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

I'm surprised it has taken this long for someone to stop giving the US cheap access to blu-rays like that. I remember watching the AWA(?) livestream of a Funi panel on Nico Nico Douga and all of the Japanese viewers were astounded at the price for complete season combo sets, asking over and over if the price was really for a complete set and tallying up the exchange rates. When we had singles in the US for VHS tapes (which were also hardsubbed anyway) and DVD (which were region locked), it wasn't so immediately obvious what a ridiculously good deal people were getting, but now even the briefest glance makes reverse importing look extremely desirable.

The region aspect is a delusion, since getting out of region locking is nothing more than a minor inconvenience for most people, but the way it has frightened some companies suddenly and brought about things like Kurokami and K-On! with their crippled releases is very annoying. I'd rather we paid more and just got releases that weren't messed up at all (sadly the only US-based company who seems to be trying for this doesn't agree that we deserve to participate, but Bandai Japan's increased focus on subtitles helps too).

In the short term, I don't care too much about Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt as the blu-ray version is supposedly nothing to write home about and it's not the kind of show I'll rewatch much, but it could potentially be very frustrating in future, and it has already stopped me picking up the US LE of SoraOto Forte since it felt like such a downgrade from the nice combo pack we got for the first season.

R
 
Rui said:
I'm surprised it has taken this long for someone to stop giving the US cheap access to blu-rays like that. I remember watching the AWA(?) livestream of a Funi panel on Nico Nico Douga and all of the Japanese viewers were astounded at the price for complete season combo sets, asking over and over if the price was really for a complete set and tallying up the exchange rates.
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You don't think that shows that Japanese prices are far too friggin' expensive? Ours are by and large too cheap yes, but theirs are ridiculous. I import a fair bit anyway, but if I was in Japan I'd import everything. InB4 "That would destroy the industry" - If property prices and wages were lower in Japan their consumer goods wouldn't have to be so damned expensive and it'd be cheaper to produce things in the first place. I suggest opening all world borders to the free movement of trade and people. Ultimately that is what needs to happen for everyone to get a fair deal.
 
I don't mind them being expensive if the alternative is that every show has to be a massive otaku hit or a merchandising juggernaut, because a lot of the shows I love most sell so poorly that they could never exist on the home video sales they'd get at American prices. Also, our versions tend to suck with glitches, missing content and quality issues being the norm rather than the exception, which I do find extremely insulting when I spend my cash. I'd rather pay significantly more for something than pay less and get a version with such mortifying flaws as out of sync audio, which the foreign companies such as Manga UK don't seem to see as a quality issue. I would assume that people boycotting a release over no blu-ray are the exact same people who would consider quality important in the first place. DVD-only buyers aren't affected.

Don't forget also that the Japanese pricing situation for us is aggravated by the brutal shift in the exchange rate that happened in the last few years. It used to be only very expensive to import from there, not cripplingly expensive as it is today :s

R
 
We're back on this already?

What's interesting about the discussion is, there are genuinely valid points being made on both sides of the fence.

I think Ayase's right, though - the way the world is now, and given the way internet consumerism has developed, the global market is the way things should really be going. Of course, that would force a few uncomfortable issues for manufacturers.
 
Rui said:
I don't mind them being expensive if the alternative is that every show has to be a massive otaku hit or a merchandising juggernaut, because a lot of the shows I love most sell so poorly that they could never exist on the home video sales they'd get at American prices.
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They couldn't exist if the end product price comes down but the production costs don't, no. I'm for lowering the production costs to enable the end product to be sold for less, something Globalisation has been doing for decades now - It just hasn't been doing it fairly due to restrictions still in place on trade and movement of people.

Rui said:
Also, our versions tend to suck with glitches, missing content and quality issues being the norm rather than the exception, which I do find extremely insulting when I spend my cash. I'd rather pay significantly more for something than pay less and get a version with such mortifying flaws as out of sync audio, which the foreign companies such as Manga UK don't seem to see as a quality issue.
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For unknown and incredibly frustrating reasons, this only seems to be a big problem with anime. All the other cheap western DVD releases seem to manage to get these things right.
 
While I agree in principle that having a true global community would be wonderful, and the sooner we break down silly things like regions the better, I am not sure that the quality I have come to expect from anime would be maintained if we brought the production costs down. The big hits would be fine, as indeed they are now when they sell tens of thousands of copies overseas, but I can't help but think that the quirky, quintessentially Japanese stuff would suffer as soon as the functional, if annoying model was changed too much. There's an underlying reason I don't have TV or buy anything much here in the first place and it's not because I hate British things or the English language (because I don't) :/

I can think of several non-anime failures in global distribution too. My friend just bought Red Cliff on blu-ray here and found it had hardsubs - hardsubs which weren't even well done, as they were hard to read in a lot of scenes. I had to import the first few seasons of House from the US because the DVD sets here didn't have subtitles at all (for the deaf/hard of hearing), even though they existed and it was a major studio release where they could easily have afforded to slap them on the discs. Mass production to save money here just seems to be seen by many as an excuse to be as sloppy and feckless as possible, and the people who suffer are the consumers. I like to be able to choose the best version.

