Thoughts on the current Anime On Demand situation

Rui

Rui

Karamatsu Boy
Administrator
I was writing a reply in the general news thread about the newest MVM license announcements and it got long.

I'm hoping one of them is Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions.
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It would be sort of weird if it was (not that being weird is necessarily a problem). AoD streamed it for free with no ads; given that they still have no apparent plan for monetising anything I'd assumed the series they were streaming would go straight to Kaze for the UK.

On that note I really want to know what AoD are up to. It's been a long time now since they went free and there doesn't seem to be any sign of a game plan ^^;

I'm very confused about what's in it for them, other than having the licenses anyway for France so it's not hugely inconvenient to pop them online for us too with subs from the US, out of charity. It's still costing them money, even if it's not much. The complete lack of engagement with the community from AoD's own employees, aside from Andrew in his role as a consultant and a couple of announcement posts each season hidden away on Facebook, make it hard to argue that it's a marketing exercise. And the lack of engagement also means that hardly anyone is likely to be using the site's delaycasts, so can it really be useful for judging viability of a title in the UK either. If it is I must have a sizeable chunk of the vote along with the other handful of AoD users here..?

But they do try at times, and turn up to events with lovely stands, so it's all very confusing.

Then there's the matter of the four licenses for this season almost certainly being the same four licenses which Crunchyroll are only streaming outside the UK. So is France taking the UK rights which we'd normally have from Crunchyroll anyway and then giving them back to us, via a site which doesn't communicate or offer the same features as Crunchyroll? We get them either way (though not necessarily as quickly as Crunchyroll) so it's not a major inconvenience, but it also seems a bit convoluted now that Crunchyroll has quickly established itself as the major player in streaming?

For me, the main reason to be excited about AoD was originally that they'd be speaking up for us and making sure we weren't left out. But they don't seem to like to talk to us very much, so it's hard to imagine they're in a position to speak for the fan community here. And if they're really just rescuing licenses back that would have gone to us anyway if Kaze weren't looking at the UK in the first place, it's a concern.

I feel almost as though complaining is ungrateful and unfair, because they're giving us free anime. But if you followed my line of reasoning all the way, I think it's time to question the situation.

Maybe I'll be wrong and they'll be bringing us a bunch of Funi titles this time after all. It's good for Crunchyroll to have competition in principle, but not when licenses have exclusivity in a way which makes things less convenient for fans who just want to see the latest shows legally. Some discussion on the benefits might be interesting.

(And possibly topical, with Daisuki on the horizon.)

R
 
If AoD's free period has been meant to reaffirm people's faith in it, then it has done a terrible job. I've watched at least one show on the site over the past couple of seasons and I have to say the service has ranged from unsatisfactory to downright abysmal. Subtitling issues are far too common (that's when episodes are actually posted with subtitles) and episodes have been delayed on an almost weekly basis. The idea that AoD isn't giving us series that we would have missed out on otherwise is hugely frustrating, given that Crunchyroll does such a good job these days.

If they'd address the lack of communication I might feel more fond of the site - at the moment the site just feels like an empty shell with a handful of videos being chucked up each week.
 
I dont get most of these situations cause first of all, i come from the time where it was really hard to find some animes over the internet (i mean really old ones), whether is was from not being available or from download traffic limit, etc, but today its completely different. There are a ton of websites where you can watch for free or download for free or even pay to watch like these anime on demand Rui is talking about.

My point is, is it really worth to pay for anime on demand? Dont you have anime channels on your tv system? Even if you do, o know it will probably just have old stuff. I used to have Animax until they changed for another channel cause that one didnt had that much audiences, which is understandable in here.

I dont wanna sound like a piracy guy cause im far away from being considered that but paying for watch? I just cant get that into my head. Pay for something physical or even digital, where i can rewatch anytime i want, its one thing, but pay to just watch is different.

I know these websites provides the anime that is airing at the moment in Japan but still...

I know that whats charged its nothing special though.

Anyway, Crunchyroll in Portugal has around 8 animes, which 7 of them are a piece of crap so its not worth.

