Forum - View topicNEWS: Industry Group Head Says Anime is a Bubble that Burst
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LordRedhand
 Posts: 1472 Location: Middle of Nowhere, Indiana |
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I don't know about fan being meaningless as a fan is someone who does 2 things advocate and support nad is one that I;ve heard several of "I am an anime fan because I watch anime through ilegal channel" (made friendlier there) Because they claim the title of fan it should mean certain actions or responsibilites, a sense of duty, which they lack. So in terms of them? I really do wish they would move on to do something else because they and the ethics they promote are wrong and I wish they could do something more constructive or something else for their entertainment, as you say "they won't care if they have to move to something else." Even now we are getting a distribution model to better serve those kind of "fans" and yet all I hear is complaints.... still so in the end with these fans it won't matter what the industry does, because we have "fans" dedicated to stealing it regardless of what the industry does. And this article sums it up pretty well "We have people talking about our product but they are not buying it." |
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xstylus
 Posts: 264 |
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But just for the sake of completeness:
Granted, there's credence to the opinion that the Japanese started to emphasize quantity over quality in response to what they thought was a voracious foreign market, but that alone wouldn't constitute a 40% drop in sales, and certainly not in the face of a threefold increase in fans.
I think you're confusing sales with popularity. Anime popularity is still WAY up (although it might be just now starting to wane). It's sales that are down. Sales and popularity jointly continued increasing on a mutual trend until 2002/2003. From that point, popularity started to increase at a more rapid pace, although sales oddly started to level off, then decline, then plummet. Coincidentally, around late 2001 the first digital fansubs (Love Hina) started to make the rounds on various sharing networks. That same year, Bittorrent was invented, and by late 2002 had become a hugely popular file sharing protocol. How interesting. All these things seem to happen around the same time period. But such facts makes no difference in the end. The damage is done, piracy isn't going away, and this is all just evidence presented before a jury of biased co-conspirators. Last edited by xstylus on Tue May 05, 2009 1:03 am; edited 1 time in total |
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KendoGirl
Posts: 31 Location: Australia |
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So, where is the official figure, from a non-biased source, that places an exact $$$$ amount on what fansubs cost the industry?
I don't get the total fansub hate. I for one, can't view sites like CR as I'm not in Nth America. I rely on fansubs to give me a taste of shows that I then would have to import in R1 at a high price due to the value of our dollar, or wait years to see an R4 release. I watched the first few episodes of the original FMA but dropped it because I found it boring (love the new one though and will buy it when it's released - I'm watching the official streaming subs from Madman) I didn't buy the original series' DVDs just because they were there - what's the point in spending so much on anime if you won't like it? I don't even watch the dubs, so I'm already paying for 50% of a DVD I'll never use. ((EDIT: I will add, that after torrenting OHSHC when it was being subbed, I've bought the "season 1" set as soon as it was released here. I'll get season 2 as well, because it was an awesome series and it's worth the money)) I think it's more of an issue of quality of anime over fansubbers taking all the profits. Sure, there are people who'll never buy things but you'll get them everywhere. You just have to cut those losses in business and deal with it. That's the entertainment business. You can't go chasing losses that didn't exist to begin with - why waste the resources that can be channeled into keeping your established customer base and bring in new ones? I appreciate how the industry is moving away from single DVDs to 13-episode "seasons" but there's still a way to go - how about re-releasing some older anime like Anne of Green Gables, Dr Slump, Goku Midnight Eye, the Lupin III series, and trying to do Sailor Moon correctly for once? I'm looking at the series for Winter 09 and it looks dismal. I can count on one hand the series I want to see (and that includes FMA2 and DragonBall Kai, which should also run through winter). More should be done to produce an entertaining, rewatchable series that can be justified as an "investment" when you purchase it. I've never regretted buying any of the Ghibli movies. I have regretted buying Shakugan no Shana and Negima! |
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xstylus
Posts: 264 |
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When you figure that out, let the MPAA and RIAA know because they've been trying to calculate that out for years. Their numbers are guestimates at best, and ridiculous ones at that. However, the data provided in this report provides the most meaningful hint of that possible. As I stated in my previous post, digital subs came around in 2001, Bittorrent caught popularity in 2002, sales began a downward spiral at that exact same time, while anime popularity exploded starting at that time. Do the math. |
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bayoab
Posts: 831 |
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Not even close. Digital fansubs were floating around P2P in early 2000 if not earlier.