R
 
Kadokawa, it's 2012. There's a global market now and it's stupidly easy for people to import or get around region blocking.

Here's a crazy thought: If the Japanese companies don't want the Japanese people to import the western releases, why don't they give them releases that don't make them want to look elsewhere? Sure, they have to recoup costs for the production, the TV airing an all that, so our release pattern wouldn't work at all there, but am I seriously supposed to believe that ￥2625 (£20.25) is worth one episode of Tiger & Bunny (Volume 1 Standard Edition only has 1 episode iirc)? Later regular edition volumes then have their SRP at ￥6300, which is £39.14 (Sure, they're sold on Amazon at ￥4796, but even that's ridiculous). Going the SRP, that's £333.37 to complete the series - and that's just the standard edition blu-rays. So when you consider that a possible western release is going to cost...what, about £50 for the entire series? (based on 2BD sets for £25 each), that roughly translates to ￥6406.15 - just over the price of one volume, so of course importing is going to look better for them.

Also:
A new Mirai Nikki Project.
Inb4 it's a recap movie, followed by a new story.

Rui said:
I had to import the first few seasons of House from the US because the DVD sets here didn't have subtitles at all (for the deaf/hard of hearing), even though they existed and it was a major studio release where they could easily have afforded to slap them on the discs.
R
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Wait, the US releases of House have subtitles?! My great uncle loves House, but was disheartened when he found out that some of the newer DVDs don't have subtitles (As he's hard of hearing). Do you know if the more recent series' have them?
 
There's an underlying reason I don't have TV or buy anything much here in the first place and it's not because I hate British things or the English language (because I don't) :/
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What's the reason?

£333.37
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Seriously? That's completely bonkers. £70-80 is the most I would think a twenty something ep series is worth.
 
vashdaman said:
£333.37
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Seriously? That's completely bonkers. £70-80 is the most I would think a twenty something ep series is worth.
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I know right? I just got the price of all the Japanese single edition blu-rays (SRPs obtained from Amazon), added them all together and converted them. Stupid.
 
Though as Rui pointed out, the conversion rate is probably exaggerating the problem even more. But, either way you look at it, it's still a bit of a maddness
 
Vash: The quality issues and (relatedly) desperate attempts to appeal to a mass market crowd are part of it for me. I have enjoyed plenty of local and American material over the years, but I've been finding that it's a lot more difficult finding the diamonds in the rough as the interesting projects seem to be the first to go as soon when belts have to tighten :s

Joshawott said:
Wait, the US releases of House have subtitles?! My great uncle loves House, but was disheartened when he found out that some of the newer DVDs don't have subtitles (As he's hard of hearing). Do you know if the more recent series' have them?
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I stopped collecting at season four as it had all became too irritating and melodramatic, but almost all US DVDs have subtitles or at least captions for hard of hearing people (it's one of the areas where America is way ahead of us). According to Amazon.com the later seasons have them too. I import a lot of my English-language stuff from overseas for this exact reason, ridiculously!

R
 
Rui said:
Joshawott said:
Wait, the US releases of House have subtitles?! My great uncle loves House, but was disheartened when he found out that some of the newer DVDs don't have subtitles (As he's hard of hearing). Do you know if the more recent series' have them?
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I stopped collecting at season four as it had all became too irritating and melodramatic, but almost all US DVDs have subtitles or at least captions for hard of hearing people (it's one of the areas where America is way ahead of us). According to Amazon.com the later seasons have them too. I import a lot of my English-language stuff from overseas for this exact reason, ridiculously!

R
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Yeah, I haven't seen House since season 6 (mainly because that was when I lost Sky) and I agree that the series had become way too focused on melodrama. I've just checked on PlanetAxel and yeah, the later seasons have them listed too. Ill have to email him and give him a poke towards it.

Thanks for the tip.
 
vashdaman said:
£333.37
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Seriously? That's completely bonkers. £70-80 is the most I would think a twenty something ep series is worth.
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There's the problem, right there.

it came up before, but I want to seize on this to further validate a point I made a few pages back:

If fans in Japan are content to pay this, for whatever reason, that's fine and dandy. But in the West, it doesn't wash. Master license holders in Japan need to acknowledge and accept this.

The perspective is:

Joe Public will sometimes pay up to £200 for a multiple-season box set of a Western TV show, with 20+ episodes per season.

Joe Public is more inclined to pay in the region of £70 - £80 for something like that.

Bottom line - harsh as it sounds - only a smaller section of the buying public are interested in animation, and the cross section of those who are interested in anime is even smaller. Of those folks, I suspect that the numbers who feel inclined to pay more than £70 - £80 for a 26 episode, one season show is *pretty small*.

