Ledford blames fansubs for closing down ADV UK's operations

Are fansubs to blame for the decline of ADV UK?

  • Yes

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • No

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • It's a complex issue

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    0
  • Poll closed .
I'm more than happy to buy anime DVDs if I can stomach the price.

ADV (and still Beez) was nearly always beyond the limit I would be willing to spend for four episodes. I got Hellsing cheap at Music Zone...that and FF: U were the only series they had that even interested me anyway.

I NEVER watch fansubs anyway...I know there's a few people who actually buy stuff after downloading it, but there's loads people who are happy just to steal stuff (anime, music, movies, whatever) online because they're too cheap to buy it.

ADV's stuff was just too expensive for what you got. I want affordable anime...Revelation, MVM and Manga can give that to me, so ADV going under won't really affect me.

That employee is a bitch anyway...should have been fired ages ago I say! >_>
 
There's one other thing ADV UK did wrong that hasn't been mentioned: Their box sets. They released Anime Legends style box sets at the price of MVM slimpak/full volume box set prices... Does anyone else see the problem there?

-------

Beez picked the Bandai titles they licensed very carefully.

.hack//SIGN
Cowboy Bebop
Gundam Seed
Plantes
Yukikaze
Wolf's Rain

^ Those are some of the few off the top of my head. Beez know they will sell enough even at £12.99-£13.99 due to the popularity of the shows. Compare that to ADV who wouldn't have sold some of the crap like Divergence Eve even at £4.99 per volume.

Beez being smarter than ADV doesn't mean they're good for the UK anime industry, though. Take my Cowboy Bebop box sets for example: £28.99 per box, no extras, poor video quality (Beez didn't attempt to fix the awful shimmering or episode 17 fault) - A low video quality release with no extras for around £10 per volume. The back of box only having 'Beez Trailers' as extras says it all.

If retailers at least made sure the video quality and subtitles are high quality on their releases, plus the addition of a at least a few decent extras, anime fans wouldn't feel quite so cheated by the pricing. As it stands, paying £5 for a bare bones volume 1 of 3-7 is a rip-off in most cases.
 
If the Japanese invested more time and effort into promoting anime outside of Japan, instead of waiting for non-Japanese companies to come begging to license series, then making them bid for the title, then taking months to get all the materials together, and not being fully supportive at the same time. That's what would do the industry some good.

Dentsu pulled out of the English market. Toei tried and failed. I think Madhouse have a branch (but I think it closed). Sojitz (KlockWorx) are giving ADV a hard time. The only company that's not involved with a Japanese company is the one doing the best - Funimation - owned by Navarre. Oh, likewise for MediaBlasters and Rightstuf.
Kadokawa are doing the right thing it seems, albeit taking their time, it seems they provide the distributor with all the materials to make up the release, and a lot at that.

I wonder how much money the Japanese actually invest in the English market, really.
The only - slightly recent - news piece I read was that they were investing in some poor European countries.

I know I shouldn't point the finger, as I don't have hard evidence for much here, I'm just piecing together bits and pieces I read here and there over the years.
 
Sy said:
Aion said:
episode 17 fault
Elaborate, please.

Without chucking the DVD in, there's a glitch when Spike is walking up the stairs (I believe episode 17 is the mushroom episode?) where the video...well, glitches.

It isn't just my DVD since an AnimeOnDVD review mentioned it as well.

Edit: I can't find where the AnimeOnDVD review mentioned the fault... Odd, I'm sure I read up about it on there in the past after worrying about my DVD being faulty...
 
For some that have seen my posts on these kind of issues may find what I am about to say a little odd.

I don't think fansubs are really as evil as has been made out, some shows may never get licensed which might appeal to the hardcore fan seeing something nobody else has. What is a problem is how people use fansubs, keeping them available after a series has been licensed or downloading and keeping copies instead of buying legal product. Then as has been mentioned, how many people that watch fansubs are actual fans not just people killing time, and out of those how many have bought or intend to buy anyway.

