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Answerman - Why Are OVA Episodes Seldom Licensed?

relyat08 wrote:

But the point is that showing clips from something like that is NOT ILLEGAL. Because it falls under fair use

It fails the first factor for fair use, namely:
... is for nonprofit educational purposes;
since ANN is not a non profit organization.

The first factor for fair use isn't restricted to non-profit or educational purposes. It also includes a range of viable commercial enterprises such as newspaper reports, critiques and reviews, parody, academic scholarship, and for-profit research.

For example, if you're an enviornmental journalist, you're allowed to excerpt quotes from logging company executives' speeches and juxtapose them with photographs you've taken of endangered forests, and then still make money off of your newspaper article.

You can also meet the standard of de minimis, as in Sandoval v. New Line Cinema Corp., 147 F.3d 215 (2d Cir. 1998), which held that you can even meet the standards for fair use within the context of a Hollywood film!

But at this point, there are no plans for an OVA, beyond perhaps a twinkle in the show producer's eye. An OVA wouldn't get green-lit for production until it became clear whether the show had found an audience,

Quote:

But at this point, there are no plans for an OVA, beyond perhaps a twinkle in the show producer's eye. An OVA wouldn't get green-lit for production until it became clear whether the show had found an audience,

This doesn't explain why awful shows that sell like garbage still get "OVA".

They can be licensed if the property is popular enough and or if they won't be charged to the point it would no longer worth acquiring the rights.

For example Highschool of the Dead manga volume 7 limited edition came with the bonus OVA episode and Sentai got it long after the series had been licensed. Initially you had to buy if separately for $6.00 dollars for a 11 minute Blu-Ray, now it's included in the newer collectors box set.

Girls Und Panzer OVA specials where 6 episodes about 10 minutes each and they sold it for 2/3 the price of the entire 12 episode season. Then just recently they put out the Anzio Special a 45 minute long episode for about $16.00 dollars.

So the demand is their but how hard and how much to acquire the OVA is the question.

Attack on Titan is such a huge hit that they actually released the manga pack-in OVAs as DVDs bundled with manga volumes. Much more the exception than the rule, though. As you note, that's part of the manga license.

The first factor test is restricted to non-profit

mangamuscle wrote:

The first factor test is restricted to non-profit

Absolutely not. It encompasses a variety of judgements related to purpose and character of use.

A common misconception is that any for-profit use of someone else's work is not fair use and that any not-for-profit use is fair. In actuality, some for-profit uses are fair and some not-for-profit uses are not; the result depends on the circumstances. Courts originally presumed that if your use was commercial it was an unfair exploitation. They later abandoned that assumption because many of the possible fair uses of a work listed in section 107's preamble, such as uses for purposes of news reporting, are conducted for profit. Although courts still consider the commercial nature of the use as part of their analysis, they will not brand a transformative use unfair simply because it makes a profit. Accordingly, the presence of advertising on a website would not, in of itself, doom one’s claim to fair use.

If I remember correctly, all of the One Punch Man OVA episodes were licensed. What are the odds of seeing those on Toonami? I know it's going to take a long time for Season 2 to be animated, but a lot of fans who don't understand the animation pipeline keep spamming their Facebook page, angrily demanding that they air it already. I think airing the OVA's might quiet them down a bit, or at least take up some space between one show ending, and the other beginning.

Then there was the case of the mysterious disappearing OVA when Funimation released Shakugan no Shana on Blu-ray. The OVA was originally released (and dubbed) when Geneon released the show a second time as a complete box set with Funimation handling distribution. The OVA was tied to the first season, but apparently got released with the second season Blu-rays in Japan. When it came time for Funimation to release their second season sets on Blu-ray the OVA was no where to be found. I wonder if it was just some weird licensing hiccup that couldn't be resolved, and they ended up having to leave it out of the set.

Kodansha Comics USA releases the Attack on Titan OADs with their manga volumes DVD-only and sub-only.

"Quasi legal." Either delusional or ignorant, it's hilarious the same.

There are a handful of other cases of single-episode-length OVAs being released as stand-alones over the years.

Voices of a Distant Star came out that way,

Whether something is "good" or "bad" is a non-issue as long as it "finds its audience." Kill Me Baby had abysmal sales (I'll leave your opinion on this title up in the air since I personally liked it), yet it still managed to churn out an OVA which means that there was interest for it no matter how miniscule.

Could you imagine going to all that trouble just for, let's say, one ten-minute OVA episode on a single disc and they priced it above $10 or something. That has to be a nightmare, for both the publisher and the distributor.