The News Thread (for news that does not need a thread)

st_owly said:
Glad Karneval has been licensed. By all accounts, the manga is vastly superior to the anime. Disappointed that it's Yen Press, as their stuff is so expensive now.
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Agreed with the pricing :( it's been awful lately. I find myself waiting a month or so until prices go down enough for me. Which is a shame as they are my favourite for quality. I'm still glad it was Yen Press since it'll be released beautifully, but hopefully the pricing issue will get resolved soon....
 
PandoraHane said:
st_owly said:
Glad Karneval has been licensed. By all accounts, the manga is vastly superior to the anime. Disappointed that it's Yen Press, as their stuff is so expensive now.
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Agreed with the pricing :( it's been awful lately. I find myself waiting a month or so until prices go down enough for me. Which is a shame as they are my favourite for quality. I'm still glad it was Yen Press since it'll be released beautifully, but hopefully the pricing issue will get resolved soon....
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The pricing is due to the on going dispute between Amazon and Hachette, whom own Yen Press. I find Book Depository to be as cheap or cheaper than Amazon in most cases.

For example SAO book 1, which is also published by Yen Press, is £8.99 on Amazon and Waterstones, but is £6.90 on Book Depository.
 
I know about the dispute, but it doesn't explain why it's affecting Waterstones as well. For example, I went into the one in Edinburgh a few weeks ago, and Puella Magi Kazumi Magica 5 was £9.99. I am not going to pay that for a pretty thin volume, especially when volume 2 of the series was £7.99, and the price in dollars was the same.
 
Yeah, I know about the dispute also. I buy through the Book Depository on Amazon usually and their prices are much better but still take a while to reach that price. I just hope that dispute can be resolved because it really is a shame :(
Still, Karneval :D
 
The thing with anime is, unless you can pull enough strings to guarantee something like Space Dandy, any TV airing will always lose out to simulcasts or even worse, illegal streaming and downloads. Why would they wait longer to watch something on TV in a format they may not even prefer, when Crunchyroll/Daisuki/Wakanim/Animax/Viewster would most likely have already simulcast it when it aired over a year ago and still have it available for streaming (and in Crunchyroll and Daisuki's case, for free).

The mainstream platform now is Netflix. Last year, I signed up to Netflix when Marvel announced the upcoming exclusive TV shows (Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist). Since then, due to demand from my siblings, I have had to make an account for my older brother and his wife, an account for my younger brother and his girlfriend and one for my youngest brother. They all watch entirely different things, but they watch Netflix. What's needed, is for anime distributors to embrace that platform more and get more of their content onto it.

Heck, just last week, I sneakily logged into my older brother's account and added Kill la Kill to his list. Has he watched it yet? I don't know. But that could be a way to get shows known to people xD.
 
Joshawott said:
Heck, just last week, I sneakily logged into my older brother's account and added Kill la Kill to his list. Has he watched it yet? I don't know. But that could be a way to get shows known to people xD.
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I like your style.
 
st_owly said:
I know about the dispute, but it doesn't explain why it's affecting Waterstones as well. For example, I went into the one in Edinburgh a few weeks ago, and Puella Magi Kazumi Magica 5 was £9.99. I am not going to pay that for a pretty thin volume, especially when volume 2 of the series was £7.99, and the price in dollars was the same.
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Waterstones stores always sell manga at RRP. Although there are various ways you can get yourself effective discounts on that.
 
Rui said:
But even most anime fans in the UK don't care about watching an obscure TV channel like Anime Central. Dub fans don't want to watch subs, sub fans don't want to watch dubs, and the content is all old stuff so it doesn't even have the allure of being new and exciting. It's rare that someone would just stumble on an obscure channel like that at the right time to have their life changed, nowadays. To hit it big, they'd have to get something massive like the Adult Swim block in the US with an actual defined audience and plan behind it.

Or the companies could take advantage of the fact that the average new anime viewer is young and tech-savvy, and get more high quality content onto hugely-advertised services like Netflix. It's much more likely to get in front of potential viewers on a service like that than being stuck on an unwatched TV channel at 3am.