What probably is more damaging to the UK industry and I have to hold my hand up here, is importing R1 discs (probably 90-95% of my Anime DVDs are R1). I know at the moment they are cheaper but this may not always be the case, and even if they were not I would probably still buy them for one big issue time of release. As I won't download pirated shows or fansubs it is the fastest way for me to get to see shows. I like many like physical products so am unlikely to go down a streaming or download route. Although Andrew's vision is very similar to something I outlined in a previous thread about fansubs.

The other problem caused by the US UK release delay is that pirated copies of US releases have time to start circulating before the UK releases hit the shelves, and once out there on the web are hard to stop.

Also pointed out anime is not strictly for kids but a quick poll around here and other forums will probably show the main age group of fans is 14-20 (at 34 I am probably an exception but I have seen someone of 50 on a forum so age is no constraint to this habit), this of course is not going to be the wealthiest group to target a niche product at that is intrinsically more expensive because of costs and limited audience. The UK industry may have to look to use tactics that may not work elsewhere, or come up with new ways of making people feel they have bought a quality product if they have to pay a premium price. A lot of people seem to get hung up on extras, myself I would rather pay £5-£10 for a bare bones release including sub and dub over £15-£20 for a DVD packed with extras I might watch once out of curiosity.
 
In response to Andrew:

My stance is that I'm a collector and always will be. I prefer a physical product to a digital one.

Since the coming of HD though, I would definately choose watching it on the computer than on a 480i DVD, which most of the time has encoding issues, mediocre translation, etc. Basically, I'd rather prefer to watch something on my computer of a quality fansub standard, in HD, and that's the only thing that would make me want to own anime but not physically.
Of course, I'd like to own the series at the same time on a physical level, but that doesn't really matter if it comes out a month or so later.

I think a business model could be to offer super high quality fansub-style anime to download, in HD - unscaled or not, because most people have a computer capable of playing HD files, but not many have a huge HD TV with a Blu-ray player and all the other equipment needed. Maybe that is what I want - but on a larger scale, people want to see anime quickly, so any kind of fansub-style thing would be good. It's like applying the Japanese model here. The showings on the TV are for the mainstream audience, and the DVD market is for collectors, that's what's it's always been, and how it will always be. Not everyone can afford massive collections, and that's what English producers/distributors are asking for, and that's not fair.

If a company can provide the high quality fansub-style anime releases, then that's the way to go. I mean you only have to look at the download figures of a hell of a lot of fansubs - that's an incredible potential amount of sales.

Anime is artwork - people want to see it in the best possible quality, and HD can provide that. Any HD file I've watched at around 230MB beats any DVD quality I've seen, and HD doesn't seem to have aliasing problems and many of the other compression problems in general.

I know you know all this already, I just think some of what I've written puts a slightly different spin on things. I hope.

Just how long is it going to take companies to realise that this is the way to go.

Oh, and on that note, it'd be nice to have super special collector items released instead of the standard artbox with a series [I know this is exactly what you're doing now and have always done, it's a shame that the companies who aren't listening won't read this]. Not that that can be done at the moment, but as producers/distributors should be appealing to a collectors market, who can afford to buy a lot of special items and generally want to part with their money (if not all of it!), and offering an "ultra deluxe limited edition" item certainly does the job there. That'll generate the extra profit that's being 'lost' and will grow the collectors market/fanbase considerably. I'm sure. As soon as companies stop trying to appeal to the mainstream, because let's face it - that's never going to happen (except for a few exceptions) - the sooner the anime industry can get back on track.

Mainstream has gone digital.

EDIT: Just want to emphasize what I mean, and scanning above to Dracos' comment about the demographic being teens-20's.
If someone comes across some website with some huge bright colourful picture, or pictures, moving pictures, videos, music, coolness, which is what is the case for such a massive amount of shows, then people are going to be excited by that, and when they read something saying "download this super high quality crystal clear episode 1 for free" they're going to be interested. Viral marketing can help massively here as well. If you have someone making MySpace pages (but properly done), or Facebook pages, or whatever other pages, just something that's going to mutate around websites - that look just incredible - then you're going to have people wanting to find out more.

