What do European fans think of Kaze?

Just Passing Through

Just Passing Through

The Wildcard
I don't speak European. But I was curious as to what fans in France and Germany think of Kaze's releases there.

From what I imagine, it seems that Kaze have the same kind of market position that Manga have here, pretty much dominant. Are we just spoilt and nitpicky when it comes to anime, as it seems that every Kaze release has some issue that will have a fraction of the UK fandom complaining? Are fans across the channel happy with the anime that Kaze deliver to them, or do they have the same complaints that we do?
 
I've always been curious as to what the general opinion of Kaze's releases are in european territories too. I think I've said this before, but unlike us, the French don't really have another same language market to compare their releases to. We can (and rightly so) compare Kaze's inferior problematic UK releases to the (Most of the time) far superior US releases, and have the ability to import them - after all, why settle for a far inferior product?
There aren't any other French/German etc. distributors abroad, so I imagine for the most part people in the European countries just have to put up with it. That said, I do wonder how they feel about their releases. I am under the impression that one of the main issues, sub locking, is actually quite common on French releases - even outside anime, however I don't see how people can be content with 13/14 episodes being shoved on 1 Bluray disc though, and the other **** like missing subtitle tracks and lack of extras/DVD only extras.

Either way, personally I'm done with Kaze. I'll finish buying series I started buying from them but nothing else.
Honestly, I know I always go on about how much I hate them, but at the same time I want to support Kaze/Manga since they do bring some exclusives over and do some nice things with the packaging. At the same time though, I've given them the benefit of the doubt so many times, and given them enough chances to prove that the problems will be rectified, but still, nothing. They also still make zero effort at all to communicate with the UK market whatsoever, leaving that the anyone else (Manga, Andrew when he ran their twitter page etc.) so it's pretty much impossible to communicate with them - which just suggests that they don't care at all. I wonder if they are the same way with their European fans too.
 
I've heard complaints from Germans before (English skills are quite common over there so they like to import from the US too!) but I can't say whether that was an extremely niche opinion or the majority of import-savvy fans. German customers are more used to DVDs with single audio tracks than we have become and the medium has enjoyed significantly more mainstream success over the years.

I find the poor Kaze disc authoring decisions very frustrating and avoid their releases entirely. However, to play devil's advocate, at least some of the restrictions such as locked subs, crippled quality and missing/restricted extras are obviously deliberate negotiations to tackle reverse importation (the region B thing is irrelevant). I wonder how many fans would prefer to pay significantly more for proper releases?

Since I reconciled that Kaze were just doing the same kind of things Viz does over in the US, I've found their irrational behaviour easier to understand. They've made it pretty clear they have no interest in communicating with the UK fans any more, though, so as long as customers in France and Germany are still buying I guess there's no need for them to reassess their approach.

R
 
I just have from them trigun movie and mardock scramble too and after hearing so much complains i guess i will stay away and get the r1 versions of the stuff i want, like berserk movies. But even for that, i might wait for a pack with all the tree.
 
On the subject of Kaze I have wondered. Their subtitle issues, not displaying dialogue and text translations at the same time along with other subtitle issues I have read about(code geass apparently has some corrupt looking or strange characters), do these problems happen when French is selected? has any one checked, if they are fine then they just don't care about any other languages.
 
Rui said:
I find the poor Kaze disc authoring decisions very frustrating and avoid their releases entirely. However, to play devil's advocate, at least some of the restrictions such as locked subs, crippled quality and missing/restricted extras are obviously deliberate negotiations to tackle reverse importation (the region B thing is irrelevant). I wonder how many fans would prefer to pay significantly more for proper releases?


R
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I doubt this very much. I think they are just pathetic at authoring discs. They have one workflow for their process and put everything through it, regardless of source material. That's why most of their DVDs have audio encoded as DD 2.0 Surround, despite the fact that no one in the US, Australia or the UK uses it for anime DVDs. They all either have DD 2.0 Stereo, or DD 5.1 Surround. Princess Jellyfish had 5.1 English from Funimation, but it still went through the Kaze process and came out as 2.0 Surround. Same with their subs and audio locking.

If the Trigun Blu-ray from Funimation could be Region AB, with unlocked audio and subs, there's no need for the Kaze disc to be locked. There's no logical reason for their Region B licence to be more restrictive than the US Region A licence. But they locked it, and they stripped out the extras and put them onto a DVD, and reduced the bitrate on the audio making it lossy instead of lossless, and reduced the quality of the video, all to put it on a single layer BD and save some dosh.

US companies author their discs to comply with whatever licence restrictions they receive. Kaze author their discs to all look the same, as if they don't actually care about the content on the disc.

I read a review of the AU Penguindrum release. Someone actually complained about the amount of background text on screen at one time, saying that the on screen translations and production notes were excessive and he got tired of pausing to read them. I wish I could have made that complaint about the Kaze release!
 
