Western anime industry in danger?

Paul

Paul

Ghost of Animes
Administrator
In a recent interview posted on Mecha Anime HQ, Bandai's Jerry Chu announced his companies (US) acquisition of Gundam SEED: Destiny.

The interview also touches on the precarious state of the US anime industry; commenting that after booming over recent years, the US has been flooded with too many anime releases to the point where "... many companies run a risk of collapse if they continue to release at breakneck speed".

This is of particular interest when stopping to consider that the UK anime industry is currently going through a similar state of 'release schedule growth'. You have to wonder, will the British market eventually suffer from the same problems of over-crowded anime shelves?
 
I do think this could be a geniune problem for the UK industry soon, especially when you remember we don't have the benefit of TV exposure like the US. It's strange to think that too many anime releases could be a bad thing, but it's certainly a worry when stores like HMV and Virgin stop expanding their anime sections and randomly stock their shops with misc. volumes of certain shows.
 
that's true. from a distributor's point of view, i think more emphasis should be put into promoting the series that are already out, rather than releasing more shows and, as you pointed out, confusing shops to the point at which they don't stock the right ones. i'm not saying loads of new releases are a bad thing per se, but it probably isn't a good idea to flood the market before you've expanded the market first. anime is still quite a minor thing in the UK (compared with the States and Australia, for example), and its image still leaves a little to be desired, so maybe this should be more of a priority. i think the most sensible thing to do would be for the distributors to set aside more of their budgets to getting established titles on mainstream television instead of buying rights to new ones that may not sell; it might pay off in the long run.
 
I'd like to draw attention to one thing:
In order for us to do something, it has to make sense financially.
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Take a moment to write that down on on a nice big card, or something.

Alright, now next time you're about to post to a forum complaining about an anime company look at this card. Is it relevant? Chances are that it will be.

Sorry, that's just something that annoys me about fans. Not so much here, thankfully.

As to the question at hand, I think the UK market has the advantage of essentially buying from the US rather than Japan. Hopefully we'll manage to avoid problems by being more selective, due to our smaller market. Sadly, I've no idea how this will really work out; it'd be nice if we could follow the trend of the growing US market, but I'm not sure how different things will be here.

One thing I am kind of worried about is Kodocha. I love this show, and am glad it's getting a release, but I'm just not convinced we have the market to support such a long shoujo series. I might be more reassured if I knew how well Furuba sold, but I don't.
 
If the companies didn't release so many shows, they wouldn't be taking so many risks with shows that are of a high calibre, but low audience potential. The UK market would be flooded by Robot Shows and "Harem" romantic comedies and little else. I like to think that the single reason that the UK scene is growing, is because the companies are willing to experiment and are being successful with that experimentation - but it's undeniable that I lack the money to buy every series that has got me interested...
 
The problem could be that anime is a niche market at the moment (and for the forseeable future), both in the states and the Uk, but distibutors seem to act like it is mainstream enterainment. You can get away with a lot more stuff is a genre is mainstream as opposed to more niche markets (mind you you can push more crap on niche markets with rabid fans, Exampe).

The lack of promotion in the Uk will be probably the anime distibutors undoing, as if you ain't a anime/ scifi fan there is no real way the man on the street will ever findout about it, or see any reason to get into anime.
 
I have noticed there seems to be a ridiculous amount of anime being released in USA at the moment and I have to admit this fact has put me off buying any R1 DVDs at the moment. It doesn't just seem to be anime DVDs either, the same thing seems to happening with manga as well.
I used to find a manga title I wanted to buy every 3 or 4 months but at the moment there are new titles all over the place and it's having the same effect on me as the influx of DVDs :(
It has the effect that overstocking shelves in supermarkets has, I can't decide which one to choose, so I end up not buying anything!!

I can't say the same thing about UK releases and the fact they have increased 1000% in the past year or two, if anything that has just encouraged me to want to buy more UK titles instead of importing 99% of my anime :D
 
As long as the uk fanbase is ok then Im not bothered, also Its weird that the US anime industry is bigger than ours, but the asian film industry is bigger over here, take for example Oldboy being released on dvd over here before its even been shown in Japan.
 