It always seems to be the Japanese websites for anime that really make this impact (and some of Funimation's websites), of course it doesn't go far enough.

Just look at the Soul Eater website - http://www.souleater.tv/ - Bones always know how to make something look awesome.
 
Aslong as theres anime, there will be fansubs. They will never be stopped, they will always be here. It is damage control from this point forward.
 
Re: Ledford blames fansubs for closing down ADV UK's operati

beez_andrew said:
Here's a pitch for everyone, as I am fully agree your statement - it's not the customer's job to serve the industry after all:

- What if you could get anime within 1-2 weeks of airing in Japan - subtitled via the internet?

- What if also there was a Video on Demand service with a catalog of old titles available from the brand name, with a wide range of notable titles among which ones never released in Europe?

- Say this had two methods - pay as you go (where you pay per episode/series you want to watch like on iTunes) and the other for fans who love their anime and as much as they can get an "All you can eat pass" (though being digital I of course mean watch instead of eat :p).

- Free samples (say episode 1 for argument's sakes) were offered by streaming for people to judge if it was a show they wanted to watch or not.

Without discussing fees there, it's the basic pitch. How many people here would be interested by such a solution assuming prices were reasonable? How many would still download fansubs?

* Long answer: Yes, sadly it is.**
** Directors cut extended edition answer: Yes, sadly it really is.

I'd develop such system if given lifetime access to it :)
I'd also like to suggest the possibility to purchase a hard copy (a dvd) every few eps...
 
Nyu said:
Aslong as theres anime, there will be fansubs. They will never be stopped, they will always be here. It is damage control from this point forward.

Anyone here remembers when fansubs took more thna a month to sub an ep? They would copy the eps to VHS tapes ans post them to you... or did this never happened in the UK?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fansub

Also, I've tried to go to any of he conventions in the UK. They are small, really, really small...
If only conventions could be bigger, it should promote anime better.
 
That's all you'll ever find at Beez is Bandai licenses. as that's who owns them. Andrew that's a pretty nice stance coming from a rep who's company wants to sell us 1 or 2 episodes of Gunbuster 2 on 3 discs. Your Concept isn't that original either, though I do support it. I myself had the same idea way back in 2001 and had put the idea across Anime Nation's "Ask John" John Oppliger and his response back then in short was "the Japanese will never do it because they fear back importing and don't think it's worth it anyway". I got pretty much the same reply when I put the idea directly to AIC in Tokyo that same year, and that was the general attitude of many fans, that it would never happen, right up until just last year when things started to look over the precipice before actually going over after the New Years hangovers this year. I don't know if you know about Anime News Network but one of their staff wrote this letter to the industry that pretty much has the same proposal. So far the response has been vague and patchy. Don't get me wrong. I'm with you on this and can only see it as the only viable solution at present until some other marketing guru comes up with another winning plan, but as one fan put it at ANN "how can a company compete with free and make a profit?". That's a toughy. BTW I voted it was a complex issue because the infestation of fansubs is the result of the anime companies, both in Japan and the US, ignoring it for too long, and not doing anything about it sooner. Also, like some have said, licensing titles only to keep them in the can for far too long before releasing them.
 
chaos said:
Also, I've tried to go to any of he conventions in the UK. They are small, really, really small...
If only conventions could be bigger, it should promote anime better.

I think you have that a little backward. Anime needs to be promoted more for more people to go to the conventions and make them bigger.

Which came first the chicken or the egg.

Although maybe if they teamed up with the UK/Irish/European animation production industry and celebrated home grown animation as a whole instead of a foreign niche that only gets repackaged over here............
 
I echo the same thoughts as other that ADV UK collapse was down to choosing titles which lack the ability to sell in the UK. They released too many show which were either poor in quality or shows that no matter how good they were they had little market who wanted to purchase them.