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Zac
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 7912 Location: Anime News Network Technodrome |
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By slipping that "non-biased" bit in there, you can reject any facts you don't like or don't agree with, regardless of where they come from. Because any information that doesn't jive with whatever conclusion you've come to, even without doing any real research on the subject yourself, is "biased", and that means it's bunk, because you say it is. I think the word "bias" means "doesn't agree with me". Because that's how it's used. |
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Ashen Phoenix
 Posts: 2918 |
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While I think mass amounts of sub-par and poor quality anime have also contributed to a degree, I most certainly agree that fansubs and fan scans are the majority of this issue and need to be stopped. |
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Dante80
 Posts: 218 Location: Athens Greece |
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Zac, that may go both ways... 
Yay..."another" fansub debate....*grabs popcorn and moves the FF tab below aegisub* |
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Zac
ANN Executive Editor
Posts: 7912 Location: Anime News Network Technodrome |
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SMUG HARD 2: SMUG HARDER |
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Dante80
Posts: 218 Location: Athens Greece |
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Now you are being mean... 
Anyway, on with the bubble issue.
That is interesting. We are talking about the market that gets 600-800 copies sold for anime like Kaiba and Real Drive, and 10k+ for others like Strike Witches and Rosario to Vampire. In this light, the above quote does not really make sense... |
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shikage
Posts: 1 |
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Really, for me personally and many people I know, fansubs are not directly a cause for a drop in sales. The outrageous pricing scheme of the companies licensing the anime series in north america is by far a more significant factor.
Quite simply, I can not justify paying roughly $8 - $10 an episode for an anime series. Individual disks of 4 episodes costs as much as an entire season of a north american TV show. Also, being in Canada I don't have options such as what Funimation and ADV stream on their sites, sites like hulu or have for purchase at reasonable prices through iTunes. Even without fansubs I would be left relying on convention attendance to watch anime at the prices they sell for here. I am certainly glad to see that many of the North American companies (well mostly Funimation at this point) are licensing anime at a much faster rate and even getting it released somewhat more quickly. But if they are going to continue to charge $25 - $35 (again, canadian) for a 4 episode disk than it's not really going to help them much. |
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LordRedhand
Posts: 1472 Location: Middle of Nowhere, Indiana |
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I don't know where your buying or what series your specifically collecting but first I would start here
http://www.rightstuf.com/rssite/ and second is that very few are releasing singles anymore so your numbers are out of date a bit there.... |
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TatsuGero23
 Posts: 1277 Location: Sniper Island, USA (It's in your heart!) |
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In terms of numbers it looks bad but when you reflect on the shows during the boom period, there was alot of crap and medicore shows being made and released, alot of them just for the sole purpose of taking advantage of the boom, with a few gems amongst them. And the fact that ADV and other licensees try to license alot of those series regardless of actual quality is what caused them to crash more then anything else. Viz survive partically in part that the majority of their stock were long running series but its also because they chose wiser in their licensing in the US. Long series have their own sets of risk to them but it paid off for them. And you know what ADV? 4Kids is still around... think about that one. You got beat by 4kids....
In a sense you can blame fansubbers for the downfall of ADV and other US companies but only because it gave the fans fair warning of what was crap and not to waste their money to support a company that got in over their heads and pretty much made bad investments. We love our anime but trying to license a bunch of series hoping we buy just for the sake of "OMG its anime!" was a bad business strategy. Thinking to short term and ideally, rather then anticipating that it just might take a while for anime to build a foundation for itself. I won't deny fansubbing did its share of damage, especially as it evolved in the mid 2000s, but in the end bad investing will always bite you in the end of you don't do anything about it. Seriously, it felt like for every 1 good series ADV licensed, they had 3 or 4 bad ones come with it. Last edited by TatsuGero23 on Tue May 05, 2009 8:47 am; edited 1 time in total |
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excalibur268
Posts: 1 |
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I have to agree, prices and selection in Canada is bad, not to mention how badly the ones we get are edited for content.
and is that righstuf site an US site because if it is the tariff going across the border will increase the prices quite a bit going to Canada, and a lot of series with 4 eps on a dvd is like $40 or more up north 
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ikillchicken
 Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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My god! It's almost as if he's realized what a ton of people have been saying for ages. |
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