Forum - View topicNEWS: Japan's Kodansha Reports Its Largest Annual Loss Ever
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LordRedhand
Posts: 1472 Location: Middle of Nowhere, Indiana |
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Then for them it's a scanlation problem. Be easy to find just the raw upload in Japanese, some may even be in print ready PDF format. So yeah pirating contributed to this.
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Kyogissun
Posts: 676 |
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I loved the lack of hesitation from users to jump and begin attacking the fansubs. Hey, whatever is cool to hate, you gotta hate, right? Let's not develop opinions after all, those are dangerous.
I mean, isn't it... common knowledge most anime's and such make their money back from merchandising? Yes, not buying the DVD's, manga and whatnot can hurt, but it's helpful to buy OTHER stuff too... That's why you see MORE than just DVD's and manga at conventions after all, that's a meager half/third/fourth/fifth of the marketing. Still, Kodansha's doing that bad? What are they having problems with then? Maybe not only are there economic problems affecting everyone, but it's also perhaps, just bad results from productions they've put out recently. |
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Top Gun
Posts: 4755 |
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Or perhaps you could go back and read the article. Kodansha's sales losses stemmed from drying-up sources of domestic advertising revenue and drops in domestic sales, neither of which has the slightest thing to do with someone illegally translating a manga online for people half a planet away to read. This literally has nothing at all to do with the American anime or manga industries, so Greg Ayres's quote doesn't apply here. Seriously, it's getting almost impossible to read the Talkback forum anymore without my blood pressure spiking, since every single friggin' thread seems to lead off with someone making some incredibly nebulous connection to fansubs. Give it a collective rest. |
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Kyogissun
Posts: 676 |
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Hate to be blunt but honestly, it seems like there's jack **** they can do about that. Any idiot with a scanner and the knowledge of an uploading site can get a manga onto the web. The only solution is much more fierce cracking down on uploading/translation groups... One that is a dramatic contrast to how fansubs, since they don't seem to be as dramatic and a hot topic as they used to be, aren't as widespread and easy to get running as say a scanner group... I honestly don't care though, I've read very little in terms of scanalations, except for World Embryo and that was until it's licensing last year. However, I'm becoming increasingly frustrated as I have YET TO SEE A SINGLE PUBLISHED VOLUME FROM DARK HORSE. Quit denying me my Daisuke Moriyama genius creativity and published volume 1 already you bastards. |
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vashfanatic
Posts: 3493 Location: Back stateside |
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I've never understood why anyone would want a digital version of manga instead of an actual bound volume. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but the tactile feel of a book that you can curl up in a chair to read with a cup of tea (or bottle of booze) is infinitely better than clicking on a computer screen.... and libraries nowadays have so much manga, it's easy enough to check out volumes rather than relying strictly on scanlations. Well, I hope things pick up for Kodansha in Japan. So far they aren't hemorrhaging financially like poor GONZO, so hopefully this is only temporary. |
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GATSU
Posts: 15479 |
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From what I've been reading, even profitable companies like Nintendo are taking losses, because of recent dollar/yen fluctuations.
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bayoab
Posts: 831 |
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Kodansha is giant and manga is not the only thing they do*. They publish all sorts of print media. Kodansha's bidirectional book deal with Random House is why Del Rey gets so many of their higher quality manga. Also, I don't know how you can blame scanlators for this since the average Japanese person cannot read a scanlation. The scanned pages without the text is just a worthless set of pictures to them. You can blame it on P2P raws if you want but blaming this on anything involving english speakers is trying a criminal for a crime they didn't commit. *For reference from their about page: Every year Kodansha publishes around 2,000 new titles in every imaginable genre from fiction and children's books to nonfiction and reference. At present, Kodansha publishes a total of 49 magazines. Kodansha currently publishes 18 manga magazines and around 1,270 manga trade paperback titles annually. |
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naruhodo569
Posts: 10 |
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The anime industry is very lucky. It has to be the ONLY industry where consumers actually come to it's defense in droves against piracy =P
Actually, I've only seen this phenomenon on the ANN forums, but then again I haven't really looked hard. In all seriousness, I'm sure there's a lot more at work here than those dastardly pirates. As others have said, the most obvious would be this economic climate, where pretty much every industry is going to be hit. Even MS is taking a hit these days. That's just the way it is. People and companies have less money. Poorer companies mean less ad revenue, and poorer consumers mean less purchases. Simple as that. |
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flawful
Posts: 21 |
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First of all this is all in Japan so scanlations wouldn't be the problem, plain old piracy would.
Second of all this drop probably has nothing to do with piracy and everything to do with the economy. As far as I know manga piracy has gotten any worse over the last year and it seems regular book sales fell even harder then manga sales, so I seriously doubt this has anything to do with piracy. That being said piracy is always a problem for these companies. A 6.4% drop doesn't even seem that bad in this economy, but those seem like heavy losses. Hopefully Kodansha is able to tough it out until the economy gets better. If Kodansha tanks the whole industry is would be in serious trouble. |
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DomFortress
Posts: 751 Location: Richmond BC, Canada |
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And in the case of Kodansha, they didn't just publish mangas, they've also involved in their own anime productions. But unlike BANDAI, they also owned the copyrights of the anime that they produced, and they published the anime themselves because they're the biggest media publisher in Japan. They don't make toys, games, nor musics, no. They make anything else that they have copyrights on(goods) and release & distribute them in media format(services). Now can you all see what's scanalations and fansubbers are doing to the manga and anime industry with copyright infringement via internet intellectual property theft?
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flawful
Posts: 21 |
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Simple, people can't pirate most of that kind of merchandise. |
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DomFortress
Posts: 751 Location: Richmond BC, Canada |
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Spotlesseden
Posts: 3514 Location: earth |
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Ok, everybody is losing money. Who is making money?
i mean the money has to go to someone else unless they just burn them. |
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Kyogissun
Posts: 676 |
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Then... yell at people to buy merch? That's what I do. When I see someone go to an anime convention and NOT buy merchandise for their favorite shows, I do kind of have a feeling they don't care that much. Clannad? I bought a figurine. Air TV? Bought the artbook back in 06. Shining Wind? Got a figurine for that too. Higurashi? Another artbook. So... I can't say much. Series I've seen to completion, I've spent what money didn't go to gaming and music on it. Typically, at said conventions, I spend easily 300 dollars in buying stuff. So I guess THIS is a good time to say it people. If you really enjoy the anime, it's fine to buy it and pay them back but if you wanna show even MORE appreciation, it's simple, buy SOMETHING extra. A poster, keychain, phonestrap, it doesn't matter the cost, size or whatever. THAT is where they get the extra money. Now that it's settled, anyone who makes another claim that fansubs are the cause, you will be verbally violated by myself and others. Oh and I would like to agree as well, back when I was dramatically making purchases of manga, I LOVED curling up in a super comfy chair or couch, music/tv low on volume and just grinding through an entire volume. But lack of interesting titles recently made me bored of it... However, once I get a new job, I'm going to order back issues of Yen Plus, get a subscription started and start buying some other stuff too. Been wanting to get more volumes of Strawberry Panic! since I got the first two. |
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DomFortress
Posts: 751 Location: Richmond BC, Canada |
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Then what about the claims that's made by the industry themselves? And do you know that anime production companies and the studios don't get anything from the sales on anime related merchandises due to multiple licensing? The only claims they have got are the anime that they made, because they have copyrights on those, and only those intellectual properties that they made. |
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