They had released shows like Gantz in the USA which would have been good seller for them in the UK, but they let mvm have the license? that was an awful decision.

Other shows like Nadia could had great potential of selling with the names like Hideaki Anno as the Director & Original Concept was done by Hayao Miyazaki. You can't get bigger for an anime than those names in western anime viewers minds.

There was plenty other shows at other distributors like X remix which could have sold well over here. But they instead released titles like Gravion, Divergence Eve and Yugo the Negotiator which had no chance of selling.

You can only sell titles in the UK which are near guarantee to sell well over here.

I can't see people ever paying for fansub when they have been getting them for free for years. The only solution if for anime to be streamed online for free around the same times as the japanese tv shows and it to make its money through adverts placed through the streaming.

A free source of the anime would stop a lot fansub groups bother to translate series. At the moment the cost of streaming and low bandwidth people have in their homes are not good enough for this to work currently, but in the future when cost get cheaper its the best and only workable option to go for.

beez_andrew said:
To do this you need strong ties to your retailers, which is difficult to do unless you can prove steady unit sales. It's a vicious cycle really.

One thing I don't really understand is why don't the UK anime companies encourage the buyers to buy directly off the own websites cutting out the retailer middleman, so increasing profit tremendously and not requiring such strong retailer present to survive.

Only really MVM has bothered to encourage to fans to buy off them, ADV selling DVD'S in its last stages of life for 1-2 pound arent going to make you any profit so doesn't count. I don't think retailers care about it either as there were plenty of mvm titles instore at virgin megastores last time i went.

Manga & Optimum Asia can get away with not encourage people buying directly off them as they have really good sales. But Beez & Revelation Films with lower sales and struggling to break even, I think it wouLd be the way forward to go.
 
chaos said:
Anyone here remembers when fansubs took more thna a month to sub an ep? They would copy the eps to VHS tapes ans post them to you... or did this never happened in the UK?

It did happen in the UK. Generally you had to have "connections" or belong to a club to have a chance, but a couple of groups eventually managed to set up more open arrangements (like http://www.btinternet.com/~Jimaku/index.html ). I once imported a bunch of Kenshin fansubs from the US (with the worry of their different tape format *and* the risk they'd get zapped in customs) to go with the stupendously expensive JP releases. What a pain in the butt that was :p and then it came out on DVD anyway during the bubble so I bought it again.

Why does everyone keep saying Gravion was a bad choice of ADV's anyway? Bishoujo shows and Yugo I can see as being silly choices, but all they had to do with Gravion was slap a picture of Mizuki's torso on the box along with a couple of robots and surely it would sell like hot cakes. It worked for me!

R
 
chaos said:
Nyu said:
Aslong as theres anime, there will be fansubs. They will never be stopped, they will always be here. It is damage control from this point forward.

Anyone here remembers when fansubs took more thna a month to sub an ep? They would copy the eps to VHS tapes ans post them to you... or did this never happened in the UK?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fansub

Also, I've tried to go to any of he conventions in the UK. They are small, really, really small...
If only conventions could be bigger, it should promote anime better.

That happened here, mainly on uni campuses. it's with the coming of the internet and aslong as the two are around, fansubbing as it is today will be around.
 
Dave said:
I echo the same thoughts as other that ADV UK collapse was down to choosing titles which lack the ability to sell in the UK. They released too many show which were either poor in quality or shows that no matter how good they were they had little market who wanted to purchase them.

They had released shows like Gantz in the USA which would have been good seller for them in the UK, but they let mvm have the license? that was an awful decision.
Gantz wasn't so much ADV letting MVM have the licence rather than MVM winning the licence from Gonzo. Gonzo have proved time-and-again that they sell their licences on a case-by-case, territory-by-territory basis and whoever licences it in one territory is by no means indicative of who will get it in another. There are Gonzo shows licenced by Geneon in the US that were released by ADV in the UK (MVM historically licenced most shows from Geneon's catalogue) and conversely shows licenced by FUNimation in the US, where MVM holds the UK licence.

