Forum - View topicAnswerman Special - The Sad Tale of Anime Crash
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EnigmaticSky
 Posts: 750 |
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"Sorry, the page you were looking for in this blog does not exist." |
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Ali07
 Posts: 3333 Location: Victoria, Australia |
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Read this a couple of days ago. But, since I've joined the site today, I thought I'd say thank you to Justin.
A very interesting read. Had never heard about Anime Crash before...there was a reason. 
Gotta get rid of the apostrophe in "don't" for the URL to work. |
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TheAngryOtaku
 Posts: 29 Location: New York |
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Ug... thank you auto-correct. No matter what I do, the forum here seems to add that apostrophe and there's nothing I can do about it. I know when I hit submit on this, there is no apostrophe in "dont" ...right there, there isn't one. But no matter what, it will get auto corrected and the ' added even in when it's in a URL (way to think that one through guys). So this wont work: http://theangryotaku.blogspot.com/2008/02/dont-panic.html But this one will: http://theangryotaku.blogspot.com/search/label/shiden - |
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Blanchimont
 Posts: 3612 Location: Finland |
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@TheAngryOtaku Not first time that happens. The apostrophe bug has a thread here;
animenewsnetwork.com/bbs/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2850969 |
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TheAngryOtaku
Posts: 29 Location: New York |
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Yes. This whole phenomenon in general is called "returns". Since the days of E.T., packaged media (with very few exceptions) has been sold on "net terms" and you'll encounter things like net-30 net-90 and so on. Net means simply that a retailer must only pay a distributor/label for what they sell (the units that sell are called sell-through). The number after that is the number of days that they have before they reconcile so if a DVD that has 1,000 copies at a store, and sells 500 after 90 days, the retailer pays for 500, and sends the others back to the label, and you have a title with 50% sell-through. This was started by Universal in the 1980's and has been a rule everyone has had to play by ever since. So at Crash (as well as many other labels which had small operations and made almost all their revenue on packaged media sales), the returns got very bad, and there was an event horizon where no matter what title would be released, retailers would over-order, then return enough to make it a negative profit activity. Not only does this happen for tax reasons (on a quarterly basis by the way), but sometimes it's anything from meeting minimums set by distributors to retailers, to retailers just straight up punishing labels they don't like (there are stories out there about Wal-Mart and Amazon doing this). The worst part is, the label not only deals with the entire cost of shipping and now warehousing these returned units, but eventually these returns get liquidated at prices so low that a label may be making something like -$0.50 to -$1 (that's negative revenue), per unit when it ends up going out to overstock stores or the dreaded $.99 bin. Then, your brand loses value overall, and those big retailers who screwed you in the first place demand you lower prices on your new releases because "look at all your stuff at discount stores". The thing is, that only works for so long, and now even most of the big retailers are gone, because they were using those tactics to tread water themselves. They would order $1M of units, and return them well before 90 days, so they could use the credit generated by that return to order whatever was coming out for the next month. Do this every month for 2 years, and of the $1M you ordered, you may be paying out only something like 20% of it in real cash. But if you're doing this, then you're in a crap-storm of a failing business model anyway, and that's why those retailers are gone too. |
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belvadeer
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For anyone curious about what's become of her, she's doing fine now. Following the whole live action anime girl thing and voicing Ulala for both Space Channel 5 games, she also provided the voice for one of the Sailor Moon-inspired characters in an episode of Megas XLR in 2004. She pretty much "vanished" from the whole voice acting scene after that. She's a performing arts school instructor now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vF1f8Vz84k Last edited by belvadeer on Sun Jun 01, 2014 11:21 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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southplumb
Posts: 36 Location: Durham, North Carolina |
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I didn't know who Apollo Smile is, but maybe this explains a tape I found. Someone was getting rid of their VHS collection and I got some late 90's anime music videos from Otakon, AWA, etc. and other things, including an Apollo Smile tape with a non-Japanese woman singing in Japanese, if I remember correctly. I haven't watched in a while, but it sounded interesting.
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doomydoomdoom
 Posts: 278 Location: Michigan, USA |
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Excellent article, love the "old days" articles on ANN! Hopefully the missing parties may chime in if they hear about or read this article...
I heard a podcast where someone who worked with Anime Crash talked about the Geisters thing, as well as their kung-fu releases (the podcast was about early kung fu bootlegs and home media releases)...he did not have a very high opinion of anime ("I HATE HATE HATE anime" was along the lines of what he said) because of the Geisters deal. Dunno what to make of Apollo Smile (whom I've heard of before), seems like a "me-too" attempt to cash in on this newfangled "Japanimation" thing. (Fun fact: last night I was playing Metal Gear Solid, and winced when Otacon said "Japanimation"...that word alone forever dooms that game to the 90s, if the polygons and "whoosh" Playstation logo didn't...oh and "animes" was worth a chuckle...) |
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TheAngryOtaku
Posts: 29 Location: New York |
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I can tell you, of the "missing parties," one of them still doesn't know how to turn a computer on, let alone access the internet, the other couldn't care less about it, and of the freelancers, only one would be registered here. I'm happy to answer anything though. They can only fit so much into a single article. You remember what podcast it was? I would like to know that. That should be interesting. |
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doomydoomdoom
Posts: 278 Location: Michigan, USA |
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HA. I see. Figured none of them would be in a hurry to reminisce anyhow.