Restricting accessibility to anime in the west by any means - higher pricing, region coding, enforced exclusivity within a certain region - is, frankly, stupid. You sell more by making your product available to a wider base of potential consumers, at a price that they can afford and think is fair.

And is it just me, or does the Western branch of the anime industry seem resigned to low sales and dwindling interest? If so, that's IMBECILIC business sense. At this stage, there needs to be a focus on attracting new customers and pushing anime back into the forefront of pop-culture. Find ways to make it cool again. Show some faith in the products and promote them. So many opportunities have been missed on that front it's unbelievable!
 
And is it just me, or does the Western branch of the anime industry seem resigned to low sales and dwindling interest? If so, that's IMBECILIC business sense. At this stage, there needs to be a focus on attracting new customers and pushing anime back into the forefront of pop-culture. Find ways to make it cool again. Show some faith in the products and promote them. So many opportunities have been missed on that front it's unbelievable!
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MangaUK said that it was happy with Fairy Tail volume 1 selling 500 copies in its first week. My first reaction was honestly, "F---, that's a pretty big fail isn't it?!".

While Anime on TV is a discussion that has been done even more times than Katie Price, I wonder if the launch of services like Netflix will help the cause? Persuade the Japanese license holders to authorise a show to be put on Netflix (FUNimation did it, so why can't MangaUK?) and then pay Netflix a bit for extra promotion.
 
The quality issues and (relatedly) desperate attempts to appeal to a mass market crowd are part of it for me. I have enjoyed plenty of local and American material over the years, but I've been finding that it's a lot more difficult finding the diamonds in the rough as the interesting projects seem to be the first to go as soon when belts have to tighten :s
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I can understand this. Maybe it's the reason I don't really watch TV, either? Though, I've never really given it much thought, I just assumed I outgrew TV. But strangely, not anime :?


And is it just me, or does the Western branch of the anime industry seem resigned to low sales and dwindling interest? If so, that's IMBECILIC business sense. At this stage, there needs to be a focus on attracting new customers and pushing anime back into the forefront of pop-culture. Find ways to make it cool again. Show some faith in the products and promote them. So many opportunities have been missed on that front it's unbelievable!
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Hmm, I would have thought it would have been possible to raise anime's profile in the west too, over the years I've met a lot young people who still find anime to be 'cool' (even if their not quite fanatics), and at a certain point I was sure it was going to keep growing from strength to strength. It just didn't happen happen, though.
 
ayase, most people working in Japan in the anime industry get paid peanuts, and so much of it is outsourced to Korea now, too. I think people have to start accepting just how niche the product is. Mind-blowing hit status is 100k sales. Mind-blowing hit status for a video game is 20m+ sales, for a movie it's $1b revenue before it even goes on sale as a home-use product.
 
Well somebody must be making money, otherwise why would anime continue to be produced and hyped and merchandised so much in Japan?
 
The thing is, when you accept your line of business as being 'niche' or 'specialist', and give up on attempts to sell it to people outside the existing market, you effectively mark the spot where you want to be buried.

Trust me - I do a little light work in comics, and there are similar concerns there. A lot of the 'old guard' seem to think there'ssimply no need for things like promotion - and it's hogwash. In that field, certainly, you can sell more of your product simply by giving it a little extra publicity. This has worked recently for DC comics as part of their 'New 52' re-launch. They didn't sell more for six months simply because they re-branded and re-launched. A fair part of it was that they got behind the product and ADVERTISED it, letting people know it was out there for them to buy.


vashdaman said:
Hmm, I would have thought it would have been possible to raise anime's profile in the west too, over the years I've met a lot young people who still find anime to be 'cool' (even if their not quite fanatics), and at a certain point I was sure it was going to keep growing from strength to strength. It just didn't happen happen, though.
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This is a pertinent point, and I've had the same experience.

Ask Joe Public about anime, and they quite often think it's all for the dreaded weeabos. It's exclusively for teenagers and nubile young women with bright coloured hair and stripey knee-length socks.

The fact is, I know a few people in my town who have time for anime, and spend money on it semi-regularly. None of them fit the above description. They all ask me about new releases and shows that are easy to find, because they don't know where else to get their information.

If THAT doesn't demonstrate the case for promotion, I don't know what does.

Also, while I'm wheeling this out, here's a PRIME example of the deficiency I see in that area:

You know how we've had a five year period where Transformers was in the public consciousness again, with those three high-grossing movies that did big business? Well, that demonstrated that there's an audience for GIANT ROBOTS. And what does anime do PARTICULARLY well? Yup. Giant robots.

Where was the promotion for mecha anime during this period? Bare minimum, some effort could have been made to push Gundam in the west. Surely that would have made excellent sense?

This kind of failure to capitalise on and tap into what's in the public consciousness is really galling, in my opinion.
 
HdE said:
Ask Joe Public about anime, and they quite often think it's all for the dreaded weeabos. It's exclusively for teenagers and nubile young women with bright coloured hair and stripey knee-length socks.
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And they still aren't interested? Weirdos.
 
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