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

from http://www.geeknative.com/51412/anime-w ... -animatsu/

Can you give us any clues as to titles or studios Animatsu is currently interested in?

Andrew: All we are going to say is we have been listening to a lot of Muse. We’ll let you guys figure out the rest!
Click to expand...

Given that, to the best of my knowledge, the English rock band of that name hasn't contributed to any anime, could it just be possible that they are referring to μ's - as in, hinting about Love Live! ? Or am I just getting my hopes up for nothing? (I'll buy it if this is what you're talking about, guys)
 
kuuderes_shadow said:
from http://www.geeknative.com/51412/anime-w ... -animatsu/

Can you give us any clues as to titles or studios Animatsu is currently interested in?

Andrew: All we are going to say is we have been listening to a lot of Muse. We’ll let you guys figure out the rest!
Click to expand...

Given that, to the best of my knowledge, the English rock band of that name hasn't contributed to any anime, could it just be possible that they are referring to μ's - as in, hinting about Love Live! ? Or am I just getting my hopes up for nothing? (I'll buy it if this is what you're talking about, guys)
Click to expand...
Muse has a song called Knights of Cydonia...gonna assume it's Knights of Sidonia. Honestly hope their releases are a improvement over Manga as I'd like to own that, but I can always import anyway.
 
I'm pretty sure it's Knights of Sidonia, seeing as they said they'd be releasing it back when they were at Manga.

Reading into another comment they made though, I wouldn't be surprised if they have Love Live too though.
 
I'm putting my money on it being Knights of Sidonia. To be honest, when writing about Knights of Sidonia I often have to look over my spelling due to the "Knights of Cydonia" song.
 
Considering Animatsu has a bunch of Sentai titles to unveil I think it's pretty safe to say that Sidonia will be one of them. Can't say I'm too thrilled about that though to be honest as I would rather it went to Anime Limited.
 
I'm going to sound both weird and dumb saying this, but I'd rather Anime Limited not licensed stuff like this. I think Andrew likened Anime Limited to Criterion in the Podcast, who's byline is "Classic and contemporary films." And although they (Anime Limited) aren't anywhere near that standard yet, since Criterion are second to none in both Picture and audio quality, I really like the notion of Anime Limited being the go to for the classic, high quality anime. Your Cowboy Bebop's, You Perfect Blue's, even new stuff like Giovanni's Island that seems to be made first and foremost as a quality movie telling a serious story. It's why releases like Blood Lad stick out to me, a mediocre show at best. Your high profile new releases like KLK and Space Dandy make a bit more sense, as they're guaranteed sellers, but for shows like Sidonia I'm fine with Manga and Animatsu dealing with them. The Blood Lad acquisition still confuses me...out of left field when put side by side with everything else, but that's just me being selfish :p
 
It is indeed you being selfish :p

I want AL to license classics but I also want as much new stuff as possible. They have the best physical releases so ideally they'd release everything lol.
 
It could be package deals with other titles, or they just want to add a mix of variety to their catalog.
I'm happy for them to license as much as they want, as their releases are beautiful to look at, and the shows are great too.

Looking forward to sales numbers / charts going up soon. I enjoyed those before. It will be interesting to see how well their titles are doing (I imagine greatly so).
I don't really trust the Neo numbers. With publication times before printing, I don't imagine their numbers are entirely accurate
 
To be fair, even Criterion have their weird selections occasionally :p (Armageddon? Really?)

Was glad to hear the goal of being the Criterion of anime being reinforced in the podcast. That's the reason Anime Limited excited me in the first place and they're on the way to getting there. Andrew mentioned on the podcast Giovanni's Island in particular as an example of Anime Limited's goals and I agree. I probably wouldn't have bought it if it came from another company.

Having said that, I'd also like to see them licence more of the classics.

I'm cautiously optimistic about Animatsu. Knights of Sidonia was a good show. I wonder if Netflix will get the second season? Binge watching it was fun.
 
It's quite useful in a way that AL grab a bunch of different stuff as they can sample exactly which segments of the market can support their releases. If Blood Lad had ended up being a bigger hit than it was it could have been a nice supplement to their income - and the concept alone will probably give it reasonable appeal to the casual audience since kooky supernatural stuff seems a good fit for the UK market.

They need to try a sports show or shoujo television series next :D

(Andrew, if you can sort out Free! on BD here one day you would make a lot of people very happy.)

R
 
Elaniel said:
It could be package deals with other titles, or they just want to add a mix of variety to their catalog.
Click to expand...

Bit of column A, bit of column be for Illiya & Blood Lad :)! Either way we're not embarrassed about stepping outside of our brand comfort zone to try new things. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't and it's not done badly in this case so hey, will call it even really!