I think the main problem , particularly stateside is the amount of companies releasing anime. You have Bandai , ADV , Geneon , Funimation , Media Blasters, CPM , Manga , Animeigo plus the Hentai sub-versions of some of these companies.

All these companies compete for licences ( some more than others ), and the as a result profits suffer for the companies that cant get hold of the major releases. Because there was a backlog of "good" anime to licence whilst the anime boom happend in America companies managed to get hold of popular titles.

There are less titles to go around now as the backlog of releases has been caught up with. This means theres more compotetion for the big licences and some companies may well suffer as a result in profits. I wouldnt be suprised if over the next year or so , some companies may pull out the market ( particularly the lesser ones ) and less and less mainstream series will be licensed stateside. I certainly dont think the anime market will die , but certain companies may be forced to be much smaller due to compotetion getting the major licenses.

As for the UK releases I certainly dont think we are in the same danger , we have three major anime companies releasing things here now , which is far less than in the states. And as long as no other big companies jump into the fray things should remain more balanced here than in my states.

Just my opinion on what I thinks happening/going to happen :)
 
hopeful_monster said:
The problem could be that anime is a niche market at the moment (and for the forseeable future), both in the states and the Uk
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And, let us not forget, in Japan. Obviously it's a rather bigger niche, but that's hardly the point.

I think the UK market will probably be okay, if only because the US market will probably suffer from over-saturation first, even though it's much bigger. Not that this is a terribly big plus; problems with the US market would affect us as well.
 
Concrete badger said:
i've just found this out at the UKA forum - it makes for interesting, if worrying reading.

www.animenewsnetwork.com/article.php?id=6355
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http://forums.animeondvd.com/showflat.p ... o=&fpart=1

Actually has ADV's responses and reasons for the cuts. Personally I dont think its that bigger deal , every market reaches a peak after a period of growth. I think the release of Naruto may well cause the anime/manga boom to start over again stateside , but right now its merely levelling out.

ADV have released and lot of titles that arent really any good in both anime and manga , aswell as spending tonnes of Anime network. So im not suprised if they are in need of making cuts as the anime boom settles a little. But I certainly dont think its the end of the company.

As I said earliar in the thread , now the big backlog of popular animes from over the years has been released by the various companies theres only so many titles to go around. So it only makes sense that companies that have been riding the wave of anime popularity will have to downsize a little to accomodate , maybe even cancel some of their less popular titles ( which considering the sheer amount of titles out there in my opinion is a good thing ).

Its sad for those who have lost their jobs of course :( , but the market has changed to a slower pace for now. Which also explains the mergers in the market ( like ViZ/Shopro and Funi/Navarre ) . Which im sure have taken place partly to maintain those companies better for a market that isnt growing as fast as it was before.

Personally I think people seem to be overreacting , markets cant grow forever . Even if all the main anime companies cut some people it isnt an implosion.
 
This is some really bad news, If ADV make more cuts it could be to the UK ADV department as the UK has much smaller market then the US and i would make sense to drop out from the marker here then in the US.
 
i'm not sure how large ADV's employee roll call is but i think it says more about the industry in general than the company itself. as MangaMinX pointed out, it's not the end of the company or anything. The UK branch may not require job cuts if it's already smaller in size. the US branch is the HQ so it probably has a lot of the main workforce, working on translation and so on. my guess is that the UK branch consists mostly of a skeleton staff of distribution peope who are necessary for the running of the business.
 
Considering that the UK industry appaears to in growing still , I dont think cuts to ADV UK are likely to be on the cards. I remember reading somewhere that ADV UK are independant from the US division and even have to pay the US Division for distribution rights. Although im unsure of the truth of that claim myself.

Until ADV US announce pulling out the market entirely ( I dont see that happening considering the years they exsisted releasing before the anime market was anything like the size it is now ) , I wouldnt worry about these events to much. Its a sign the industry is slowing down for sure , but things cant keep growing indefinately. Even if a company did die eventually or pull out the market. That may be a good thing in the long term for anime fans , as it means more money and more stability for the remaining companies.
 
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