to say, it seems!

I see the "mainstream box sets cost £x so anime should cost £x too!" argument as a fallacy. It's already been explained that the mainstream sets will always sell more than the anime so there is going to be less pressure to break even, but I want to add that it's a simple fact of life than some things cost more than other things. Buyers have to make a value call every time they buy anything at all.

If you go to a supermarket to buy a drink, you usually get a choice between buying a bottle of unbranded cola or mineral water for a few pennies, or buying a branded drink with a flavour you like more for several times the price. Some people have to stick to the economy options and go for the unbranded option, but the deluxe alternatives are still offered in almost every shop because they are very popular in spite of costing more. Both types of drinks can slake your thirst equally well.

Of course, not everyone can afford luxury branded drinks and not everyone can afford niche entertainment, either - the market cannot change its costs of production enough to accommodate them, but what it can do is find ways to sell cheaper options to them (nowadays this would be satisfied beautifully by streaming services when it comes to anime if the likes of Manga UK adapted to the market).

I can put my hand on my heart and admit that I consider Gundam Unicorn v.1 on BD (~£32) to be worth 10x more than the 2007 Transformers movie on DVD (~£3). For me, it would be worth 20x more than Transformers, though fortunately I don't have to pay that much. Heck, you'd probably have to pay me to watch Transformers. Because the thing I like costs £32 that's how much I want to pay, because buying 10 copies of something I hate instead isn't a value call I am ever going to make.

On advertising, Manga UK have experience of riding high on the back of Akira and GitS back in the day when they used to advertise in every medium available. I remember them having a presence at almost all 'geeky' events in the 90s and they did so much advertising that their company name became synonymous with the medium itself over here.

I don't think that exposure to anime is the core problem, I think there's a gap between appealing to new fans and finding ways to monetise those fans. This gap only widened during the years where anime was the cheapest it has ever been in the UK; I get stopped by complete strangers in the street asking about the manga I'm reading or the anime merchandise I'm holding. A guy on the bus once screamed out "Oh my god! She's reading BAKUMAN.!" at his partner when he saw me, then apologised for his overexcited reaction (lol).

But there's a problem when I can't walk down a street without meeting another anime fan, tens of thousands of people are attending London Expo and yet bargain box sets are only selling a few hundred copies. Even the well-meaning young fans don't think to go looking for this stuff on Amazon; they assume it's too niche and won't be licensed so they consume it free online. New fans often think local releases are always dub-only, or lower quality than streams, or always going out of print, or censored. They're often right.

Why is it when Manga UK sublicense something from FUNimation there's still no legal stream available (unless this new Animax deal is going to sort that out)? Why are there no ads on those streams for the box set release to educate the people who already like it? It's the dumbest thing ever that the UK streaming services are trying to sell me cars and makeup instead of the product itself when they can potentially run a banner or post-ED splash screen on streams they licensed themselves at no cost to them.

Am I the only one who wants to see a splash card after each episode on Crunchyroll/Wakanim/Animax which says 'COMING SOON TO BLU-RAY from Manga Entertainment" for the titles they pick up during their airings? Add details promising a future dub if there'll be one, or add catalogue titles to services to help promote them like Sentai and Funimation are doing to let fans sample them legally. Sharing information would inconvenience nobody and do wonders for educating the streaming generation about the services our distributors provide.

R
 
Re: Jerome of Manga UK sounds off about licensing restrictio

MangaUK ran a few ads in gaming magazines in the run up to their release of Dragonball Z too. I'm not sure how well the series did for them, but considering that they've since licensed GT, Dragonball and One Piece, I'm guessing that Toei were pretty happy.

Maybe more advertising in other specialist interest magazines (such as gaming magazines) could do some good, but I don't know how much an advert on the level of what they did for Dragonball Z costs and I imagine that the reason we don't see more of it is simply because the the money involved wouldn't be justifiable? There's also the question of which anime series' or movies out there could appeal to a more mainstream audience? I think there's really only one title that springs instantly to mind - Attack On Titan. Just look at the viewing figures it pulled in during its premiere on Adult Swim in America.

The problem is though, MangaUK can pay for as much advertising as they want for a series, but how many additional copies will they actually sell because of it? Why would a general audience pay £18 for half a season of Attack On Titan when they can pick up say, a full season of the much more popular Game of Thrones for £16? This isn't me saying "Attack On Titan needs to cost even less!" this is more of saying, we need to find a way to give the series enough exposure to make people aware of it and want to spend money on it. How do you do that? Well, most mainstream shows would be broadcast on TV but of course, we've had that debate a thousand times...so why not Netflix?

A possible idea is to stick Attack On Titan on Netflix some time before its DVD/BD release, then run ads in magazines with taglines like "Japan's equivalent of The Walking Dead" (I didn't make that quote up) that make it clear that the series can be viewed on Netflix, then with a mention of the upcoming DVD/BD release date. Will such a strategy work? Honestly, I wouldn't count on it suddenly making anime mainstream and I wouldn't even bet on it making a huge difference, but with a show like Attack On Titan, it might be at least worth trying.
 
Re: Jerome of Manga UK sounds off about licensing restrictio

The only other show, off the top of my head, that I can see doing well outside the suggested audience is Steins;Gate due to how big a following things like Dr Who have. But, as I'm not exactly a huge Sci-Fi fan, I wouldn't even know what to suggest, promotion wise.
 
