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@vashfanatic- Well I'd say it's not toally impossible to blind buy although I do understand the see it first mentality, that is why I'm for legal streaming/downloads and anime on TV to fullfill the see it before I buy it mindset. But there are good ways to buy blind and really bad ways to buy blind.

Good: Freinds, reviews, following specific themes or genres that entertain you (for eample I like "dark" or pyschological thrillers myself so thing like BoogiePop Phantom or Lain or Gunslinger Girl as a blind buy- which I did - work for me, others can do something similar to fit there individual anime needs. And even then you don't neccessarily have to buy renting or legal sreaming is now a viable option!)

Bad: For me personally it was listening to closely to "random" forum users like on adult swim when I strated out that kinda threw me of something along the lines of "If you like x series you'll like y series/movie" Which in one aspect was true I bought Gunslinger Girl at Wal-mart based on the logic above but I also bought a series that I didn't like so that's why I'd say trust friends and reviewers more than a random person on the internet and know specifically what your looking for. Another one for me was price, often the worst ever and poorer series were purchased solely on the "wow this price is low how can I loose?" and then finding out how horribly wrong that is as I loose $2, $15, $60 for an anime series that I only got because of the price point, so just because the anime is cheap to buy doesn't mean you should buy it.

Hopefully that helps explain some things.

Last edited by babbo on Thu Apr 02, 2009 10:59 am; edited 2 times in total

Ghiblix2 wrote:

Seems to me like the DVD sales remained pretty steady throughout the years from 2001-2007 at around 300m. So I don't see a real argument for people saying that pirated anime is causing the downfall of anime -- although it definitely looks like it has a noticable impact. Still it fluctuates around 20%, the 2001 figures are identical for 2007 dvd sales at 316M.

Is it fair to compare those years though? Differences in pricing and distribution (less epsidoes per disc, mostly single disc releases etc etc) at the time probably have something to do with those numbers . As well as the fact that the early market was heavily saturated with tons of new titles getting licensed when there wasn't necessarily a buying market for them, so while people may have been buying quite a bit of anime, compared to how much was being put out the 2001 figures might not be as nice as they look.

DomFortress wrote:

Mr. sickVisionz wrote:

Why do they even waste time doing DVD? When you browse on the web and in magazines, all you see is ads for DVDs, but it's only about 11% of the total industry.

On a sidenote, these numbers are just revenue, not profit (revenue minus costs). I'd love to see what those numbers were, especially the profit made from DVD.

Because the anime studios and production companies only have the copyrights on their intellectual properties known as anime, and that means they only get paid for selling their anime on DVD. So when anime DVD sales drop while no TV networks showing anime, the anime studios and production companies don't get paid for their anime.

Huh? I understand what you're saying, but what are you responding to in my message? If you're saying that the people who create/own the rights to the characters don't get money from toy sales, you're way off on that. As commercialized as anime is in Japan (when you watch commercials in between anime it's always advertising manga, toys, video games, novels, the latest happy meal special, etc), I can't imagine that they don't get a licensing fee from all the merchandise that's made.

TokyoGetter wrote:

I don't like being tied to my PC any more than I already am at work or when I'm on assignment, so it's nice to put that aside for a bit and sit in front of the TV at my house or at a friend's place and watch a well-crafted show.

I totally agree with supporting shows by buying them, but wow, you guys really have to move into the 21st century!!! Like every HDTV comes with a VGA input and HDMI and like every PC has at least a VGA output and most laptops nowadays have a HDMI out port on them. Theres nothing quite like sitting down in front of a nice flat screen, and watching some anime in 720p.

Ghiblix2 wrote:

The reason why people probably don't buy DVDs is that they are insanely expensive and the amount of terrible crap that is out there is probably a threshhold that people don't want to cross. I don't know about anyone else but spending money on anime that turns sour -- as it so often does midseries -- makes me feel really stupid.

What fansubs do is it allows people to see things in its entirety then decide to purchase the DVDs to support -- this kind of honor system obviously leds to people probably not buying but they probably wouldn't buy it otherwise anyway, risking a gamble.

Ehh, I agree with the part about anime being insanely expensive. I just purchased 13 episodes of a 1 hour TV show on Blu-Ray, brand new for $26 on Amazon.com. 13 half-hour episodes of standard definition Naruto retails for $34-44 on Amazon. And thats actually one of the better priced shows. You basically get half the video quality, half the running time, but double the price...

However, I totally disagree with the fansubs as a worthwhile previewing method. I don't think that you need to see all 50+ episodes of Gundam 00 in HD/Blu-Ray rips with 5.1 audio just to know if you're interested in buying the first 4 episodes on DVD. I don't think you need to see all 300+ episodes of Naruto to know if you want to buy the first 4 or 13 episodes on DVD.