R
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QFT. Basically the issue is that most of the likely anime watchers have moved to what TV calls "time shifted devices" i.e. on-demand television nowadays. So the only channels worth anything for broadening the anime market are:

- BBC (any branded channel) -> There's kudos to being on a public broadcaster, the number of shows that can go on it are super slim due to rules on promotion of toys etc though.

- Channel 4 / E4 -> Again like BBC - there's a "ex-terrestrial broadcaster" kudos to them.

- Pop Kids -> One of the few kids channels and it actually does still broadcast some anime (DBZ etc). Not much but really the only viable kids channel out there for anime, a market which does still use linear TV.

The main Sky channels are arguably also viable - but beyond those the demand drops massively. I know for a fact some anime gets as low as into less than 100 watchers, sometimes several thousand - but not anything sustainable.

That said - Netflix, Amazon Prime Video etc are all prime new options for anime fans and for a wider audience given the demographics who use them plus the algorithms used to recommend new shows. So it isn't that I think TV is worthless for anime - but I certainly think there are more productive things to work towards for broadcasting anime :).

Viva la revolution,

Andrew
 
But it's thanks to tv I and loads of older fans on here got in to anime in the first place, we didn't have internet back in the day and we * by chance * found it ether on

Nickelodeon
Cartoon network
Any other tv channel on british tv by chance
Propeller tv
Anime central
Toonami
MTV
Sci-fi............It's sci-fi not syfy.......which blew my mind
And a few others....

Again it's thanks to tv and chance I got in to anime and I'm glad to have gotten that chance..........

People need to be aware of what anime is and what it's capable of for kids to teens and adults........

Some who first looks at a anime who doesn't know a thing about anime will ether......

1 see it as a children's tv show if it's just a quick glance.
2 some think it's ( Chinese tentical cartoon porn ) >_> that they saw on the internet or heard from other people
3 just mindless violent cartoons that doesn't teach you anything
4 they just see it as weird and brush it off

And that's the problem people aren't aware how awesome anime can be .........If more people got in to anime and was spreading the word of how brilliant shows like.....

Death note
Baccono
FMA
Fate zero

And so on we'd get more shows with more funding to make brilliant story's and animation with great deep complex characters.

Even tho it's my own thing I'd like to show how anime can be mature, insightful, deep, with great characters that makes you want more......

But I guess you know what I'm saying
 
anime_andrew said:
The main Sky channels are arguably also viable - but beyond those the demand drops massively. I know for a fact some anime gets as low as into less than 100 watchers, sometimes several thousand - but not anything sustainable.
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Is this accurate though, the ways of measuring are very dated now given the technology available. i.e they are not real numbers but estimates based on a small sample.

obviously difficult as even if you can prove its wrong, those are the figures used by advertisers.
 
chrisjmuk said:
anime_andrew said:
The main Sky channels are arguably also viable - but beyond those the demand drops massively. I know for a fact some anime gets as low as into less than 100 watchers, sometimes several thousand - but not anything sustainable.
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Is this accurate though, the ways of measuring are very dated now given the technology available. i.e they are not real numbers but estimates based on a small sample.

obviously difficult as even if you can prove its wrong, those are the figures used by advertisers.
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The data I have is very accurate and recent, won't divulge source but as a spoiler, not many places screening anime and I wasn't discussing children's content but things like Black Lagoon etc ;)!

Basically sadly anime will never get a shot at a time slot that could make money by and large - the UK just isn't geared the same way France and Germany are for TV. So I'm placing my betting chips on the next generation of Netflix et al for broadening the market :).

Andrew
 
AF, online streaming platforms can play the same role as Nick, Toonami and CNX did for us for new fans today. Times have moved on and linear broadcasting on TV is but one of many different avenues to get anime out there. Getting as much anime onto Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and all the others would be much more effective now. This should absolutely be a massive priority for the UK.
 
anime_andrew said:
The data I have is very accurate and recent, won't divulge source but as a spoiler, not many places screening anime and I wasn't discussing children's content but things like Black Lagoon etc ;)!

