fujishig

Moving the discussion from the bargains thread

That's a pretty simplistic way of looking at it. American TV show boxsets only really took off when the prices came way, way down... 20 to 30 bucks is now the norm. People could usually sample them for free on tv, or at the very least there was sufficient word of mouth on what they were buying. That doesn't really exist for anime... the dvd sales are not an extra revenue stream, as they are for domestic shows, but often the only revenue stream for the companies that release anime titles here. The high licensing costs (no idea if they're down now) pretty much prohibited cheap boxsets of anime seasons for recent stuff. Also, singles allowed them to gauge interest in a title, without doing all the work up front. If they had just released boxsets, they would have had to do all the sub/dub work up front, and just hope that the expensive release would sell.

I have no idea what changed to enable the "season sets" now being released like Aquarion. For Naruto, the dub-only edited versions, which appeal to the mass market, are released in singles, and it's a fairly popular title anyway. The only other box-set first ones I can think of are either older anime, which doesn't tend to sell as well (Tekkaman Blade). I take that back, they did try it earlier on with some properties like Fushigi Yuugi when they were first released, but the price was high and people complained about the price.

I won't disagree with you that the weak economy and saturation of the market are reasons that the industry is declining a bit. But I don't think it's because they just didn't realize that boxsets are what the domestic customers want.

Jah-Wren Ryel

I disagree on almost all your points.

Fan-subs are an easy way for potential customers to sample and for potential licensees to guage interest.

Most anime airs in Japan, so DVDs sales - foreign and domestic are just as much "extra" revenue for anime as they are for american tv.
Meanwhile production costs for anime are at least an order of magnitude cheaper than for american tv.(high-end tv is $5M+ per episode, high-end anime is ~$200K/episode) The cost to produce a dub track is at least another order of magnitude cheaper too, probably closer to two orders of magnitude ($5K-$10K).

If licensing costs are too high, then that just means the license owners aren't interested in being competitive.

In a bit of segue...
In my opinion, TRSI and other publishers that don't feel they can take the additional risk of dubbing their releases, ought to look at ways to harness the community of anime fans on the net by enabling fan-dubs (yes, fan-DUBS). Include extra tracks on the dvd that have no dialog at all and let the community see what it can do to produce dub-tracks. Sure they'll get people pirating, but even if they get 10 pirates for every 1 new "dub-only" customer it would still be worth it since such dialog-free tracks presumably already exist, including them on the DVD itself would only be a marginal cost. If a show proves extremely popular they might even include multiple fan-dub tracks on a second pressing.

fujishig

How many people really have access to fan subs? And of those, how many are really interested in "doing the right thing" and actually buying the domestic releases when they come out? Not to mention that most reputable fansub sites pull their releases as soon as they're licensed domestically. The number may be higher than I think, but I'd think that the companies are trying to attract the non-hardcore anime fan who's doing all the fansub downloading and stuff... that's what singles attract, the guy with 20 bucks in his pocket who goes to Best Buy and wants to pick up something cool. But yes, if all they want to do is appeal to the hardcore fans, the season set-only option is fine.

Anime airs in Japan, true... but the domestic companies are making all of their money off of the domestic release (unless they're subsidiaries of the Japanese company, and even then they're usually thought of as a separate business unit). So dvd sales are not "extra" revenue for the domestic companies, for the most part, they're the primary, and most times the only source of revenue for all of their work subbing, dubbing, producing, etc.

Licensing costs should come down with the drop in sales...

I'm not sure how fandubs would work... I'm not very familiar with it, but I don't see many (good) fan-dubbed projects. I'd think that it'd be easier to get some fan subs up, since that seems to be the most prolific community, and maybe the company can just focus on the dub... but I don't really see the Japanese licensor agreeing to this, if they had any say in it.

Erdrick

For a well put together discourse on how box sets could potentially make domestic companies more money than singles, see post 310.

Takeshi357

Am I the only one who prefers having anime with their OPs and EDs intact, ie. without the Japanese credits removed and replaced with english ones?

This is especially big for me when it comes to 80's anime, where it sort of heightens the nostalgy factor...

WTK

Overpar

I just rented Metropolis from Netflix and loved it! The only problem was the picture wasn't that great. It looked old, like the colors were muted. Does anyone know if there is a re-mastered edition out for any region or if a Blu-ray release is in the works? I would love to see it cleaned up!

Thanks.

WTK

Japan had a Blu-ray + DVD release last year on 11/23/07. Here is the link to CD Japan and Play-Asia.com.