Kaze tried to enter the Italian market too. If I recall right their first releases were the movies by Osoda (TGWLTT and Summer Wars), then about a year and a half ago they hired an Italian PR and announced they intended to release more and more titles in Italy. I thought and hoped it was a great chance: a company that could release BDs with multiple languages could only gain from multiple markets, this could be a great thing for us customers. After that they released Agartha by Shinkai and all Black Lagoon (season 1-2 and the OVA) on BD. They had the great idea to get them dubbed by in France, so the Italian dialogues were pretty messed up, plus all the voice actors were French trying to speak Italian. You can imagine how nice those dubs were. They got a LOT of complaints (with some insults) for all this, if you look on Amazon IT those releases have the poorest ratings ever. Those BDs sold really badly, after that Kaze disappeared from Italy. No statements on those crappy dubs, no communication, no more licenses, nothing.



Teo
 
Mangaranga said:
There aren't any other French/German etc. distributors abroad
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There's Declic and Dybex in France.
Tokyopop Germany is still around, but they appear to have stopped doing anime.

Is any anime released in French in Canada?
 
teonzo said:
They had the great idea to get them dubbed by in France, so the Italian dialogues were pretty messed up, plus all the voice actors were French trying to speak Italian. You can imagine how nice those dubs were. They got a LOT of complaints (with some insults) for all this, if you look on Amazon IT those releases have the poorest ratings ever.
Click to expand...
You mean people didn't just find it sexy?
 
Shiroi Hane said:
Mangaranga said:
There aren't any other French/German etc. distributors abroad
Click to expand...
There's Declic and Dybex in France.
Tokyopop Germany is still around, but they appear to have stopped doing anime.

Is any anime released in French in Canada?
Click to expand...

I thought that meant there are no major competitors, in the strictest sense, since there'll generally only be one company which puts out any given series in German (until the license expires and gets rescued if it was a hit). The English language market is pretty weird with having so many versions of the exact same series floating around, even more so when you factor in subs on JP and Asian releases. It's one of the things that bothers me since it seems like wasted effort to keep redoing the same work and introducing new quirks with each iteration :s

I guess Spanish editions are most likely to have multiple versions overseas?

R
 
Hi all,

Some not unfair comments here all in all - am not entirely interlinked to the homevideo part now as my focus has been on another project launching in Autumn time with a partner (as well as my work with Anime Limited).

Let me look into a few of these things though - will see if I can get myself and my team more involved to clean up things for everyone involved to avoid anything like this happening again. As I'm a consultant though there's only so much I can do and if my agreement is renewed (it's a little complicated as you can guess) this is an area I intend to take a more active role in course-correcting over the next year.

Re Bakuman - I'm looking into that one myself because I just don't understand how something like that could happen.

Re video errors - I"ll look into that one too.

Re Subtitle locking - Draconian measures are thanks to EU contracts licensors send, I know because I am asked to burn the subs into the video for some contracts and we have to find agreements that allow flexibility. It's a nasty thing for us to be asked and I can't comment on US contractual agreements but if it's requested contractually they have to do it.

Am I missing anything from the list?

Best,

AP
 
My list would also include:

Why don't they talk to us (even in French if need be) about Anime On Demand? They never finished announcing their lineup for the current season and the winter show Mondaiji wasn't finished until a few weeks ago. I moaned a little in this out-of-date thread here. The lack of communication from Kaze is worse than the actual problem in this respect; if they tweeted each time an episode went up and were more transparent with information we'd all be less frustrated with the service. As it is, we feel annoyed because we can see the US customers getting a good service from Crunchyroll and the like while we're twiddling our thumbs waiting to see the episodes the Americans are already blabbing spoilers for online.

There are also weird things going on with disc releases, whether they're with missing subtitles (e.g. sign subs for dub fans, making it hard to understand the plot in some cases) and extras being limited to the French part of the disc or the DVD rather than the BD. Again, the problem is transparency. I know Viz is quite similar in the US so it might be something which this particular organisation won't budge on, but people are usually so much happier if companies are up front about things. A search on the first post in this thread collects a list of discs with unique issues.

I personally dislike their PAL conversions and disc restrictions (sub locks, region locks when the foreign versions aren't restricted, other technical restrictions). I know these are harder to take action on, but in cases where the they mean the foreign editions are obviously better than Kaze's it's hard to justify buying locally.

In the long term I'm sort of hoping they'll just give all of their licenses to Anime Limited if they won't promote the illusion of wanting to cater for the concerns of the UK customers themselves ^_^;

R
 
Hi Andrew,

Glad to hear that you still have an ear to the Kaze grindstone, although I can undertstand if it is an overwhelming mountain to move.

Mangled metaphors aside, the biggest problem with the locked subs, outside access for hard of hearing English dub fans, is that the quality of Kaze's subs are so primitive.