Basically sadly anime will never get a shot at a time slot that could make money by and large - the UK just isn't geared the same way France and Germany are for TV. So I'm placing my betting chips on the next generation of Netflix et al for broadening the market :).

Andrew
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Makes sense, I've watched a few anime shows that I wasn't interested in buying the DVDs of on netflix recently, two of which impressed me enough that I have them in mind to buy them (once its been a while and I can watch it again). I know I'm in the minority there, I guess because of my age I still want a physical version of something I would watch again, where as a lot of younger fans are just happy with streaming services, but if that's the case then you're not losing any potential buys with them. Overall it does make far more sense.
 
The problem is, the way anime gets on TV is almost completely different in Japan than it is here. If I remember correctly, the TV channels are typically paid to air anime in Japan as opposed to here, where it's usually the other way around (with TV channels being the ones doing the paying). So in order to make airing a show viable, a channel will need to be confident that the content they're showing will bring in enough viewers to make them a comfortable profit. So in that respect, it would hurt if a channel paid for the rights to a series that hardly anyone watched. (I think I got that right? Please correct me if I'm wrong Andrew).

I think the only chance anime has of getting onto linear TV would be with series' attached to major children's multimedia franchises, like Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh! and the inevitable release of Yo-Kai Watch. I'm still on the fence about whether Yo-Kai Watch will be able to strike success close to what it has achieved in Japan, but considering that the TV anime was what really caused the boom, it's likely that whoever is in charge of its localised release efforts will at least try.

The thing is though, Netflix really isn't limited to teenagers and adults either. The other day, my ten year old brother was allowed a TV in his bedroom, so I hooked his Wii up and made him his own Netflix Kids account. Since then, he's mostly been spending his time walled up in his room watching TV shows and movies on Netflix.

The Pokémon Company International are an example of a company that has really embraced the new on-demand way TV is going. Back in 2010, they started "Pokémon TV", a service on their website that let people watch a selection of Pokémon episodes each week, before expanding it to iOS and Android last year. They've also added both the first season and the more recent Black & White series to Netflix, along with a couple of the movies. The current season (Pokémon The Series: XY) is also having episodes added to iTunes after they air in North America, so they're really covering as many digital bases as they can.

Pokémon The Origin's international debut wasn't made on TV either. It was first shown on Pokémon TV, before being added to Hulu in America, as well as iTunes internationally. I think it was also aired on CITV in the UK at a later date though.

Cloud Strife said:
Looks like Clannad the visual novel will be a getting a official release in the west through Steam

http://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-news/2 ... am-release

Plus it will be the full-voiced version. Definite purchase!
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I'm admittedly not too knowledgeable about Steam (at the moment, I only game on consoles), but would this mean just a US release, or a worldwide release?
 
Only anime that will work on television now in the UK are feature films. You don't have to commit 12 or 26 or more weekly slots, you can get it done in one 2-hour hit, show it once and forget about it. And with movies, you aren't really competing with online services, as the online streaming and download sites tend to concentrate on the series.

The challenge is to get channels interested in the stuff. Get Filmfour to break out of the Ghibli model and diversify, try some Hosoda, get Perfect Blue on screen, heck even some of the standalone shonen features like Naruto or One Piece. I mean, why isn't Welcome to the Space Show on during the holidays? Kids would love that, or Oblivion Island.
 
As much as I would like more anime to be on TV, I think the most important thing to do at the moment is make it available, legally, on as many websites/platforms as possible - as that's the future.

Game of Thrones was available on TV for free, yet 99% of the people on my friends list would just torrent it, because they didn't want to wait a few hours. That's the attitude we have to focus on changing at the moment.

I actually emailed Film 4 last year suggesting they did a Mamoru Hosoda season or a Satoshi Kon season in the evening - as they had previously aired Paprika. Perhaps I'll email them again and suggest Welcome to the Space Show and Oblivion as I didn't include those! Good choice!
 
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