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NEWS: ICv2 Interviews Funimation Founder Gen Fukunaga


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jel123



Joined: 28 Nov 2005
Posts: 108
PostPosted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 6:49 pm Reply with quote
Dargonxtc wrote:
Remember, these files are not going to be in .ogm or .mks format. This is for obvious reasons.
Yes, I know and I think this is unfortunate. Currently any DVD you buy is playable on any DVD player or computer. Why shouldn't a downloaded version be the same?
Also I'm not sure why there is so much fear on the part of anime companies regarding making their product available in something like mks format. Almost any computer can rip a DVD into any of the popular formats. How does eliminating the ripping step make illegal downloads less likely?
Dargonxtc wrote:
If they make there own format, it will be labeled as proprietary and boycotted. Rolling Eyes
In a way that is what they are doing now using iTunes as a distribution channel. Haven't been paying attention to the latest announcements but last I knew you could only play videos under iTunes or on the iPod. For me personally this is a drawback as even though it is playable on my iPod the quality is much lower than a typical fansub and audio/subtitle switching is not supported (english dub only). Don't know if the situation with Xbox or PS3 (the other two channels mentioned) is any different. Then again that would require a hardware purchase.

I think kokuryu puts it well;
kokuryu wrote:
In general there is zero need for DRM on anything - its just a matter of making everything available for a price that people are willing to pay for. Someone who is going to pirate something will do so whether or not it has DRM on it, so DRM does NOTHING to prevent piracy. It only increases the production costs for an item. They just need to provide the video in a format that everyone wants and make it easy for people to purchase it and have a good variety for whats available - that is all.
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GATSU



Joined: 03 Jan 2002
Posts: 15582
PostPosted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 6:54 pm Reply with quote
Porcupine:
Quote:
GATSU, I could be wrong on this since I'm not Gen, but I think his attitude is that marketing towards women is somewhat futile. He thinks that males are the ones who buy DVDs despite anyone's best efforts to reverse that trend.


If women can go for "Sex and the City" and "Enchanted", then anything can be marketed to them. I don't see the point on lowering your prices for a smaller fanbase, though.

Quote:
GATSU, ADV isn't just cutting back. The fact that they are cutting back is indicated by the evidence that ruro niko just said. But what Gen Fukunaga just said, and what I heard from a Suncoast employee half a year ago, is that ADV is hurting financially, a great deal.


That's more likely because no one goes to Suncoast anymore, not because of ADV.

Quote:
It's true that ADV has been around since the beginning but I think (I could be wrong) US Manga is just as old as them and they went into total hibernation in the past as well (they are currently coming back though).


GITS: SAC seems to do well enough for them.

Quote:
Pioneer/Geneon was also a reasonably old anime company.


And they were the worst at adapting to market trends.
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Porcupine



Joined: 21 Jul 2004
Posts: 1033
PostPosted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 9:28 pm Reply with quote
I think that Greed made a good point. Box sets may be cheaper than individual volumes, but for some people they could still pose a problem because they are not willing to pay a larger amount for a series that they are not sure they will enjoy.

There are probably several solutions to that including what Greed suggested. But how about this one? Simply start releasing animes in a format consisting of an individual Volume 1 DVD, then a very cheaply priced boxset consisting of all the remaining volumes. Might sound complicated, but the anime industry has already recently made a similar move in another area...that of anime artboxes. It used to be that they optionally came with Vol. 1 DVDs but companies are moving towards releasing the artboxes with Vol. 2, 3, or final volume DVDs instead. To me that makes more sense.

Regarding what dargon and others have said regarding a potential problem with being able to shorten the time being the Japanese release and the domestic releases, to be honest I've never personally considered it as big a deal as many others do. A lot of fans want that, and demand it, and say that they will (illegally) download less if that happens. But I think a lot of these people are just whining or perhaps even lying to themselves. I think that piracy will not be greatly affected even if the delay were reduced to zero. People will still pirate. People pirate Hollywood movies and there are no issues with lag time. So reducing the lag time to zero wouldn't really solve the problem at all. That is just my opinion.

I favor leaving the lag time where it is and pursuing other methods of reducing piracy, possibly including lowering DVD prices, and seeking other avenues of profit (television as opposed to DVD), etc.

I'm re-reading the article now, and I never noticed this part before:
Gen Fukunaga in ICv2 article wrote:
That brings up a problem, because one of the benefits of waiting to see it release in Japan, is that we can try to avoid the loser titles--the ones we know are going to bomb out because they bombed in Japan.
The way he said that is ultra funny. Lol. =D

Gatsu, well I did say that US Manga was coming back (these past 2-3 years). They were pretty dead before then though. At least compared to the olden days in the 90's when they had just as many releases as ADVision did. But is GiTS:SAC even a US Manga release? I don't own the DVDs myself but according to the ANN Encyclopedia the first season was a Bandai Entertainment license.
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GATSU



Joined: 03 Jan 2002
Posts: 15582
PostPosted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 9:38 pm Reply with quote
Porcupine: It's a co-release b/tw Bandai and Manga.
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ZeetherKID77



Joined: 17 Jun 2007
Posts: 982
PostPosted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 10:51 pm Reply with quote
"Biggest acquisitions yet"?