The obvious issue is that Kaze can't or don't show more than two lines of subtitles on screen at the same time. This means that for the Japanese audio track, they have either the dialogue on screen or if there is a silent moment making it possible, a sign translation. They cannot do both simultanously. This means that often in shows like Princess Jellyfish, Persona 4, Pengindrum, and even in the signs light Tiger and Bunny and Code Geass, there are points where the Japanese audio track will miss out on a plot specific signs translation, because they show the dialogue instead. When they do translate the signs, they show that translation in the same place and the same font as the dialogue, so if it happens in quick succession you don't know what is dialogue and signs translation. The same thing happens if more than one person is talking at a time. Either the translation drops one of the dialogues, or the subtitles are shown in quick succession and all mixed up. Right now, the signs are mostly on the English audio track, and the dialogue on the Japanese audio track, while having the DVDs locked means that it's impossible to flip the subtitles to see what has been missed, even if that was a viable solution, which it isn't.

Kaze needs to use software that allows for multiple subtitle streams on screen at any one time, different colour fonts, and complete control over placement of text.

Take someone like Funimation, Sentai, Madman, ADV for example, basically anyone that has been releasing anime to a general audience and been authoring their own discs. They will translate all the dialogue, put it in different colour fonts if need be to avoid confusion when more than one person is speaking. Signs will be translated as well, and that text will be placed over or close to the sign it is translating, all of this happens simultanously. Remember Excel Saga with its subtitle trivia track, that even added an extra layer of subtitling to the workflow and wasn't affected technically. It's impossible to read it all if you're watching Japanese with subs/signs and trivia, but it can and has been done. Get up to the quality of the other publishers and distributors and you can knock out one of the legs of the anti-disc locking argument.

I'm still incredulous about the blanket disc-locking contracts that you say Kaze have, when they are in Region B, not Region A, making reverse-importing less of an issue, and where many of their discs' US and AU equivalents do not require locking. I'd find it easier to believe that their disc authoring workflow is just standardised for each release and they are unwilling to change. If they can get the subtitling right though, there would be fewer complaints. I've never felt the need to complain about FMA Brotherhood, Oblivion Island or Blood-C, both of which were released in the UK by Manga with their Blu-rays, and in two cased DVDs locked, because they got the subtitling right. The lack of control becomes an annoyance, not a crippling design flaw.

Anyway, this is the least that Kaze need to do, to resolve their issues.



Frankly I feel that their product needs to be on a par techically with AU and US releases, similar quality audio and video, same level of extras... The Tiger & Bunny Blu-ray should be a Blu-ray. I shouldn't have to stick a DVD in to watch extra features, just so that a penny pincher can save some money and squeeze the episodes onto a BD 25. It shouldn't be cheaper for me to import the Blu-rays with better quality AV from Australia than to buy the UK release. Un-Go shouldn't have 11 episodes plus its OVA crammed onto one Blu-ray, and have the rest of the extras stripped, (A Blu-ray which I can't play because it's incompatible with my player, and with no fix intended). Code Geass S1 getting many of the extras but then S2 being barebones is just... :evil:

But 18 months into the Kaze UK experiment, with no feedback apparently being heeded from any quarter, I have little faith that they will change now. Best news this weekend was Madman Entertainment announcing that they had Bakuman, as it might get fixed subs from them. Also was thrilled when Anime Limited picked up the first Tiger & Bunny movie. It's sad, and it's probably snarky of me, but I'm actually heartened that at this time the only new title to look forward to from Kaze is K. I'm tired of looking at their releases and wondering what I will have to import next.

I am far, far more thrilled, intrigued, interested and anticipating with salivatory eagerness what Anime Limited has lined up for us, and your announcement on Facebook today of more licenses only sweetens that anticipation. You haven't even had your first physical home media release, and already you own the social media stratosphere, approaching 2000 Facebook likes. That's amazing marketing, and given that you have your finger on the pulse of UK fandom, and so well tied in, I have every faith that Anime Limited will be a soaring success.

Noted that you just hit 2000 likes, hinted at the new licence, I figured out the hint, and got a headrush at just what it will most likely be. And it's a show that I do not even like! Tell me you don't know how to market! :mrgreen:

Compare that Kaze's social media presence, last Tweet, Jan 4th, last Facebook post, Mar 13th (last Facebook post about anime 23rd Nov 2012), Anime on Demand last Tweet Jan 4th, last Facebook Post, Apr 15th.

As you probably know, I've been reviewing most of Kaze's output. I've tried to be impartial and rational, although it's been getting progressively harder to do. Outside of the disc-locking consistency that winds me up, there have been only two titles which I haven't found fault with, Roujin Z and Mardock Scramble: The Second Combustion. That's not a rousing success story.

Anyway, all POWAH! to Anime Limited.
 
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