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NEWS: Sailor Moon Ranks as #7 Graphic Novel in U.S. Bookstores in October

SM has been doing AMAZING.

TsukasaElkKite wrote:

SM has been doing AMAZING.

Thank god for that. Since the manga's been doing so well and there is a renewed interest in the series, perhaps someone will license the old anime? Toei, please let someone get the rights to it! As excited as I am for the new series, I grew up with the old one. I had every single VHS tape, every DVD, the wands, the lockets, the dolls, even the moon cycle.... how I would weep over a gorgeous Blu-Ray boxset, released to a NA audience!

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Podcast: Plan B: Talk Box Mercury

Invited Guest: Fernando Sanz: Part of the Capital 8 staff and the Official Sailor Moon Fan Club President for Mexico and Latin America. Fernando “Usagifer” Sanz is one of the important people behind the Talk Box series project based on Naoko Takeuchi’s work. Today, Fernando will tell us in detail everything about the upcoming Talk Box Mercury, how they came to an agreement with Toei, the difficulty in negotiating with Takeuchi herself, and an exclusive: what will happen with the Spanish language version of Princess Moon. Who will finally be the singer?

[Introduction of Fernando Sanz and how Capital 8 works as distributors for anime]

Sanz mentions that the staff at Capital 8 are also anime fans, so they know what the fans would like on their DVD releases
Towers Entertainment: licenses and dubs the shows
Capital 8: Distributor

Licensing:
Sanz: It’s a very long process. The public wouldn’t believe just how long it takes working on these long negotiations. For example, with Sailor Moon, it was a process of 2 years before we acquired the license, to be able to come to an agreement to release the series, which happened more or less the same with “los Caballeros del Zodiaco [Saint Seiya]”.

I think the power of conviction that we sometimes have as people and as businesses is important, in that the Japanese people, the executives, will like you. Then, you come to them with your proposition; what you want to do, how you want to do it, and…you have to convince them, you have to sell your idea ver well for them to release the license. It’s not easy; you have to negotiate for a long time, you have to sell very well what you intend to do so they can agree and release the license. The same thing happens with “los Caballeros” [talks about Saint Seiya licensing process which is just as difficult to get as Sailor Moon]

Sailor Moon took a lot of effort, mainly because Naoko Takeuchi, well, I’m sorry Sailor Scouts, but she is who owns 100% of the rights to Sailor Moon. She is the one who has the final say so on whether or not the license will be released to you.

PlanB: Basically, if she likes the products, she says “Sure, go ahead”, but if not, “No” and that’s it.

Sanz: You have to come with a set idea on how you want to exploit the franchise, exploit her product, and she consults, obviously, with people at Toei, but she is the one who decides if she likes the idea of how you’re going to exploit the Sailor Moon franchise. And well, the license did take some time. It’s been a few months since the remastered DVDS were released over in Japan, and obviously, we weren’t going to have them before the Japanese. So because of that, it took a bit longer to release the final product, and so that we could have the series remastered, because it’s very different than the one that came out a couple of years ago on some American DVDS [talks about ADV’s releases, and how the company no longer exists]

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Masters:

Sanz: We want to respect the wishes of the Sailor Scouts, the fans, in what they want, and a quality product. Regarding Sailor Moon, the negotiations to buy the license took a long time. There were many discussions on how the product was going to be released.

They (Toei) lend you the masters, where you take the audio, the image, everything, so you can make the DVDs. And at that moment (negotiations), they would not give us the “remastered” masters.

It was either those (remastered masters), or do a transfer from old Betacam tapes to DVD, and well, it’s not a very good quality image compared to the one all of you have on the DVDs we’ve released. It was an image quite degraded.

PlanB: Comparable to the version of Sailor Moon we saw on TV all those years ago, more or less, or worse?

Sanz: More or less, mainly because the resolution quality is a bit ugly, and also because the tapes are quite old. It’s said that the image on the tape has noise, a noise that’s very hard to remove in a remasterization. So it was a difficult negotiation because they already had plans to release the DVDs commemorating the 20 years of Sailor Moon, and, well, they were DVDs with a new image, sound, and with new characteristics. So Capital 8 and Towers always fought to obtain the remasters, which is now what you have in your hands.

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More stuffs below.

Note: Fernando Sanz specifically mentions, more than once, that the license was very expensive, which pretty much debunks what the Italian site reported as "free license" rantipole. This was a pretty informative segment. Read on!

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PlanB: How was it, after the process, Towers and Capital 8 were able to acquire the remastered versión of Sailor moon from Toei? What did you have to sell (to them)?

Sanz: Basically, it was an expensive product. Sailor Moon is an expensive product, mainly because it's starting to reappear in markets all over the world. It is being relicensed all over.