I hope they got the full license for Initial D. Tokyopop ruined the dub.
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Zalis116
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Joined: 31 Mar 2005
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 11:36 pm Reply with quote
I'm glad to see something about the format war shakedown, even though we probably won't see HD anime releases for another 3-4 years.
Quote:
It looks like the high definition format war may be entering its final stages. Do you think the high def DVD medium has potential for anime companies once a single format is established?

Yes. We feel there will be -- that's a definite positive.
On the AoD equivalent of this thread, gundamseed wrote:
I have not bought any type of anime DVD in 2 years maybe. Like Chris I am an HD whore; when I see fansubs that are in HD, and know certain titles are made HD, I will not buy the DVD. Take Gundam 00, for example. I will not buy that show unless I can get it in HD, same for a lot of shows. A few of my friends are like that also. You could say people like us are also hurting DVD sales . I notice that since a lot of anime fan d\l fansubs, a few of them are saying, "Why buy something on DVD when I can get better-looking picture quality on a downloaded file?"

Quoter's remark: I cleaned up the writing on this post, but I didn't change the original post's intent -- check the link to verify.
Quote:
That brings up a problem, because one of the benefits of waiting to see it release in Japan, is that we can try to avoid the loser titles--the ones we know are going to bomb out because they bombed in Japan.
That's perfectly good logic...if the tastes of the Japanese and R1 fanbases are exactly the same. Which I'm sure they are.

Regarding Fukunaga's "perception" of ADV's difficulties: Given how secretive these companies are with sales data, licensing fees, etc., who's to say that Fukunaga knows any more about his rival company than we do as readers of the news? I can say I "perceive" difficulties from the ADVocates and NewType USA shutdowns, but does that perception hold any weight? (And if magazine publishing were so problematic for ADV, why are they starting up a new publication instead of simply shuttering NewType and walking away?)
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AstroNerdBoy



Joined: 03 Feb 2004
Posts: 413
Location: Denver, CO
PostPosted: Tue Jan 22, 2008 12:17 am Reply with quote
Porcupine wrote:
I thought it very interesting that he favors making anime CHEAPER still in America, despite the already huge price differences between anime in America vs Japan.


What does the price of DVD's in Japan have to do with us? A new Hollywood blockbuster release can be sold for $16 in the U.S. (usually one without many extras) and the same movie on DVD is going to be a lot more expensive in Japan. [/quote]

Quote:
But here is the scariest thing about this article, by far. Some readers may not have read to the end or missed it because it was small, but Gen Fukunaga hinted that ADVision is in big financial trouble. This especially concerns me because I had heard the exact same thing half a year ago from an employee at Suncoast. Instead, Geneon was the first company to fall. After that, I figured that the Suncoast employee didn't know what he was talking about. But now it seems that he did, so I'm doubly worried. If ADVision goes bankrupt too that will be catastrophe for the anime industry in the USA.


He also talked about consolidating the market. However, his words aren't a surprise though. ADV dropped its support club function. ADV is changing its magazine publication to be more broad-based. Does ADV still do manga? While fans would be disappointed, I don't think this will be the catastrophe you describe. If anything, it may be an opportunity for a company like FUNimation.

jel123 wrote:
I agree that this is someone that appears to "get it" when it comes to anime distribution today.

That said I disagree with some of his statements;
On the question of expanding download-to-own:
Quote:
"...The only thing slowing us down is that it's not that easy to just convert it digital. You have to have equipment and people to convert it to digital, and that takes resources on top of everything else they're doing..."
Unless I'm wrong; Everything is already in digital form and it's just a question of formatting it for download. The formatting and posting of content to a download site could be easily automated.


Isn't this exactly what fansubbers do? To date, I'm not aware of any automated process for taking the source video and re-encoding it (to include establishing the timing of subtitle scripts) to a .AVI file. That takes time. However (and pardon my ignorance here), if they also have to DRM them differently per platform, that also can take time.

Quote:

And on the future of the DVD format (vs. download):
Quote:
"...Second, if you want to see both the Japanese and English versions, you're going to buy it twice in download?..."
Not sure what he means by this; how often are the two versions different? If it's just different audio/subtitle tracks a single download should be able to contain everything.


