Forum - View topicIs it legit if it's "licensed" in Malaysia?
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Randall Miyashiro
 Posts: 2451 Location: A block away from Golden Gate Park |
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I think you missed my point. My point is that companies in Japan need to have subtitles with their R2 releases which would leave the R1 license open for companies like Funimation or Bandai Entertainment. This would allow fans to either buy R2 imports with subs like the current Japanese Ghibli releases or many import Blu-ray discs or wait for a cheaper domestic version that includes dubs. BVUSA is not doing this since they are locking the R1 license with a fairly redundant sub only choice which overlaps with the Japanese release. Bandai Visual Japan should put subs on their Japanese R2 releases and leave the US release for Bandai Entertainment in the States. Some of us don't mind paying more for imports but import prices should remain with imports and not domestic releases. This would give non-Japanese speaking fans two price points to choose from since the R2 release would have subtitles. BVUSA is doing the opposite of what I'm suggesting. 
You can see how much I hate what BVUSA is doing here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here I can probably go on for much longer since I find 51 matches for BVUSA for me and almost all of them are complaints. I can assure you I'm no fan of BVUSA, although I don't have the will power to boycott them as I once thought I would. |
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dormcat
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 9902 Location: New Taipei City, Taiwan, ROC |
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So you are basically telling me, if BVJ releases [title] on [date] with English subtitles but Japanese packaging and menu you'd be happy to import it from Japan (plus shipping, tax, and all the trouble signing up Amazon.jp or other online stores in Japanese, or looking for an agent), while if BVUSA releases [title] on [date plus less than a month] with translated packaging and menu as well as English subtitles at the same price available at stores near you you'd hate the company. You are just an import purist, you know?
If you think American audiences should have the right to obtain a low cost dubbed version with a much later release date, feel free to write a letter to BVUSA asking them to sub-license the right to another American licensee. It can be done (such as One Piece being divided among 4Kids and FUNi) but I highly doubt they would do that. |
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Randall Miyashiro
Posts: 2451 Location: A block away from Golden Gate Park |
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Once again you couldn't have been more off on where I stand on this. I actually prefer domestic releases with their time delay, higher episode count, cheaper price and inclusion of dubs over the very high prices of imports. The reason why I hate BVUSA is that they are preventing domestic companies from releasing titles at affordable domestic prices which I prefer.
I wish that Bandai would place subtitles on their R2 releases which I think the original poster was hinting at for those people who can't wait for the US release of which I am not one of. Almost all of my R2 imports arereally old titles that I don't think will be released in the States, and I really hate paying these prices (comparable to BVUSA or more) for DVDs. Actually only about less than 2% of my DVD collection consists of import discs since I only own about 30 R2 DVDs. I would hardly call myself an import elitist and actually think I have one of the larger R1 collections out there. Why not have the R2 discs include subtitles? I fail to see why you insist this is a bad thing! I wouldn't buy most of them since I would rather wait for the R1 release, but this would be a better strategy for Bandai compared to their ridiculous current BVUSA strategy. I would much prefer waiting for a Bandai Entertainment release of MS Igloo at an affordable price instead of paying $100 for the current BVUSA edition. Unfortunately this will not happen since BVUSA already has the R1 license. If R2 releases are subtitled the anime studios can get their extra dollar from the few rabid fans (much like the ones Bandai Visual thinks exist) who are willing to spend money on that high price to episode ratio while still licensing out their anime for realistic affordable domestic releases. This would also allow the number of titles that exist in R2 land to have subtitles that don't have R1 releases. Please explain why it is a bad thing for R2 discs (like the Ghibli films) to have subtitles? To me it seems like a win win situation. On a related note I have sent in every business reply card that has been included with all my BVUSA purchases circling the worst pricing point number. I'm not sure if it will matter, but postage is free on them. |
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dormcat
Encyclopedia Editor
Posts: 9902 Location: New Taipei City, Taiwan, ROC |
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Like I said in the second paragraph of my previous post: please feel free to persuade BDUSA to sub-license it to other American companies, or just tell them to shut off the company once and for all.