Ok you can start my massacre. :D
 
bakum4tsu said:
Pay for something physical or even digital, where i can rewatch anytime i want, its one thing, but pay to just watch is different.
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So....I take it you don't go to the Cinema then ;-)
 
Rui said:
I feel almost as though complaining is ungrateful and unfair, because they're giving us free anime. But if you followed my line of reasoning all the way, I think it's time to question the situation.
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Nothing wrong with voicing concerns, I'd much rather be in a position where we had to pay and they matched Cruncyroll standards for sub titles and timeliness.

I'm not much up on the streaming side but it sounds like they may aswell give up on the UK market and let Cruncyroll take those licences. Unless someone is going to tell me AoD is linked to Kaze and they are securing UK rights for shows they will release later in the UK?
 
Ah, Anime On Demand. I wanted to like them, so much. The idea of a service focusing solely on the UK market seemed like a great idea and one I was quite prepared to support. Then they brought in their retarded pricing model. I'm sorry, but a subscription only service was a stupid idea. One episode of a show is not enough to decide whether or not you will enjoy the entire show. Combine that with the tiny amount of shows they get per season compared to Crunchyroll, and not knowing what they'd get each season and they instantly lost my support there.

I remember they also got Sekaiichi Hatsukoi 2. I specifically said to them on the old AoD forum on ANN "Why would I pay you to watch this when I can watch it on Crunchyroll for free (with better subtitles and no delays as well)?" and their eventual answer was something wishy washy and stupid.

I want to support them, and anyone who works to bring anime to the UK market. As others said, they're terrible at communicating with the fans as well. Right now, I wish they'd go away and leave Crunchyroll to have the licenses instead. The service as it stands is not worth paying a penny for, especially when Crunchyroll has a free option. Even having to wait a week would still be quicker than AoD in most cases.
 
First I'll start off somewhat off topic by saying that I would be willing to pay for something like Neon Alley - Just something where you can watch new stuff dubbed on a linear TV platform. It brings some sort of excitement of waiting for the next episode to air and you can also leave it playing all day and jump in and out of things whenever you like.

Then we get to 'Simulcasting'. Multiple services offering different shows, locking out regions, one service taking rights to a show in all regions but one as someone else has licensed it. Why bother when it's much easier to wait a few hours after airing and get it from one place where someone has subtitled the whole episode including the OP/ED, uses nice styled subtitles for the karaoke and arguably better video. You also have the ability to watch where and when you want. No need to go and sign up with multiple different sites, only to find that the show you wanted to watch is locked out of your territory.

Maybe it's because it's the way that my friends and I have always accessed this stuff that I see simulcasting as a massive downgrade from what I am used to, especially when it's split up/segregated as much as it is. AOD just happens to be by far the worst service out of the lot, and by the looks of it, they haven't even finished shows from last season yet. If that's the service you would get if you were a paying subscriber then I see no reason why anyone in their right mind would pay for it. Let's be honest, at the end of the day their main audience is France, not us. They don't care about us, evident in their lack of communication, so we should we care about them?

I'd much rather support shows I like by buying things like Music CD's, Merch like Nendoroids and I'm even starting to consider importing some Japanese BD's now I have more money coming in (So long as they are subbed). The idea of the new Daisuki service is semi-interesting though, although I won't get too excited until we actually find out more about it. Hopefully it will kill off AoD and break down the walls which, for example, prevent us from watching shows licensed by Funimation.
 
Anime-On-Demand streamed Steins;Gate, which MangaUK picked up (as opposed to it being a Kazé release through Manga). They certainly have spiralled into nothingness, especially when compared to the time when they were simulcasting shows like Tiger & Bunny, Steins;Gate and Un-Go. Personally, the only titles I've watched on Anime On Demand lately have been the Kyoto Animation titles - they've been pretty good at picking those up. I also watched To Love Ru Darkness, which was a random as heck pick up. I'm glad that we were able to legally view it, but we don't even have the previous two seasons legally available, so it doesn't make much sense :/. Personally, I wish they'd also go after getting the UK rights to the shows FUNi grabs for streaming and decide to block to us.

