Wall Street Journal article on Japanese anime industry

And this is the real effect of dwindling media sales and piracy. Poorly paid people being paid less and expected to work harder to keep the company profits up. Though little can be done to improve media sales if the don't produce things people want to buy.
 
Also highlights that, all though Spirited Away made a bundle for Ghibli, very little of that was spread about to those who worked themselves to exhaustion making it. A bleak report, but nothing I didn't already know.
 
Are these problems of the sort that a change in business model would resolve?
The effect felt worldwide by high domestic DVD prices in Japan perhaps augments their restriction of income. Of course, the collectors-only market is one with which some consumers are fully satisfied, or so we're told.
 
Yeah, basically anime just isn't popular enough in Japan to lower prices and hope to strike out to the mass-market. The last thing that had that kind of popularity was Evangelion.

What I could see would be a further amalgamation of the US and Japanese anime markets, since neither of them is going to go too far on their own in the future, combined with more world-wide paid for streaming and other digital distribution. Especially for series that don't lend themselves as well to selling 10s of thousands of DVD/BD copies and various related moe goods.
 
Zin5ki said:
Are these problems of the sort that a change in business model would resolve?
Click to expand...
That would be tantamount to the Vatican becoming Shinto. Japan would love it if the world wide market was more like theirs and are fighting tooth and nail not to succumb to the business model of the West, giving more for less. tis the reason they fear back importing more than H1N1.
 
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