Some people like having both the Japanese audio w/ subtitles and the English audio versions of a series, which the DVD format provides. While DVD rippers will use the .MKV or .OGM container file to encapsulate multiple audio and subtitle tracks, it appears that this file format isn't what FUNimation would use for downloads. I'm sure the main reason would have something to do with DRM (ugh!). Also, I'm not aware of an easy way to convert .MKV/.OGM files so that they can be played on a regular DVD player. Also, while there are DVD players that will play DivX .AVI files, I know of none that will play .MKV or .OGM files.

Anyway, others have already discussed this, but at the moment, to get both versions of a release would be a double-purchase.

The thing that concerns me about the legal downloads is the big three options listed. Granted Mr. Fukunaga didn't say those were the only choices, but those three would be non-starters for me. I absolutely refuse to use iTunes and I don't own any game consoles, nor am I going to purchase any. So they will need to have another option or not get any money from me on the download front.

As to the issue of reducing the time factor from the release in Japan to the release in the U.S., I think that would help somewhat. Clearly it wouldn't remove all piracy but I think it would help since that seems to be a common complaint among fans is the lag time.

As to the big deals/announcements, FUNimation scoring some of Geneon's titles would be pretty big, in addition to any new series they might license.
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ilikehotaznz



Joined: 03 Dec 2007
Posts: 28
PostPosted: Tue Jan 22, 2008 1:00 am Reply with quote
What if there was a digital rights tax that collected billions of dollars every year, and then distributed the money to the rights holders based on popularity of download? As piracy increases, the pool of money gets larger.

Trying to fight digital hyperdistribution of content is a futile effort. The governments of the world should embrace it rather than trying to fight it.
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GATSU



Joined: 03 Jan 2002
Posts: 15582
PostPosted: Tue Jan 22, 2008 1:40 am Reply with quote
Zalis:
Quote:
I notice that since a lot of anime fan d\l fansubs, a few of them are saying, "Why buy something on DVD when I can get better-looking picture quality on a downloaded file?"


Because people who watch anime for the picture quality aren't really anime fans, but tech whores?

Quote:
Quote:
That brings up a problem, because one of the benefits of waiting to see it release in Japan, is that we can try to avoid the loser titles--the ones we know are going to bomb out because they bombed in Japan.
That's perfectly good logic...if the tastes of the Japanese and R1 fanbases are exactly the same. Which I'm sure they are.


That's awful logic! That kind of mentality nearly cost FUNimation One Piece, because they chose Detective Conan and Kodocha over it; and it's kept niche titles which are low-investment, but have bigger returns-such as Mind Game and Nasu-from being licensed in the near future! In fact, part of the decline of the domestic industry is due to R1 companies buying and flooding moe-themed series onto consumers who clearly do not go for it like the Japanese.

Quote:
I can say I "perceive" difficulties from the ADVocates and NewType USA shutdowns, but does that perception hold any weight? (And if magazine publishing were so problematic for ADV, why are they starting up a new publication instead of simply shuttering NewType and walking away?)


Exactly! They've outlived Streamline, CPM, and Geneon. The only company which has lasted longer than them is Animeigo. There's no way they're going down, especially since they've got new deals with Capcom and WB.
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Nobuyuki



Joined: 22 Mar 2004
Posts: 536
PostPosted: Tue Jan 22, 2008 1:47 am Reply with quote
GATSU wrote:

Quote:
It's true that ADV has been around since the beginning but I think (I could be wrong) US Manga is just as old as them and they went into total hibernation in the past as well (they are currently coming back though).


GITS: SAC seems to do well enough for them.

:facepalm:

That's Manga Entertainment. US Manga [Corps] is Central Park Media. Rolling Eyes
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Espeon



Joined: 09 Apr 2004
Posts: 105
Location: Australia
PostPosted: Tue Jan 22, 2008 3:01 am Reply with quote
Illegal Downloads like copies off English DVD is bad and I never have anything to do with them, But when it comes to Fansubs I will download them as they release in japan SO i can see if the shows gonna be worth the money i'll pay for it once it's released in english. Sure so many people says it's bad and some will say it not we wont go into that right now..

I like the look that the releases will be faster and more episodes per disk, But if i dont know enough about the show other then the hype and it ends up sucking i'm gonna have a flop of a show in my collection they may never get watched again.
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Randall Miyashiro



Joined: 12 Jun 2003
Posts: 2451
Location: A block away from Golden Gate Park
PostPosted: Tue Jan 22, 2008 5:43 am Reply with quote
What is becoming apparent from Fukunaga and Zak's interviews as well as what's going on with BVUSA is that the current price point scheme is not working. As mentioned by Zak there are a bunch of casual anime fans that are wondering why they can buy a whole season of Lost for the same price as 7-8 half hour anime episodes. On the other hand there are always collectors out there who are willing to spend $50 for 3 half hour Gundam episodes.