However, a major issue for both of these situations even existing is that the JPN are afraid to fully enter the American market. A JPN company could easily hire voice actors, translators, etc and get stuff out in the US day and date with the JPN broadcast. The current model is to sit on their butts, let shows get HDTV rips, DVD rips, Blu-Ray rips, and be sitting on bootleg streamsites that they make ZERO money from... then like 2 years later some small struggling US company can finally afford to license a show and do a DVD only release for something that has zero sales potential or actually has alot of sales potential, but everyone saw the show like 3 years ago (often in HD). I think that method is incredibly flawed and is broken. It's behind the times and I honestly feel like it's pretty much destroyed the market.

More companies should jump on simultaneous streaming and selling downloads. Most of these crappy bootleg streaming sites have horrible picture quality compared to Hulu and Crunchyroll. Plus, you can actually make some advertising money on Hulu and Cruncyroll. Why not go for that? I feel like there's no excuse not to and it would cost CHUMP CHANGE (or perhaps nothing at all) for a JPN company to pursue this. Plus, you don't need a miracle internet connection to stream 720p content (i'm on DSL and after like 30 seconds of buffering, everything plays perfect).

I think fansubs aren't at all about previewing a show. I think the entire point of them for the typical anime fan today is to provide anime for free. I think that the typical kid nowadays has grown up feeling that anime should never be paid for. That's a silly concept to them. They've never had to pay to see anime in their life. It's a shame because I know sooooooooooo many people who would claim to be hardcore fans and watch hours upon hours of anime each week and know like every show and will damn near get into fights if you knock one of their favorite show... but they own like zero DVDs but have mountains and mountains of fansubs.

I'm not suggesting that digital replace DVD and Blu-Ray (although I think this is inevitable), but why not pursue alternate streams of income if your DVD sales are declining? Especially when you can totally cut out the licensing middle man who is pretty much destroying the market.

As far as the quality of the shows being a factor... I totally disagree. Look at your DVD collection for regular stuff. Is every movie you have like the best movie ever made? Probably not. But you still purchased it because you liked it. Most anime fans don't buy anime like that. They either never buy it regardless of anything since it's available for free, or they only buy like the super best of the best. They'll watch a show like 5 times over and love it, but still consider it not good enough to buy. They'll go on forums and argue how something is the best anime ever, but laugh at the idea of buying it. I don't think it has as much to do with the actual quality of the content as it does with, "I already have this at a quality level thats like equal to or better than DVD... why should I pay for it?"

Yeah toy licensors/anime distributors are brought in when the anime is in production (before it get on TV) so money is changing hands for the license to do so, now I know that different anime production contracts vary so it is possible that they could sell the right of in full or have a percentage of the sales comeback in after a certain sales target is achieved, much like DVD distribution works.

It's ironic because I recall Hieskel countered that hardly any money is made through merchandise in North America at the Otacon fansub panel when one person (fansubber actually) in the audience stated that she supports the industry by buying Naruto manga and goods.

DomFortress wrote:

Because the anime studios and production companies only have the copyrights on their intellectual properties known as anime, and that means they only get paid for selling their anime on DVD. So when anime DVD sales drop while no TV networks showing anime, the anime studios and production companies don't get paid for their anime.

First, see below about who actually owns the rights. Secondly, no, their rights extend most of the time to merchandise as well, since they have essentially bought the rights. But many times the rights holders (i.e. production committees) will sign up a figure making company as a sponsor for example (which you will see at the end of openings for TV broadcasts) who then gets some kind of deal of it. Nonetheless, merchandise licensing is still controlled by the same the rights holders for the anime.

Mr. sickVisionz wrote:

.. If you're saying that the people who create/own the rights to the characters don't get money from toy sales, you're way off on that. As commercialized as anime is in Japan (when you watch commercials in between anime it's always advertising manga, toys, video games, novels, the latest happy meal special, etc), I can't imagine that they don't get a licensing fee from all the merchandise that's made.

That's the harsh reality. A lot of people conflate "creators" with "rights owners" and the two could not be further apart for most commercial tiles.

Except for independent or self-published works, the studios and the creators DO NOT hold the rights -- the rights are split up between the production committees and sponsors involved. "production committee" or "production company" is quite a misnormer as they really act more like mutual funds. In fact, you can buy a billion DVDs and not a single cent or yen will go to the actual creative staff -- which is unlike the American system for example.

Just as bad is the financial leakage from all of the entities involved. You typically hear about about much it costs to produce a title and how big the budgets are, but what about the actual fundamental production costs?

Taken from another site:

Sponsors altogether puts up ~$500k (¥50mil) -- essentially the "cost" of the rights, split up amongst sponsors and committees however the investment deal is negotiated -- but only $80k of that actually goes towards the real production work (including pay)!
I suppose lots of middlemen sounds good if you like the idea of jobs for jobs sake...

edit: now the handful of exceptions would be the Miyazaki/Ghibli's (the large self-supporting) and the Makoto Shinkai's (the small self-supporting) out there, and various doujin circles.