PlanB: We’re not going to tell you all the details of how it was acquired, etc, because (if we did), Toei’s offices would be burned down at this moment.

Sanz: It was a difficult process. There’s a lot of things that I would take too long in explaining, but basically we fought, we insisted a lot with Toei, with Naoko, so that we could acquire the license. I believe a lot of it had to do with the fondness Naoko Takeuchi has towards the fans in Latin America.
Obviously the license cost much more money so that it could be released. But one of the conditions was to respect not only the version that we had presented to Toei and Naoko (the Talk Box), but also to respect the image, the quality, the audio; in other words, to make it the best we could, to not ruin it like other franchises, where they get cuts here and there; to comply with one of the guidelines which is to not cut anything and to have the best quality audio and video possible so as to not deceive the fans.

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It amazes me how much people will watch and read something like The Walking Dead.

SM has been doing AMAZING.

Their second set, Talk Box Mercury, also got delayed a while back due to music issues as Naoko apprently didn't approve of any newly-dubbed songs that were made specifically for these sets so the company had to drop their versions of Princess Moon & Otome No Policy (which were already recorded) along with other songs they had planned for future sets.

And at #3 Avatar:TLA novels keep selling! If this was Japan, another series would've been called for already!

enurtsol wrote:

And at #3 Avatar:TLA novels keep selling! If this was Japan, another series would've been called for already!

But in America all you have to do is sell a few thousand copies to hit #1 on the charts. In Japan you need a few million to get the top spot.

If a manga got that low of sales they wouldn't get another series, they'd be cancelled

Tenbyakugon wrote:

It amazes me how much people will watch and read something like The Walking Dead.

And those Compendium books cost $60 each! And yet at the top!
That's what a good series gets ya.

enurtsol wrote:

If a manga got that low of sales they wouldn't get another series, they'd be cancelled

My statement is all relative. As I mentioned above, those Walking Dead Compendium books cost $60 each, so for that kind of franchise, they wouldn't need to sell as much. Or if something is around the top for a long time in the marketplace it's in, that could show the powers-that-be its enduring popularity whatever the competition may be.

Let's turn this around. Compared to America (where may need tens of millions, especially when Disney could sell 5 million in 1 day), Japanese video sales are extremely low; yet those are enough to have a franchise renewed, partly because prices are more expensive but cheaper to make. Relative to what the Japanese need, those are enough.

Their second set, Talk Box Mercury, also got delayed a while back due to music issues as Naoko apprently didn't approve of any newly-dubbed songs that were made specifically for these sets so the company had to drop their versions of Princess Moon & Otome No Policy (which were already recorded) along with other songs they had planned for future sets.

Source: http://www.sailormoonforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=579938#p579938 (My quote in the second post & the full third post on this page)

2. I doubt Toei would ever allow anyone to release the old anime on Blu-ray before they do one themselves (which I don't see happening anytime soon if ever except for maybe the movies) so don't get your hopes up.

enurtsol wrote:

lostrune wrote: If a manga got that low of sales they wouldn't get another series, they'd be cancelled My statement is all relative. As I mentioned above, those Walking Dead Compendium books cost $60 each, so for that kind of franchise, they wouldn't need to sell as much. Or if something is around the top for a long time in the marketplace it's in, that could show the powers-that-be its enduring popularity whatever the competition may be. Let's turn this around. Compared to America (where may need tens of millions, especially when Disney could sell 5 million in 1 day), Japanese video sales are extremely low; yet those are enough to have a franchise renewed, partly because prices are more expensive but cheaper to make. Relative to what the Japanese need, those are enough.

Japanese home video costs a lot more though, not to mention is broken up into a dozen or more volumes and is all based on midnight no-ratings shows. Unlike a mainstream AMC primetime show. Not to mention Japan is a fraction of the population of America so American sales should be a lot more by that regard but aren't

Though I guess it's a good thing we were talking about a cheap 7 dollar Avatar kiddy comic book and not the Walking Dead

That's why I said that A:TLA being #3 in the charts, if it was Japan and at #3 or near the top of the graphic novel rankings all the time, then that could've called for a renewal of the franchise already. (Because unfortunately in the US, being at the top of the charts in graphic novel sales is usually not enough - but in Japan, it can be.)

lostrune wrote:

Though I guess it's a good thing we were talking about a cheap 7 dollar Avatar kiddy comic book and not the Walking Dead

Oh, cheap shot 'cause ya missed the argument, though people could say that about trashy otaku-ish things too, so be careful about glass houses and all that.

Eh... maybe I'm completely missing out what you guys are arguing over here but... have you guys heard of this thing called Legend of Korra? Cause... yeah. The Airbender franchise is alive and kicking much in terms of ratings butt.