Jiindama said:
Reaper gI said:
Exactly, sub only fans have been forced to buy hybrid releases. Which will mean our money went towards the dub as well.
How is that hard to understand.
Exactly,
dub only fans have been forced to buy hybrid releases. Which will mean our money went towards the sub as well.
How is that hard to understand
Nnnnngggggghhhhh, please tell me that you secretly know how stupid this sounds, and that you were doing it for some sort of reverse-trolling purposes.
I mean, really, seriously, are you posting it with any conviction whatsoever past the point of "hahahaha, look what happens if I turn it around... now it makes no sense at all!" Dub fans *do not buy enough anime to make dubs profitable across the board* this is something based in fact, and evidenced by the decline in the number of dubs being produced. Recording a dub track costs a whole ****-ton more than producing a subbed version. Something is "subsidised" when it is being kept going by payments from people who don't really "want to" or "shouldn't" be paying for it. "Your" (dub fans) money has gone towards dubs... and still wasn't enough to cover them, in the long run.
ayase said:
Okay, so sub fans help finance dubs by having to buy hybrid releases. But it's not like they subsidise dubs by virtue of being sub fans, is it?
Last time I saw any figures, most native English speakers who watch anime watch it dubbed. So it's not as if the vast majority are paying for dubs only enjoyed by a minority.
These "figures" have never been based on a level playing field, not from back when companies used to charge more for sub-only VHS copies (madness beyond all insanity) and make dubs vastly more available due to video rental stores etc, and not now with the lack of reliability of any such figures in this day and age of streaming and excessive fansubbing.
It is *not an arguable point* that dubs cost more money to produce than subbed versions and it is *not an arguable point* that companies cut dubs to save money, but don't look to cut sub tracks and only produce dubs for the same money saving reasons.
Sure, you can continue to add two and two together and make an omelette, or you can draw the sensible conclusions from these facts.
Like Reaper said, it is an anomally that dubs became the de facto way to produce anime in the first place - all stemming from a belief that the origins of the shows needed to be covered up, that you had to edit together and rewrite three separate shows into one to make good TV, that there was a long-term future in anime on TV... all massive fallacies, without exception, and ultimately something that has both served to get the Western anime industry going, and helped to cripple it as the face of the market has predictably moved on more quickly that people were reacting to it.
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Edited to make a couple of comments sound less insulting... I'm too nice to people sometimes, I really am. Also bear in mind that I am largely arguing this from a neutral point of view - the success, failure, relevance or importance of dubs in the anime industry is something I feel a fair amount of distance from since US/UK releases make up only a small fraction of the money I spend on anime.
That said, the only time I tried to watch a dub in the last few years (I had been told that Gundam Unicorn was pretty well dubbed, so thought I'd see how they gone about portraying the characters) my ears started bleeding after a couple of minutes, so maybe it is a little personal too, haha.