I've never said it's a bad thing. It wouldn't be a smart business move, though. Why not just include subtitles of all major languages in the world, then? This applies to all Hollywood movies as well, and translation costs is really insignificant compared to overall production budgets anyway. Yet how many Hollywood movies have done that? The distribution method you proposed involves reconstruction of business models and international copyright laws. You can keep preaching your ideas, but I don't see the current model will be replaced by yours in a foreseeable future. |
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Randall Miyashiro
Posts: 2451 Location: A block away from Golden Gate Park |
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How about all of them besides some of the Disney titles? Here is a list of amazon's best selling movies and their available subtitles. 1. Across the Universe Cantonese, Chinese, English, French, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish 2. Cinderella English 3. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford English, French, Spanish 4. Snow Buddies English 5. Ratatouille English, Spanish 6. Becoming Jane French, Spanish 7. Aladdin English, French, Spanish 8. Aristocats English 9. 3:10 to Yuma English, Spanish 10. El-Cid English, Latin 11. American Gangster English, French, Spanish 12. The Bourne Ultimatum Arabic, English, French, Russian, Spanish I'm not talking about a new revolutionary model here. If you go to the Blu-ray and HD-DVD (where disc space is no longer a factor) lists you will find almost 100% of the theatrical films have foreign language subtitles and audio. The top 24 (Mel Gibson's Apocolypito at 25 is the highest ranking English only film followed by the Road Warrior in 30th place) Blu-ray movies have at least one additional language and most have space for multiple audio tracks. Monty Python's Life of Brian has subtitles in Arabic, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish. There are a good number of other discs with subtitles from a dozen major languages in the world. This is becoming more evident in Japanese Blu-ray DVDs as well since even the newly released Utawarerumono Blu-ray box set has the ADV dub on it. Likewise many Bandai Visual Japan Blu-ray titles have both English subs and dubs. I don't understand why you think this will take "reconstruction of business models and international copyright laws" since it is already common in the States and becoming more common in Japan. I don't think BVUSA is doing the right thing like your first reply to my post implied. I'm not an import purist as your second post stated. I don't think my idea of R2 subs is as unfeasible as your third reply states. I apologize if I sound a bit defensive here. I feel both completely misrepresented and cornered. Edit: I looked at my copies of Apocolyptico and Road Warrior and they do have the minimum English, Spanish and French subtitles. The Harry Potter movies also don't have subtitles listed on the amazon page, but my Blu-ray copies have English and Spanish on the first movie and English, French , Espanol, Catalan, Danish, Dutch, Flemish, German, Italian, Japanese, and Swedish in 5.1 surround and the above plus Finnish, Korean, Norwegian, and Portugues for subs. Terminator 2 is the only movie in the top 100 that I could not confirm has subtitles although Terminator 1 has subs in English, French, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, Chinese and Thai and I would suspect T2 has at least the basic three languages. The only high definition discs I could find in my collection without subs listed on the box is Rescue Me Season 3 with all of my other television series and documentaries having foreign subtitles and languages. |
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dormcat
Encyclopedia Editor
Posts: 9902 Location: New Taipei City, Taiwan, ROC |
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It's because you think as an American or Western European, where average income is comparable to that of Japan. It took Microsoft almost 20 years to change their global pricing policy. Before 2004, an Office suite costs ~US$500 worldwide, which is less than 1/5 of the monthly wage of entry-level workers and less than 1/20 of the managerial levels of a typical US company. For small companies of developing nations, however, US$500 can be more than a month worth of salary, thus no company can afford to buy one copy for each computer, and piracy was rampant. You mentioned that BVUSA (or directly from BVJ, or any other Japanese license holder) should allow other US companies to produce dub-containing, cheaply priced, more episodes per disc releases. However, lots of problems can and will rise up: will any US company willing to license something that has already been available to American customers? Will there be an extra cost and copyright issue for the English script? What if the English script written by Japanese sucks and requires rewriting? Another issue you have not yet considered is that USA is one and only one larger economical body than Japan. It's racial diversity allow sufficient domestic customers find additional language tracks useful. Have you ever think about the licensing industry of other less-developed countries? For an US licensee it would be much easier to break even of the costs, buy for smaller markets -- such as Poland (38M population and $14,300 GDP per capita) or Hong Kong (very high $37,300 GDP per capita but only with very limited 7M population, less than that of Los Angeles). Including Polish or Cantonese subtitles to any Japanese title other than the most popular shonen titles (e.g. Naruto) can effectively wipe out the licensing industries of respective countries/regions, as the hardcore fans would choose to buy Japanese version, and with the exception of most popular titles there won't be many people left. Here in Taiwan (23M population and $29,500 GDP per capita), any title that can sell over 1000 copies can be considered as "popular." If you were a licensee, would you acquire an anime series that can only be sold at downtown LA with an expected sale of less than 500 copies? I'm not an expert of the area, but I'm sure that I can see what you see not. Furthermore, we have derailed this thread quite a lot, so let's stop here. |
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Ishmoo
 Posts: 413 Location: Fredericksburg, VA |
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I won't try to claim I grasp all the business model jargon being tossed around here, but it does seem that we're making things far more complicated than they need to be.