That said our main remit remains primarily and in no real order:

- High quality new film (Miss Hokusai, Giovanni's Island, Patema Inverted, etc)
- Classic films (Perfect Blue, Place Promised, Wings of Honneamise, etc)
- 4-6 new series a year that we love + want to show the world (Terror in Resonance, Space Dandy, Tokyo Ghoul etc being good examples)
- Classic series (Cowboy Bebop, Escaflowne, Baccano!)
- Challenge-projects which are high-value but short or otherwise not often commercial (HAL, Garden of Words, etc)

GoW was a challenge on runtime level - never for one minute was it a problem for us in terms of director or quality though (I'm not just saying that because my name cameos in it either...)

Best,

AP
 
Ath said:
To be fair, even Criterion have their weird selections occasionally :p (Armageddon? Really?)

Was glad to hear the goal of being the Criterion of anime being reinforced in the podcast. That's the reason Anime Limited excited me in the first place and they're on the way to getting there. Andrew mentioned on the podcast Giovanni's Island in particular as an example of Anime Limited's goals and I agree. I probably wouldn't have bought it if it came from another company.

Having said that, I'd also like to see them licence more of the classics.
Click to expand...

You'll love my latest slate of titles I'm chasing then - I think folks will in general but as a whole, labours of love coming up over everything else really on the horizon...

We do strive for doing interesting things with properties though so watch this space going forwards, also chasing a few new films that are exciting for me just now (one I am almost certain I won't get sadly but some others that I am confident we will...)

Ath said:
I'm cautiously optimistic about Animatsu. Knights of Sidonia was a good show. I wonder if Netflix will get the second season? Binge watching it was fun.
Click to expand...

Whatever they're buying - I think folks should be optimistic about Animatsu. Both Jerome & Andrew H are great guys and know the anime space well so I am certain they've got some cool things in the works for folks :).

AP
 
Rui said:
It's quite useful in a way that AL grab a bunch of different stuff as they can sample exactly which segments of the market can support their releases. If Blood Lad had ended up being a bigger hit than it was it could have been a nice supplement to their income - and the concept alone will probably give it reasonable appeal to the casual audience since kooky supernatural stuff seems a good fit for the UK market.

They need to try a sports show or shoujo television series next :D

(Andrew, if you can sort out Free! on BD here one day you would make a lot of people very happy.)

R
Click to expand...

This is how we kind of view it too - nice to step out of our comfort zone so we keep our range fresh! I'd say Blood Lad did OK actually - but it's probably not a type of show I'll queue up for acquisition regularly either.

For Free! - will definitely look into it ;)! We're huge fans of those dashing swimmers and have thrown some fun packaging ideas round the office unsolicited - bit complicated though all in so we'll see ;)!

AP
 
anime_andrew said:
Rui said:
It's quite useful in a way that AL grab a bunch of different stuff as they can sample exactly which segments of the market can support their releases. If Blood Lad had ended up being a bigger hit than it was it could have been a nice supplement to their income - and the concept alone will probably give it reasonable appeal to the casual audience since kooky supernatural stuff seems a good fit for the UK market.

They need to try a sports show or shoujo television series next :D

(Andrew, if you can sort out Free! on BD here one day you would make a lot of people very happy.)

R
Click to expand...

This is how we kind of view it too - nice to step out of our comfort zone so we keep our range fresh! I'd say Blood Lad did OK actually - but it's probably not a type of show I'll queue up for acquisition regularly either.

For Free! - will definitely look into it ;)! We're huge fans of those dashing swimmers and have thrown some fun packaging ideas round the office unsolicited - bit complicated though all in so we'll see ;)!

AP
Click to expand...

I Am Not Buying Blu-rays Wrapped In Speedos!

Seriously though, do you think a football anime like Giant Killing could work specifically in the UK and Europe where it might not in the US or AU?
 
anime_andrew said:
You'll love my latest slate of titles I'm chasing then - I think folks will in general but as a whole, labours of love coming up over everything else really on the horizon...

We do strive for doing interesting things with properties though so watch this space going forwards, also chasing a few new films that are exciting for me just now (one I am almost certain I won't get sadly but some others that I am confident we will...)
Click to expand...

Tease!
 
Just Passing Through said:
I Am Not Buying Blu-rays Wrapped In Speedos!

Seriously though, do you think a football anime like Giant Killing could work specifically in the UK and Europe where it might not in the US or AU?
Click to expand...

Darn! Back to the drawing board for packaging :p.

Seriously though - it depends on the show. The trouble is the target demographics don't overlap too often between football & anime for buyers so it really has to be a smash hit to be worth the risk. Sports anime even in America hasn't the best of records sadly so I'd be very very cautious on chasing anything there...

You never know though.

Andrew
 
anime_andrew said:
For Free! - will definitely look into it ;)! We're huge fans of those dashing swimmers and have thrown some fun packaging ideas round the office unsolicited - bit complicated though all in so we'll see ;)!

AP
Click to expand...