Re: Jerome of Manga UK sounds off about licensing restrictio

I think the problem with Steins;Gate is that it can rely fair bit on otaku culture and general internet humour for some of its jokes, as well as it being a catalogue title now.
 
Re: Jerome of Manga UK sounds off about licensing restrictio

I made my edit at the same time as Josh made his points so I want to post again to add that I agree with him and didn't mean to ninja his ideas ^^;

It's silly that we were all watching America raving about the Adult Swim airing of AoT and seeing 'potato girl' trending on Twitter etc, but in the UK new fans who got interested in what they were hearing could do nothing other than watch it illegally because it had been taken down from Crunchyroll. We know Manga UK had the home video rights because they announced it long before that, and it was either them or FUNimation who had the UK streaming rights, presumably. Why in the blazes was this situation ever allowed to happen?

Why are the UK companies (sans Anime Limited and - tragically - Kaze) continuing to resist the improvements that the US companies have been bringing to the industry? Why aren't they judging popularity by streaming figures to help them make targeted business decisions too? Why aren't they all trying to monetise the fans who are downloading? It's almost as though they aren't trying to see things from the perspective of their own buyers. It hasn't been 1995 for a long time.

Presumably Manga UK think that removing any kind of legal access to the show will get everyone super-excited over their Autumn BD+DVD release. Except that by Autumn we're all going to be in the midst of a new craze and they're competing with foreign distributors who are beating them to the punch. And half the would-be fans have no idea Manga UK is even releasing the show at all because they don't spend their lives rummaging around for information like the dedicated fans on this site.

Steering an audience you have control over (like the people watching legally on FUNimation's site, or Hulu in the US, or Adult Swim) is always going to be easier than trying to sell people something they watched a year ago. My friend keeps asking me when AoT is coming out in the UK (he watched it on CR and loved it back in the day and now he wants to show it to his friends). I just showed him my US set and apologised for the slow UK release and continued lack of access to a streaming option that he was still experiencing ^^;

R
 
Re: Jerome of Manga UK sounds off about licensing restrictio

Honestly, I really couldn't care to what Jerome has to say, it's the same sob story we heard when Manga didn't get card captor sakura, the same rant we heard when that tv channel imploded and the same rant we'll hear when AOT fails to get the numbers he wants because he's pressed himself into checkmate.

He really should throw the towel in.
 
Re: Jerome of Manga UK sounds off about licensing restrictio

Joshawott said:
Maybe more advertising in other specialist interest magazines (such as gaming magazines) could do some good, but I don't know how much an advert on the level of what they did for Dragonball Z costs and I imagine that the reason we don't see more of it is simply because the the money involved wouldn't be justifiable? There's also the question of which anime series' or movies out there could appeal to a more mainstream audience? I think there's really only one title that springs instantly to mind - Attack On Titan. Just look at the viewing figures it pulled in during its premiere on Adult Swim in America...

A possible idea is to stick Attack On Titan on Netflix some time before its DVD/BD release, then run ads in magazines with taglines like "Japan's equivalent of The Walking Dead" (I didn't make that quote up) that make it clear that the series can be viewed on Netflix, then with a mention of the upcoming DVD/BD release date. Will such a strategy work? Honestly, I wouldn't count on it suddenly making anime mainstream and I wouldn't even bet on it making a huge difference, but with a show like Attack On Titan, it might be at least worth trying.
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Dragon Ball is the one anime that has been the closest to "mainstream" in this country in the last twenty years, unfortunately you can't really use it as a typical example. But, as you say, if you could, Attack on Titan would definitely be "that show". If you read Mike Toole's latest column, he cites AoT as essentially the show that could push anime back to the levels of popularity it hasn't had in the US in a decade - with Netflix being the key part of that.

Rui said:
I can't walk down a street without meeting another anime fan
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You must live on a great street. :lol:
 
Re: Jerome of Manga UK sounds off about licensing restrictio

ilmaestro said:
You must live on a great street.
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One of the few benefits of living so near to the capital, I guess :D

--

That ANN column makes things sound so vibrant over in the states. Most distributors here seem to have forgotten both the low end (streaming) and high end (quality) audiences exist entirely, and for some reason we're desperately upset whenever the status quo is shaken. Even when the status quo is sort of rubbish.

I don't watch Netflix (or dubs) but it definitely seems as though it's the way to captivate a new batch of curious fans idling on their sofas. I also like that in the US fans get a choice of which service to use instead of having to have subscriptions and bookmarks for half a dozen streaming sites to watch...half a dozen anime titles. It would be really interesting if someone would make a partnership with the US streaming services, so Funimation could become a US+UK streaming entity with paid subscriptions and links to buy the UK editions when they reach catalogue status. Or something. It's weird how people lament the difficulties of landing a TV deal over here but drop the ball so catastrophically when they already have a way to get their content in front of a young audience via more modern channels.

R
 
Re: Jerome of Manga UK sounds off about licensing restrictio

I wonder how long it'll be before the US companies decide they'd like to reap the profits of UK streaming? If they have the licences it's surely only a matter of time before they weigh up the profits of sub licencing versus what they can make via streaming. We all know Funimation can easily have multi region BD's and DvD's in their sets, is it only the hassle of dealing with the BBFC that stops them from crushing the UK companies?
 
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