I think the best thing to do is to try to appeal to both markets as Funimation has been attempting with booklets and slipcases in their new releases and ultra cheap Viridian editions. I wouldn't mind if they continued this practice and would love to see new releases at the $35 price if they were packaged like those gorgeous Gonzo digipacks. I also think they are doing the right thing by keeping cost down to a minimum for their cheap Viridian editions.

I think this is also a trend that can be seen with ADV since many of their individual discs like Utawarerumono, D'Eon, and 009-1 have inserts while their thinpacks lack most extras.

These companies need to pander to their collectors market and make an affordable edition for the casual fan by making the nice editions nicer and the cheap editions cheaper. I personally loved BVUSA's Patlabor movies limited edition releases and am willing to spend more than the typical $5-10 difference in price for something really nice.
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mike.motaku



Joined: 22 Feb 2006
Posts: 160
Location: Indiana
PostPosted: Tue Jan 22, 2008 10:34 am Reply with quote
ZeetherKID77 wrote:
"Biggest acquisitions yet"?

I hope they got the full license for Initial D. Tokyopop ruined the dub.


Oh yeah, that'll really set the anime world on fire. Rolling Eyes

I hope that is not what they consider a big title or we're all in deep doodoo.
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jel123



Joined: 28 Nov 2005
Posts: 108
PostPosted: Tue Jan 22, 2008 11:44 am Reply with quote
AstroNerdBoy wrote:
jel123 wrote:
I agree that this is someone that appears to "get it" when it comes to anime distribution today.

That said I disagree with some of his statements;
On the question of expanding download-to-own:
Quote:
"...The only thing slowing us down is that it's not that easy to just convert it digital. You have to have equipment and people to convert it to digital, and that takes resources on top of everything else they're doing..."
Unless I'm wrong; Everything is already in digital form and it's just a question of formatting it for download. The formatting and posting of content to a download site could be easily automated.


Isn't this exactly what fansubbers do? To date, I'm not aware of any automated process for taking the source video and re-encoding it (to include establishing the timing of subtitle scripts) to a .AVI file. That takes time. However (and pardon my ignorance here), if they also have to DRM them differently per platform, that also can take time.
I've never tried it but I don't see any reason you can't rip a DVD to .avi with subtitles (hard sub) or any other format. Guess what I was trying to point out is that claiming "it's not that easy" is just wrong. It would be even easier than what fansubbers do; by definition Funimation already has enough information to make the DVD (video, audio track(s), subtitle(s) w/timing) so making a downloadable version including any special encoding for a particular platform can be just a matter of pushing a button. Once it has been setup (which apparently some of it has seeing as there are titles available for D/L) this should not require extra people or equipment.

AstroNerdBoy wrote:
Some people like having both the Japanese audio w/ subtitles and the English audio versions of a series, which the DVD format provides.
So why not include both in the download? Even if it's two separate files - doubling the size of the download shouldn't increase the cost of delivery by much. I can see no justification for charging twice for the two versions.
I usually watch an anime DVD two times - first with subs then in English but I only need to buy one DVD. Downloads should be no different.

Then again I'm probably just dreaming to think that it will ever happen Wink
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CCSYueh



Joined: 03 Jul 2004
Posts: 2707
Location: San Diego, CA
PostPosted: Tue Jan 22, 2008 12:03 pm Reply with quote
Wow.
All he said was they "perceive" difficulties on ADV's side. That could be the same as Chrysler making guesses about Ford.
We all see ADV cutting fat. MAYBE they're trying to avoid losing major amounts of money in the coming recession. The things they're dumping maybe were ok in the day, but not now. One doesn't know until one tries a 24-hr anime channel in America, but they've been running it long enough to have good figures on whether it produces enough profit to justify keeping it going or putting it out of it's misery. I know my cable network seemed to drop their on-demand channel a year ago. Newtype was a gorgeous zine & I loved every issue, but the detractors always screamed about the cost & with more zines popping up cheaper, do they keep the luxury liner or go economy to compete? They also know how the freebies to anime clubs is working out-again, is it worth the cost? When they were making Newtype, one could even see thjem just pressing a few more of the give-away dvds & sending those out to clubs, but they're dropping the dvd with the zine, so why continue this charity svc? Is there even enough demand? I know my teen was hot to start her own anime club, but it lasted 2 meetings (4 yrs ago). No one knows how many people are asking for these discs. 100? 1000? Has there been a drop-off from when they started?

Is this all that different from ADV making a huge fuss about licensing 50 manga titles & then abandoning 90%? Businesses try stuff & then they drop them when they don't succeed. Companies keep an eye on their competition, looking for opportunities. ADV is Funi's closest neighbor so their actions probably would impact Funi more than others (VAs would be impacted. ADV vanishing would mean these actors would either look to Funi for work, move to a different market area, or go back to their day job) Funi would be stupid not to eyeball everything.
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