WTK

Here is a link to a snapshot of Blood+, Part 1 (6-Disc SE) posted by someone @ AoD:

Overpar

Thanks, WTK! Judging by the review, though, it doesn't look like that great of an improvement, so I think I'll hold on to my $98 for right now.

VamPirateXXX

So does Blood + Part 1 no longer come with a T-shirt? I seem to remember hearing that it would, but that picture doesn't seem to show one.

WTK

The t-shirt is still included. It will be fitted inside the box right next the thinpaks.

Trigger

Just for reference - I tried to get Official Anime Discussion threads going years ago (started in 2000) and eventually gave up on it... I got a lot of complaints from people saying they didn't want it all in one thread. DVDTalk has since leaned more in that direction - Official this and that threads 30 pages long. I can see what people were complaining about now that I don't visit the forum as often - it can be a pain finding any info if you have to read through entire multi-page threads.

Anyway - I unearthed some of the threads (I think there were 5) in the archive... the info may be older, but there's probably some interesting stuff in there somewhere...

Thread 1 is gone...
One and Only Anime Discussion Thread 2
One and Only Anime Discussion Thread 3
One and Only Anime Discussion Thread 4

Also - here's another thread I tried where I cataloged and categorized and whatnot every Anime that was available at the time. I spent sooooo much time on it, but while some appreciated it - mostly it just kinda got ignored. Perhaps someone might find this useful now.

Anime on DVD: The Guide to Anime 2.0

Feel free to link to this information in the first post if you feel any of this is relevant.

McHawkson

Thanks, Trigger, will look into those link later on.

Trigger

No problem... it's just a good thing they were archived because there really is a wealth of information in them.

Jah-Wren Ryel

Unless your contention is that the people who watch fan-subs have totally different tastes than those who purchase tangible discs, that is all irrelevant to judging demand because it should be proportional. And if your point is that normal fans can't easily sample fan-subs, a major part of that is because fan-subs aren't sanctioned so you can't (easily) find them on youtube, et al. That would obviously change if they were sanctioned.

Since the cost of "all of their work" is orders of magnitude less than the cost of producing the original episodes, the total sales required to turn a profit is also orders of magnitude less.

Which is precisely my point. They - the japanese licensor and the foreign distributors - need to catch up with the 21st century. The reason you don't see many fan-dubs is because nobody makes the raw materials available. They should take a cue from people like Trent Reznor, Barenaked Ladies and to a lesser degree Peter Gabriel and release the individual tracks in a useful format in order to make fan-dubbing practical.

If it turns out that fan-dubs are still impractical, then its no skin off the nose of either the japanese or the foreign distributors. If they are practical then it becomes a new business opportunity - shift the risk and the cost of dubbing onto the community where failure won't bankrupt anyone while focusing on their core business that the internet can't replace - packaging and distribution of tangibles.

WTK

Thanks for the links Trigger!

...you put quite bit of effort on that Anime Guide. It maybe helpful for those who are unfamiliar with the older anime titles.

WTK

Could it be Maria-sama ga Miteru or maybe something else? We will find out soon enough!

Overpar

Sky Blue coming to Blu-ray in June in the U.S.!

http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/skyblue.html

WTK

It sounds like this may be a UK release. Source.

Trigger

Yeah - it was a labor of love... I hope someone finds it useful.

qtwerp

I certainly hope so! That's one of the very few series I'd snap up at full retail.

Smorri

Hello everyone. I have a question concerning Strawberry Marshmallow. I just watched the first DVD and really enjoyed it. My question is 'Whats with the one girl always ending up laying face down on the floor?' The first time (when she jumped through the window) I took it that she fell, but after that it seemed like maybe she was being punished for her smart comments by their big sis. Did I get this right?

Thanks in advance...

Takeshi357

Not that anyone really cares, but there's a new Hokuto no Ken box set coming out on 28th (only in Japan) to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the franchise, with the whole series remastered in HD, spanning 26 discs plus two discs of bonus material, a deluxe booklet and repro promo poster from before the show premiered.

There's also a limited edition with a Kenshiro and Koku-oh action figure, but none of this matters because the box set doesn't have any english subs of course and costs over 1000 US dollars.

Oh well, the next time someone complains about anime being expensive...

McHawkson

Miu always do that through the series. It seems that whenever she got hit or tripped, she would pretended that she's "dead" by laying face down. I guess that's the way she's trying to get an attention from everyone in the room. That's how I see it.