ADV have managed to retain the UK licence for a couple of Gonzo releases and FUNimation have managed just one (Kiddy Grade). On top of that GDH have entered the UK market as a direct distributor in their own right, with the release of Afro Samurai. Whether they will release more of their catalogue this way remains to be seen but it makes second guessing the UK distributor of them that much harder.
Dave said:
beez_andrew said:
To do this you need strong ties to your retailers, which is difficult to do unless you can prove steady unit sales. It's a vicious cycle really.

One thing I don't really understand is why don't the UK anime companies encourage the buyers to buy directly off the own websites cutting out the retailer middleman, so increasing profit tremendously and not requiring such strong retailer present to survive.

Only really MVM has bothered to encourage to fans to buy off them, ADV selling DVD'S in its last stages of life for 1-2 pound arent going to make you any profit so doesn't count. I don't think retailers care about it either as there were plenty of mvm titles instore at virgin megastores last time i went.

Manga & Optimum Asia can get away with not encourage people buying directly off them as they have really good sales. But Beez & Revelation Films with lower sales and struggling to break even, I think it wouLd be the way forward to go.
The one main difference between MVM and the other licensors is that MVM started out life as a shop long before getting into anime distribution. They started licencing and distributing anime by happenstance rather than going into business with that goal specifically in mind.
 
Tin Man said:
chaos said:
Also, I've tried to go to any of he conventions in the UK. They are small, really, really small...
If only conventions could be bigger, it should promote anime better.

I think you have that a little backward. Anime needs to be promoted more for more people to go to the conventions and make them bigger.

limited visitor # conventions doesn't help :(
back home, in my city we had 3 different anime conventions per year

last one I've visited had 50k+ visitors and they had acts from japanese singers for the opening of Jiraya and Jaspion (super sentai series)
 
Rui said:
chaos said:
Anyone here remembers when fansubs took more thna a month to sub an ep? They would copy the eps to VHS tapes ans post them to you... or did this never happened in the UK?

...I once imported a bunch of Kenshin fansubs from the US (with the worry of their different tape format *and* the risk they'd get zapped in customs) to go with the stupendously expensive JP releases. What a pain in the butt that was :p and then it came out on DVD anyway during the bubble so I bought it again.

..

I've got escaflowne, oh my goddess and record of loddoss war that way. Yep, it was difficult.. You had to be a friend, of a friend from a cousin os someone to get your hands on something. Under this perspective things seemed a bit dodgy... ^_^

Rurouni Kenshin... One of my favorites of all times and the second anime dvd series I've got. The first was evangelion. My first anime of all time was Akira, even before Eva, but Akira is not a series....
 
The same thing always put me off buying UK anime DVDs. The fact that I can spend £20 for 4 episodes of an anime, or the same price (or not much more) for a whole season (24 eps usually) of a normal TV series, e.g. House MD, Two and a Half Men, Supernatural, Smallville, etc...

Say what ya want about how much of a fan I am, but I just at value for money.
 
King Jimmeh said:
The same thing always put me off buying UK anime DVDs. The fact that I can spend £20 for 4 episodes of an anime, or the same price (or not much more) for a whole season (24 eps usually) of a normal TV series, e.g. House MD, Two and a Half Men, Supernatural, Smallville, etc...

Say what ya want about how much of a fan I am, but I just at value for money.

You got to remember though when comparing 24 to an anime DVD release.

On average 24 can get up to 10 million viewers on the FOX channel, whereas on the other hand how many viewers do you think a whole season of anime on TV gets?

Then when actually releasing the DVD, FOX is a massive business, they can afford advertisements on TV and in magazines and they can ensure that they will sell a certain amount of DVDs straight away thus having it a low price from the get go.

Anime on the other hand your aren't guaranteed that people will be interested in buying it, plus they have to include costs of dubbing it and also having to pay the prices of the BBFC before it gets a release. You've also got to add onto that, that many shops will not take anime since they themselves can't be sure it will sell.
 
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