There is a chance that you'll probably end up being partnered with Crunchyroll to distribute a bunch of titles they own. I wouldn't say it was a bad thing as they have Arpeggio of Blue Steel and Strike the Blood also which I feel would be a good seller for the UK. But I wonder if Crunchyroll owns some of the rights to the Madhouse/NTV shows given a bunch of them have never been released on home video yet besides Death Parade which Funimation managed to grab before Crunchyroll did. If those titles were part of Crunchyroll's deal then that could mean you would have the rights to the likes of Hunter x Hunter, Kaiji, Parasyte and possibly My Love Story! (airing in April and is also part of Madhouse/NTV) if they also pick it up.

---------------

Just had a look at how Dragon Ball Z Kai is doing in Japan in terms of episode count.

March 1st will be Episode 143 focusing on Gotenks being absorbed which was covered in Z's Episode 265 (250 dub). Looks like another 20 episodes or so and Kai will be done.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I definitely prefer seeing Anime Limited (and by extension, other distributors) being diverse with their catalogues and pursuing both classic and contemporary titles. There are definitely older series' and movies that should be preserved and be made readily available for modern (and future) audiences, but there are also a number of high quality newer works. It's worth remembering that today's "contemporary" will become tomorrow's "classic".

As a result of the high quality of past acquisitions, a part of me has admittedly come to see Anime Limited licensing a series as a kind of quality assurance, which is precisely why I backed the Mai Mai Miracle Kickstarter (basically, the people at Anime Limited have good taste).
While of course the aim of every company is to turn a profit, Anime Limited is also the only UK anime distributor so far where I feel that a title hasn't been licensed solely because of its commercial appeal (Of course, I'm not saying that profitability is the sole reason driving Animatsu/Manga/MVM's decisions either).

I think the only Anime Limited licenses that have stood out to me as being rather odd have been the aforementioned Blood Lad and Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya. I watched the first couple of episodes of both and found that they didn't personally appeal to me. I hope they do well though, because a more varied catalogue can only be a good thing.

Also Andrew, please license Shirobako. I will throw money at a pretty release for that series. If possible, I'd love to see it receive the Anime Limited treatment with a Collector's Edition including an art-book containing the in-universe designs for the series' made by Musashino Animation (alongside the series' regular designs of course. Maybe the two could be split over two volumes?).
 
anime_andrew said:
Ath said:
To be fair, even Criterion have their weird selections occasionally :p (Armageddon? Really?)

Was glad to hear the goal of being the Criterion of anime being reinforced in the podcast. That's the reason Anime Limited excited me in the first place and they're on the way to getting there. Andrew mentioned on the podcast Giovanni's Island in particular as an example of Anime Limited's goals and I agree. I probably wouldn't have bought it if it came from another company.

Having said that, I'd also like to see them licence more of the classics.
Click to expand...

You'll love my latest slate of titles I'm chasing then - I think folks will in general but as a whole, labours of love coming up over everything else really on the horizon...

We do strive for doing interesting things with properties though so watch this space going forwards, also chasing a few new films that are exciting for me just now (one I am almost certain I won't get sadly but some others that I am confident we will...)

AP
Click to expand...

Great to hear! I echo the calls for some classic anime.

You mentioned on the podcast about Criterion releasing Akira on laserdisc - which was actually the only animated film they ever released until Fantastic Mr. Fox this year and Watership Down this month. Which is quite disappointing, when they've released over 800 films on DVD. In the UK, Masters of Cinema have a slightly better ratio having released three Rene Laloux films. I suppose that their main demographic is film lovers and film academics who will eat up the film 'canon', probably epitomised by the Sight & Sound polls, that will sell in the same way that Dickens, Tolstoy and Fitzgerald will sell for Penguin. On the other hand, the highest placed animated film on the most recent S&S poll was My Neighbour Totoro all the way down at #154. Do critics lack appreciation for animation? Are they just snobbish towards it? Who knows, but it would seem like a combination of the two (and having listened to the podcast I won't get you started on the Oscars!)

I'm rambling, but I guess I'm trying to comment on is what I perceive as a lack of demand for classic anime and animation in general in comparison to live action film. And a lack of discussion about classic anime - both critically and online; rarely do you see a mention of Future Boy Conan, for example, in an article about Miyazaki. Rarer still is discussion about Toei Doga like Hakujaden, or Momotaro's Divine Sea Warriors - despite their importance in anime history. By the way, if you haven't yet read it, I'd recommend Jonathan Clements' Anime: A History!

EDIT: And it's probably worth mentioning transfers. Excitingly, Cinelicious in the US have been given the original 35mm camera negative of Belladonna of Sadness to restore in 4K themselves. Correct me if I'm wrong but my perception is that anime rightsholders are generally quite protective over things like that, which may be another reason that Criterion haven't gone back there.
 
Back
Top