Forum - View topic

NEWS: Eureka Seven AO BD to Have English Subs in Japan

It's all about economy, folks.

Bandai Japan is not interested in licensing titles where they put a lot of investment into. Eureka Seven franchise happens to be one of them.

When they pulled plug off from their US operation, Bandai Entertainment, it shows that they want to make seriously large sum of money from collectors rather than making pennies from cheap BD/DVDs.

They realized that making few thousand dollars on one DVD title isn't enough to cover costs associated with production, marketing, and overhead. Bandai Entertainment was selling DVD's for cheap, but their cheap price still couldn't keep them afloat at shrinking DVD market.

Vast majority of fans here watch anime from stream and downloads. Most of them don't buy physical media even though they're lot cheaper than Japanese counterparts. Bandai Japan knows that they're not going to make serious money through cheap BD/DVD. So, it's not worth their time to make few thousand dollars licensing their major franchise and trying upkeep US branch which is not making money. They want to sell directly to collectors since casual fans will watch the show via stream and downloads.

For Japan, they only need sell 4,000~6,000 units of $500 DVDs to cover show's production cost ($2 million~$3 million). Our side need to sell 40,000~60,000 units to match the production cost. Seriously, how many anime DVDs in the US actually reached 10,000 unit mark?

Not every season will have a Fate/Zero for Aniplex to sponge another 500$ off of a few suckers.

Their luck is going to run out and then they'll be laughing on the other side of their faces.

... Well for this collector, if there's no dub, there's no sale either side of the Ring Of Fire,

Not every season will have a Fate/Zero for Aniplex to sponge another 500$ off of a few suckers.

Their luck is going to run out and then they'll be laughing on the other side of their faces.

He gives great points. The casual fans opinion of anime in the R1 is so dumbed down from what it once was. Everyone is so focused on "cheap" that it is literally at the level of dirt. They want to consume every show imaginable instead of just the few that really won them over. So yeah everyone, go on and bash Bandai Visual. If you are complaining then those subtitles were most likely not put on there for you. They know you have zero intent on buying these discs. Also, zero evidence to support that it won't be licensed for a domestic release in the future.

I really don't believe American anime otuka know how to run a business.

I'm frankly surprised Funimation is even in business anymore with half their catalog given away for $25 a season.

Mohawk52 wrote:

... Well for this collector, if there's no dub, there's no sale either side of the Ring Of Fire,

... if having a dub roughly doubles the sales at any given level (which would be too crude to make an actual investment decision, but seems like it could be the right magnitude), then question is whether half the sales of the Direct English Export dub covers the cost of the dub.

Assuming the Direct English Export is around $350 (Garden of Sinners was $400 direct, but an SRP of $600), Japanese level net revenues of about 55%, and the cost of adding a dub is $150,000, that's $540,000 in gross sales of the dub release, or 1,550 Direct English Export sales. So if you expect you can sell 800 sub-only or 1,600 hybrid, go hybrid, if you expect you can sell 500 sub-only or 1,000 hybrid, go sub-only.

Different expected sales multipliers for dubs, net revenue shares, dubbing cost would place the hybrid vs sub-only threshold at a different place, but the basic principle of the incremental sales from a dub having to cover the incremental fixed cost of doing the dub is universal, whether its the Direct English Export price points or the more traditional US mainstream first release price points. For any given title, there is an expected sales levels where doing a dub costs more than it gains, and expected sales levels where not doing a dub is leaving extra money lying on the table.

And then there's the question of the Kickstarter model, where you could bring the threshold down by getting the uncertainty out of the way.

If they want to piss about and just release it for US only then yeah that could be the case. Release the dub region free and I'll bet they make that x 3 with ease and then some, no mistake, as long as they don't take the piss and price gouge.

They just have to remember that the US isn't the only English speaking country on this planet that has anime fans

Even if it's not SAVE editions, the usual selling price of a 13ep series these days is about $40-45. Which means Funi et al probably get about $30-40 selling the set to vendors.

The Aniplex sets obviously are a higher quality product in presentation and goodies, but that kind of stuff doesn't dramatically drive up the production costs. So the vast majority of that extra price is pure profit. So you can see how each Aniplex set could easily be worth 10-20 sales of cheaper boxes.

However, there is indeed no reason for the Japanese distributors to region code their own BD's ~ that's a condition they impose on distributors in other media regions to put more sand in the gears of reverse import ~ so for a BD-oriented Direct English Export model, it would indeed make all the sense in the world to license for English Speaking Countries and make the Direct English Export available to online distributors in North America, the UK&Ireland, and Australia&NZ. For some titles, that would push them over the threshold to justifying a dub. For others, not.

Quote:

They just have to remember that the US isn't the only English speaking country on this planet that has anime fans

Yes, but North America is likely over half the English speaking anime market, which makes a variety of North American only approaches viable which wouldn't be viable on a UK-only or Australia-only basis. OTOH the UK and Australia are in the same Blu Ray region as each other, and a different one from Japan ~ and in the same Blu Ray region as France, which is a substantial international anime market (and certainly a larger manga market than North America).

I'm not sure if you are aware but India's second language is English from the days of the Raj and there must be a few anime fans living there as well though we don't hear much from them.

A nice box is one thing. I could care less about a super fancy set with extra crap in it. The extras for the most part are cheap throw away stuff that in no way justify the extra price at all. Trim all the fat and just sell me something. As long as it's something I know I want to buy and has subtitles on it I'll buy it. But to add a bunch of useless crap just to drive the price up is stupid and never in my life will I but a set just to get a few extra things that are way over priced.

Not every season will have a Fate/Zero for Aniplex to sponge another 500$ off of a few suckers.

Their luck is going to run out and then they'll be laughing on the other side of their faces.

Mohawk52 wrote:

I'm not sure if you are aware but India's second language is English from the days of the Raj and there must be a few anime fans living there as well though we don't hear much from them.

Most of India is also ridiculously poor; there's not much money to be made there. On the plus side, since VCD still seems to be popular there, reverse importation isn't a concern.