One thing I wish they would do, which I have asked them to do before, is update the website so that I can play videos on the Wii U's Netfront browser. I can play the trailer they display on the front page, but not the actual shows. It's ridiculous. Their communication is absolutely dreadful.
 
Some really good viewpoints being talked about here. I hope Kaze FR get to see them even if they don't talk to us directly.

bakum4tsu: I know it's even worse for you, you're in the situation we were several years ago out there only worse off because the Japanese companies have far less interest in Portugal than countries which use French, Spanish, English or the most popular Asian languages. But I feel that we can get this working and participate properly in a successful, profitable, high quality anime industry one day if we can get our voices heard (my hopes are so high for Daisuki...). Things have improved so much in the time I've been a fan; we've gone from no online fan scene at all to thumbnail-sized downloads and VCDs, then on to a piracy-fuelled wild west, and at last to legal streaming and simulcasts. And now for the first time I can finally watch a reasonable amount of anime perfectly legally, supporting the industry I love instead of some guy making money running a dodgy server somewhere. And we can matter, and affect the quality of the eventual physical disc release in a visible way, like providing enough hits on the legal streams to justify dubbing a borderline show or getting it a BD release. It's so exciting, for me, to be able to watch something when it first comes out; to be able to buy Newtype magazine and have the news be relevant to me. I want this to work so much - on a global scale.

One of the many things I find weird about AoD at the moment is that they have a whole website, which is pretty nice-looking, yet it has no information on it and you have to go to your account or click through several times to the last episode of something to verify whether there's a new episode - this was particularly annoying a couple of months ago when they started lagging behind everywhere else by weeks/months (at the start of the year IIRC) and I had no way to find out what was going on. When they do talk, they post updates on Facebook only, bizarrely, with no hint on the website that that is where you should be looking. Crunchyroll has a proper news feed, an up-to-date schedule showing everything clearly linked on the front page, and updates on Facebook, Twitter and heaven knows where else. And it makes episodes available when it says it will so you can invite people to watch with you without ending up looking silly when the episode isn't actually there after all.

Another way that I think Kaze has dropped the ball in a way is that I speak Japanese and English, and can read French and German well enough to get by too. When they were going through that rough patch and not putting episodes up for a while without speaking, I could see them sitting there on the French site but not watch them. I can also go to the Japanese websites, but lately they've all put in geolocks too because they want to keep their relationships with overseas licensors sweet(!) at the expense of expats. I know it would take a little effort to have a geolock system which let UKers view the French site for series where Kaze owned the rights in both countries, but it would be appreciated very much. There are lots of ways it could be done, and this is a huge unique selling point that Kaze could bring to the market with their position in Europe by catering across borders better than Crunchyroll. Except they don't.

Meanwhile on the other side of the fence, forum member Ayase is off in France torrenting copies of his anime collection to avoid boredom. I could tut at him and tell him to try streaming rather than giving torrent aggregator sites visitor stats, but he's an anglophone in a French area so of course the streams he can view on French websites are going to be in French. And what if he travels to Italy, is he going to have to get an Italian streaming account somewhere (if a decent service even exists?) and watch everything in Italian? This is a situation which is incompatible with the realities of global travel and trade, and it's a complete waste of the main advantage of the streaming model to begin with, namely that you can log in and view anime anywhere, legally, whenever you happen to be. Otherwise it's no wonder that downloading seems more convenient to a lot of people.

I wish anime licensors around the globe would stop enabling this old-fashioned approach, let alone encouraging it. Crunchyroll's already overtaken Europe language-wise with the option to select your subs from a small number of available translations if you're allowed to view a show in your territory. They've even been chipping away at the crippling exclusivity contracts which hold streaming back with their shared license with Funi this season (Shingeki no Kyojin). In fact, they have been improving little things about their service nonstop for a long time and it shows. Catering for one tiny little country with years of relying on piracy instead of 200,000 paid subscribers, I don't see how AoD are ever going to be pulling in enough fans to warrant investing in the website as much as Crunchyroll can these days. Fine when they're licensing titles we aren't getting anyway, but disappointing when they clash, as they do nowadays with Crunchyroll's improved UK support.