Here's the podcast: http://www.midnightmoviecowboys.com/e/crash-cinema/, featuring Garo Nigoghossian, who worked with the company from the early stages of their home video distribution label, apparently. He explains about midway through the podcast that he was trying to convince the company to branch out into original productions when their kung-fu movie releases were failing; it was something he was wanting to do as an aspiring filmmaker, yet they wanted to shift their focus to acquiring anime titles. Nigoghossian specifically advised them against that due to his observation that the American anime home video market at the time was over-saturated, but they obviously went ahead with their plan, and he specifically mentions their acquisition of Geisters, which is what jogged my memory in this article. Anyway, anime, he claims, "ruined everything". (I listened to brief snippets here and there to remember and summarize, feel free to correct, opinions on this guy's perceptions, etc.) |
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TheAngryOtaku
Posts: 29 Location: New York |
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Oh yeah. Garo had done a few covers for the kung fu releases, and then he had a film he made called "Actress Apocalypse" that Crash released. I think he came to the NY office once. The situation was a mess indeed and the deadlines to get it into distribution were barely met. The movie was ok, but it was never going to sell many DVDs at $19.95 SRP (even with the soundtrack included). Actually, it would probably do better if it were made today and only released on streaming services. The thing was, I think Chris Parente didn't know how to say "no" to something like that, because he was a huge grindhouse fan and I think he saw a market there when there was none. It was an unfortunate event, but it was at a time where the only thing that was going to sell on DVD other than a Hollywood Blockbuster would be something that had a broadcast/cable presence (the thing needed to be on TV, and that wasn't gonna happen). Crash had no broadcast partners other than BlackBelt TV for the martial arts only, and so indie films was a money-loser from the get-go, but they wanted it. Make a minimum of something like 5,000 to 10,000 DVD units for stores and you'd have to sell a lot of them to just reach the break-even on the DVD production alone, forget about paying for the movie production and marketing itself (hell, I still have boxes of Garo's movie at my place, because no stores really wanted that many). Crash acquired a few indie movies with the stipulation that revenue for the film makers only comes in after the cost of making the glass master and DVDs is made back, and many times, that never happened. The martial arts (although bottom of the barrel) consistently made money, because there was just a small, up-front license fee and then that was it. No royalties or production costs (other than that of re-mastering). All the time and resources put into vanity projects like that, could have helped keep the wheels turning on the fundamentals, but there was no getting the two guys in charge to get smart and do actual business. That's the reason Crash went after Olympus Guardians so hard. AGE/Mego had a serious chance to get that on PBS (or something like that) because it met FCC educational guidelines, but Scott Mauriello (crash) and Marty Abrams (AGE/Mego) had unending dick-measuring contests about everything from who left the coffee pot on to who knew more showbiz people, and since the one to get Olympus Guardians onto TV was Marty's son, the project died from spite right there. Without a TV slot, dubbing and releasing OG just for the DVD market became another one of those losing propositions. |
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Shiroi Hane
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 7585 Location: Wales |
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You don't need an iPhone to use iTunes (unless you want to purchase while away from a PC or Mac). Their files are DRM-free AAC (except in Japan, where they still used DRM last I checked, and were lower quality to boot) iTunes does have the best selection of Japanese music in the West out of all the digital stores I've tried however. |
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doomydoomdoom
Posts: 278 Location: Michigan, USA |
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Ah OK. I appreciate your insight, I was wondering what others who were there might of thought because, as they say, there's two sides to every story. And yeah, there definitely was no market for a movie like that, especially with DVD copies going for that damn much. Even the classic grindhouse flicks ain't worth that much to me. But that was about all there WAS a market for, as you had companies like Blue Underground snatching up all the Argento, Fulci, etc. classics, Anchor Bay had plenty (including stuff that Blue Underground ended up picking up) like the Emmanuelle movies, and Crash took care of the kung-fu films. But it sounds like, as you said, the guys in charge wouldn't calm the hell down and start acting like serious businessmen in it for the long haul. Pretty terrible that the indie filmmakers got screwed, but that's what happens when you dive in over your head I guess. Yep, I could see Olympus Guardians being maybe on FoxBOX or whatever the Hell there was at the time, maybe PBS. Too bad, again, nobody was interested in doing good business. |
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StudioToledo
 Posts: 847 Location: Toledo, U.S.A. |
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Always hard to tell Justin, the recent crowd funded scandals shows we haven't really learned enough!
Although I'm sure I'm necroing this post anyway, I would say she was the Tumblr of her day, and because of being "early to the party", she just kinda came and went, though I suppose I didn't follow up on her as far as her voice acting is concerned.
In some way, she has done far better than the average Channel Awesome reviewer. None of those guys will ever learn! |
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TheAngryOtaku
Posts: 29 Location: New York |
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Scott Maurielly had someone print this article out and show it to him 3 years later. Not realizing how old (or maybe he did, who knows) it was he called my phone and left incoherent voicemails of slobbering impotent rage. Just...wow.
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