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Chicks On Anime - Fansubs (Pt 2)

WORDS

iindigo wrote:

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People scolded Unit 03.5ish for posting nonstop and you're easily matching his furious pace. Go back and look at the last few pages and count how many responses on each page are yours, and it's a little ridiculous.

Hit the brakes a little. This has become the 'argue with iindigo' thread.

They could air/distribute it in the US without a dub track and I'd be perfectly happy. To me, the dub track is wasted time.

I understand that new fans probably don't want to bother reading subs

The costs of popping something onto iTunes is minimal at best.

Sheleigha wrote:

Digimon... Ok, well apparently Adventure 02 of all things is available on Crunchyroll. But, is it bad for me to complain that I wish I could have a fancy boxset instead of streaming an episode? Amusingly enough, even in the fansubbing world, Digimon has NOT EVER been successfully subbed all the way through! It takes years for the people that try and Tamers has hardly been touched.... Heck, even if you wanted to BUY legit dubs, they hardly released alot of that anyways :/

Well one would have to wonder how big market is for "uncut" Digimon, sure subtitles fine, but the series is marketed to children, so the release is going to be marketed to children, generally that means dub.

ValkyrieZeroZeroOne wrote:

I may be missing the mark completely here, but I would imagine that the revenues from selling broadcast rights to a television network not only cover the costs of dubbing the series that is on TV, but in at least some cases subsidise the costs of other series' dubs as well. Now with more and more anime being lifted off TV, this source of funding is dwindling rapidly.

Ha! Revenue, he says.

On the contrary, in terms of US anime broadcasting, it's a buyer's market. Simply, the networks are in the position of power - the anime companies need the networks more than the networks need the anime. If anything, the anime companies are giving the networks the anime for free or even give the networks a cut of the DVD sales in exchange for airing the anime (IIRC, as was the case in the early days of Adult Swim). The anime companies get their money back thru increased DVD sales due to broadcast exposure.

My personal opinion is that to avoid buying a series you really want to see just because there's no English dub is to cut your nose off to spite your face,

Valkyrie: I keep harping on entitlement like a "broken record" () because a lot of downloaders are whiny, impatient, spoiled brats who think they have the right to every anime under the sun for free. When leechers are no longer an issue, then entitlement will no longer be an issue. But the truth is, a lot of those selfish "broke" kids don't see anime as an industry with people who have JOBS working to produce it to make MONEY; they see it as this magical supply of endlessly free entertainment that they are not subject to paying for.

So the anime industry makes a profit off of me but if it wasn't for the fansubs I wouldn't even look at anime and they'd get zip; I'm not going to spend 30-100+ bucks based on a review, trailer, or one episode.

Legal streams, downloads, rentals, borrowing from friends or libraries...is this really so alien a concept to some people?

EDIT: Valkyrie -- yeah, this is largely the fault of the industry (and primarily on the Japanese side) for letting this beast grow to such a size. I still don't understand why Japan is so slow to change, and why they hold R1 companies by the balls when it comes to implementing said changes to their business.

chucklyfun wrote:

@pparker - Market research is not the answer. The problem is twofold: * Customers don't know what they want, usually. iindigo is an exception here because she has already seen it. * Companies pay attention to their most vocal customers for market research. That includes people like LordRedhand, who don't see the need for this. Fans like iindigo would not be surveyed, unless they're lucky and they buy a ton of their product even though they likes fansubs more. My articles supporting this: http://www.innosight.com/blog/index.php?id=189 < The Best one

Yeah, I wrote assuming the times when market research does work, not when it so often fails. The bias based on personal assumptions and discounted data are rarely obvious by the time research data is summarized for management, but all the points in this link are valid. Thanks for the links, BTW. Great stuff, though I haven't finished them all.

My other reference in line with this was the waiting for the "Steve Jobs of Anime". There are very few individuals with his ability to dream up products, starting with the Lisa, that not only anticipate future demand but create it from desires that remain subconscious in the population. Jobs is an artist, and Gates is an opportunist regardless of his claims otherwise (beginning with MS DOS).

But I wouldn't entirely discount marketing research as a tool in responding to changing market conditions and driving incremental innovation. It just has to be done right. The likelihood of ever developing something disruptive based on market research is virtually nil. By definition it is something the established company can't or won't see coming until it's too late to ignore.