Maybe I'm being melodramatic; maybe Manga UK and Kaze are signing a deal right now to get their whole bilingual back catalogue up on the site to give it a nice niche to grow from.

I don't blame Kaze's staff for the state of AoD right now, it's obvious that it's a very low priority of Kaze France and individual staff members get very little thanks for the negativity we generate. But it either desperately needs some proper attention or Kaze need to cut the UK loose, in terms of licensing, and let America look after us instead. That way we can support Crunchyroll better, get multilingual subs and streams which go up day and date with the US, and hopefully help them eventually crush Funimation and their annoying region-locked anime entirely.

R
 
GolGotha said:
bakum4tsu said:
Pay for something physical or even digital, where i can rewatch anytime i want, its one thing, but pay to just watch is different.
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So....I take it you don't go to the Cinema then ;-)
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You're right, i just go to the cinema maybe 2 or 3 times per year to see big names. Last time i went was for the Hobbit. And the movie is only available in 3D, i dont go believe me lol its way too expensive for 2 person to go and see it. For that, i rather buy the dvd when it comes out, its the same price and i keep the dvd lol

Cinema doesnt make much sense to me these days, you can get better quality from db/dvd and they are released rather quick in the market these days.

So yeah, dont go that much ;-)


Sorry offtopic
 
Ahh... Anime On Demand - a service that seemed good at the time however seems to have gotten lost as it goes on.

My main issues were lack of communication and delays. If there was communication, then I wouldn't be so bothered about delays. I felt once it moved away from ANN, it wouldn't be so good. I miss the person who wasn't Andrew but actually communicated with people on the Forums. Any problems? Take it to Facebook/Twitter/Contact us. ...oh wait. Contact us at periods was broke as well.

Being free is not an excuse for a poor service if this is the service they're going to provide in the long run. These upcoming changes don't give me much hope - when the current site was launched, I recall it being posted that there would be more changes to come within a few months.

So what can AoD do? Communicate more and stick to schedule. Get away from announcing via Facebook and Twitter - you have a news section. Use it! I would rather support the service than rely on 'Free'.

PS. Andrew, if you see this. Don't take it on yourself.
 
When it was on ANN, I didn't use AoD at all aside from Tiger & Bunny as the ANN player was so bad it made me too angry ^^;

I eventually came around when it moved to its own website, and I paid for a subscription just before they stopped being relevant. But I agree with reborn about the lack of communication and constant schedule slippage gradually chipping away at my patience.

I sound dreadfully entitled, but ultimately if AoD is helping UK fans for free out of charity, supporting AoD is charity too on the part of fans. We may well be waiting longer for the same streams, on fewer platforms and in lower quality, that we'd be getting if Kaze didn't exist. This might not be a fair assumption - and if it isn't, perhaps Kaze should be reassuring us that they're bringing us a service that benefits us. Because the site isn't engaging us, there's no sense of building up loyalty to a brand or participating.

The next paragraph is more general.

Exclusivity, region locking (on streaming and on DVDs/BDs), locked subtitles, limited subtitles (in terms of languages) and reduced quality; these are all things which benefit foreign anime distributors, not anime fans. They also don't benefit Japan (the usual easy blame target which can't defend itself) because nobody is forcing a western company to pick up a specific series on the agreement that it receives a crippled release or a stream weeks behind the US one. Nobody is forcing companies to release at such low prices they force themselves into a corner in terms of sales required and having to make increasingly crippled discs. Nobody is forcing companies to sign contracts which hurt customers if they don't want to, as is obvious when the same series receives radically different restrictions in different regions. It's forcing the anime industry to fight a battle on two fronts, against piracy and also against paying customers.