I don't see why companies like BVJ adding subs to R2 releases is so terribly problematic. Other countries are already doing this and then re-selling inexpensive DVDs to the English market. I'd have thought that the Japanese companies would rather not be circumvented in this way. Someone else is making the profit off their product when they could just do it themselves and put the bootleggers out of business. The fansubbers also seem to manage just fine so it can't be overly cost prohibitive. I find it tough to believe that the professionals can't figure out how to accomplish this when high school kids all over the world have their own sites set up with hundreds of anime titles available for download. Licenses for R1 releases could also be made available and would simply work the exact same way they do now.
I would feel safe in saying that the VAST number of American consumers would still be interested in buying a cheaper R1 release with more episodes that is dubbed and where the menu is not entirely in Japanese. Trust me, I know how hard it is just to find the "Settings/Subtitle" section on the menu when nothing is in English. This is already a common practice here in the US. I can buy a Limited Edition Collector's Box Set for many US shows at over $200 with all the bells and whistles if I want, but I can usually buy a simpler set without the frills for much cheaper as well. There shouldn't be any additional cost to an English script rewrite than there is right now. That already has to be done anyway so it's not a new expense. I don't see why anything has to be changed from how the typical R1 release is currently being handled. Why not do both and give the consumer the choice of which to buy? That way, they make whatever limited amount they can off of the more expensive, but more restrictive R2 release, then turn around and sell the R1 license as well. Everybody wins. And the Japanese companies are sort of like double dipping. They make money twice. Last edited by Ishmoo on Sat Feb 02, 2008 12:36 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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dormcat
Encyclopedia Editor
Posts: 9902 Location: New Taipei City, Taiwan, ROC |
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Apparently, in your mind the "cost" = "payment for a translator." Are you derailing your own thread or what? |
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Ishmoo
Posts: 413 Location: Fredericksburg, VA |
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Uh, no. I'm actually totally confused at to what you're trying to say... Allow me to clarify: In the quote you used above I was responding to your question:
My answer is this: R1 releases currently coming straight from the non-subtitled, non-dubbed raw Japanese versions already need an English script re-write when the R1 license is purchased. Thus, that should already be in the budget and require "no additional cost" above what they are paying right now to prepare a title for R1 release. If you're referring to adding English subs, of course there will be some cost to hiring the staff to do this. However, as I clearly stated in my previous post, other countries manage to accomplish this and still sell inexpensive dvds to the English speaking population. If they can do it why can't Japan? I also mentioned the ever notorious fansubbers. If high school kids can figure out how to do this cheaply I'm sure the professionals can manage as well. Perhaps they could hire THEM as cheap labor. Also, since this directly relates to question #1 on my original post I'd say it's entirely on topic. So, no I am not "derailing my own thread." |
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Randall Miyashiro
Posts: 2451 Location: A block away from Golden Gate Park |
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From the original post:
Isn't this exactly what we are arguing for, the concept of subtitles for the US and EU fans who are interested in buying R2 discs? The incomes are comparable . I'm not talking about how anime should actually be subtitled in 14 different languages and only wanted to list a few US releases that have done so to make a point that the business models have already begun changing.
Are these not the exact same issue that the UK faces with almost every R2 UK release? Didn't you yourself ask "translation costs is really insignificant compared to overall production budgets anyway. Yet how many Hollywood movies have done that?" Did the fact that the Japanese releases of Tokyo Godfathers, Animation Runner Kuromi, or Saikano included English subtitles effect the sales for the US versions? Even within the same country a title will often get rereleased by a different company like Slayers, Patlabor or Votoms. I think that the number of people who would buy R2 subtitled anime would be lower than even current BVUSA titles since "...plus shipping, tax, and all the trouble signing up Amazon.jp or other online stores in Japanese, or looking for an agent" is not as convenient as just oreding it through TRSI at a discounted preorder price. Not even considering downloads and bootlegs I would say that US companies are willing to license something that has already been available to American customers.
Not really since R2 English subtitles would be aimed towards fans in the US, Canada and Western Europe. It would be a convenience much like the abundant Spanish and French subtitles that can be found on most domestic DVDs,
I'm also not an expert in this area, but there are a number of Japanese DVDs that already have English subtitles. I don't think ADV is freaking out by the fact that the Japanese Utawarerumono Blu-ray box set already is incorporating their dub and subs since the number of highly priced Japanese box set sold will probably not effect ADV's possible future Blu-ray release. Likewise I don't think Disney will be hesitant on releasing Earthsea once the Sci-fi channel's rights have expired even though the European and Japanese versions will have been out for a long time by then. I fail to see why you think it would be so difficult, or revolutionary for Japanese releases to include English subtitles as a number of titles have already done. I'm still standing by my opinion that this would be the best way to appease both people who don't want to wait for the R1 release and keep the licencing options open for the rest of us. There is definitely something that you see that is apparently invisible to me here and with that I am also done talking about this here since we can't seem to see eye to eye on this subject. |
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