This applies to streaming too; why are people asking for exclusivity for streaming licenses? It's entirely to protect their local revenue streams, not to benefit their customers. Paying customers benefit if series are made available on every single platform there is, not confined to a single website which puts episodes up late and doesn't communicate. It's not my problem if Kaze France doesn't want to work with Crunchyroll or another platform because they'll have less revenue and power that way, it's theirs. I don't understand why the industry works this way. We recently saw the outcry when Microsoft suggested that customers pay for a revenue-protection system which only benefits Microsoft themselves (the recent Xbox internet connection drama).

I wish the anime industry in the west would stop fighting against its own customers with questionable conflicts of interest. There's nowhere for the actual 'enemies' - like pirates - to go, anyway, if supporting the industry legally is such a mess.

I suppose that the worst case outcome would be Kaze continuing to sit on the licenses for the UK and abandoning AoD, so we have no legal way to watch them again. I'm not even sure who to complain to if that starts happening...

R
 
If what you say is true then the best point of contact is japan itself. Kaze, Manga, MVM et al are the distributors and only have the right to sell anime not hold it to ransome. A word with the actual liscensor will possibly cause enough commotion to force trade out of the distributor. Think of it as using a hammer to turn the alternator. The Alternator has all the power but it ain't distributing. Some blunt intervention from a more primary source might convince it otherwise.
 
Anime on Demand is free right now, which for me excuses a whole lot of sins. It's streaming in HD as well, which is a decent bonus. For free, I can put up with a small catalogue, delays, subtitle goofs...

If I had to pay for it... well I wouldn't.

If Anime on Demand's three seasons of grace were a gift to fans to convince them that they are doing better, thet the delays will be gone, and that they will deliver a service worth subscribing to. Well they've failed. Nothing in the seasons past has convinced me that they are doing better. Their new title catalogue continues to shrink, with only four new titles this season.

As mentioned, best leave it to Crunchyroll. I think their best bet is to transition to a back catalogue streaming service, offering something other companies don't. Have existing and back catalogue titles from Kaze, Manga, MVM, ADV, Revelation, and Beez on the site, both to advertise current releases,and make available shows that are long out of print. Also stream old shows that are unlikely ever to get a home media release here. Give up on the simulcast model as they've constantly proven that they just can't do it here.
 
Problem Children episode 8 has gone from being scheduled for last Friday, to being delayed until yesterday, then posted but 'unavailable', now it's pushed back until next Wednesday.

Sometimes you just have to laugh.
 
I'm glad that the three unfinished shows from last season are all series I dropped. I'd actually thought the massive delays we had were over when they caught up (well, overlooking the fact that this season's new licenses look as though they're going to start off delayed again). Ouch.

The delays seem to be caused by a mix of things, from delays receiving the video (from Japan?) to problems getting the subtitles (from the US?). They don't seem to be licensor-mandated. Magi was originally on Wednesdays but after slipping around and missing its date almost every week it eventually settled into a Thursday timeslot which was was a blessing and a curse - it made us even farther behind the rest of the planet, but it also meant that AoD could generally put the episode online when they promised by the end of its run.

It feels a lot like reinventing the wheel when the videos are already online legally (on other sites, region locked away from us) and the subtitles are ready in the US when the US video goes up. Some poor chap at AoD is probably single-handedly managing all of the videos for all of the different Kaze regional portals and whenever they go on holiday or have a sick day the entire process falls to pieces.

Meanwhile with Titan, Funi and CR both use different subtitles (they seem to be paying for separate translations) but both get them up without the schedules getting messed up :s

I really hope that Daisuki will be a success and give us more of an avenue to communicate with Japan about how things are going.

R
 
The site is semi-automated - the problem with missing subtitles in the past was because the videos were being uploading on schedule but the subtitles had been delayed. This was mostly, if not always, for shows on TAN so I assume the bottleneck there is Sentai.

There was one show the other season where Sentai's stream was delayed a week and, since we were already well behind, I thought it might be a change to catch up - but our's was delayed a week also regardless.

FUNi do their own subs - their's were different to CR's on Sora no Otoshimono also.
 
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