Xanas wrote:

Ok, if I've got what your saying your argument is that fansubs hurt advertising and advertising hurts those who make the programs and those who make the programs (production companies) don't get the money from the distribution companies.

So while distributors may do fine with more sales of character goods, production companies get squat.

This is actually a decent argument, however I have to say... why? Why do the production companies work under that without making better deals that actually make them get paid.

The legal explanation is due to the unfair contracts sat up by the licensing agreements between the Japanese distributors and the anime production companies. So that the Japanese distributors will gain the most profit in the niche Japanese market by screwing over the anime production companies. The historical explanation is due to the 10 years long Japanese economic recession that forced the anime production companies to reconstruct themselves in order to survive. By subsidizing their business through corporate ownership underneath the Japanese corporate distributors consisted of medias publishers, game developers, and toy manufacturers. The psychological explanation is due to the elitism and group mind mentality within the Japanese society. Which is facilitated by the Japanese educational and social system that forced them to loose their idealism and inspirations as a nation, while they slowly being corrupted by the darker side of their Japanese society.

Xanas wrote:

And the distribution companies, whatever they make is only because of production. If production doesn't exist distribution is screwed as well. So it befits distribution to be at least somewhat fair to production. It may increase temporary profit margins to screw them over, but if they do so for too long they'll screw themselves as well.

The Japanese corporate distributors had indeed been screwing over the anime production companies for far too long, even after the 10 years long Japanese economic recession ended in early 2000's. And quite frankly, it should have all ended right when the Japanese anime industry received outside help from the international anime licensing companies. By legally distributing anime while promoting anime on international TV network in order to create a much bigger international anime market. But that's when anime piracy over saturated the international anime market by illegally distributing fansubs while facilitating more anime piracy on the internet.

Xanas wrote:

And there is still something your argument doesn't explain. Why did character goods sales decrease so substantially when it's something not related to fansubs. Are you saying people didn't know "Naruto plushies" existed because they didn't see the ads because they weren't watching on TV? That's kind of hard to believe. Particularly because even the stuff on TV I don't recall having had commercials for these character goods, and the fact if someone wants something they tend to search the internet if they already are looking for the show that way.

You need to stop treating all these as singular event, but rather as a series of chain reactions. When anime production companies had to fork up the bulk of the anime production cost while loosing advertisement revenues from other Japanese industries due to anime piracy. The Japanese corporate distributors had to use their own ad venues to sponsor the anime TV program to be broadcast on Japanese TV network. This will force the Japanese corporate distributors to increase the market price of the anime character related merchandises in order to cover the extra ad venues cost, a cost that was originally only to cover a small portion of the anime production cost. Over time this will only drive the price of the anime character related merchandises to a point that's beyond the normal anime fan's disposable income level, and forcing the anime fandom to drastically change their spending habits to either stop buying the anime character related merchandises all together, or face a life of poverty due to their expensive hobby.

And here's a fun fact about business, in the life of business, advertisement venues are considered as "disposable income".

Xanas wrote:

I'll grant that the production companies are certainly losing out on advertisement revenues from fansub use. Then again, I don't think fansub use is high among those who would have sat there and watched the show at the specified time. It's those who desire to watch it at another time, etc. who are downloading it that way, or those who had no access to the TV program. Considering the amount of anime that appears on local TV, most anime wouldn't get the TV ads anyway.

That's because people stop watching anime programs on TV due to illegal fansub distributions on the internet, while no company want to waste disposable income on TV programs that nobody wants to watch.

configspace wrote:

That's the harsh reality. A lot of people conflate "creators" with "rights owners" and the two could not be further apart for most commercial tiles.

Except for independent or self-published works, the studios and the creators DO NOT hold the rights -- the rights are split up between the production committees and sponsors involved. "production committee" or "production company" is quite a misnormer as they really act more like mutual funds. In fact, you can buy a billion DVDs and not a single cent or yen will go to the actual creative staff -- which is unlike the American system for example.

Just as bad is the financial leakage from all of the entities involved. You typically hear about about much it costs to produce a title and how big the budgets are, but what about the actual fundamental production costs?

Taken from another site:

Sponsors altogether puts up ~$500k (¥50mil) -- essentially the "cost" of the rights, split up amongst sponsors and committees however the investment deal is negotiated -- but only $80k of that actually goes towards the real production work (including pay)!
I suppose lots of middlemen sounds good if you like the idea of jobs for jobs sake...

edit: now the handful of exceptions would be the Miyazaki/Ghibli's (the large self-supporting) and the Makoto Shinkai's (the small self-supporting) out there, and various doujin circles.

That's what I figured. I do music so I know about about ownership. The guy that I quoted was making it seem like anyone could go off and make Naruto toys and not have to pay royalty to anyone. I knew that was way off.

As far as anime production companies not getting any money for toys... I don't know, that makes sense to me. All they do is draw. They don't come up with the characters or stories or even the art style. They're paid to draw and that's it. To me, it makes sense that they not get any royalties from anything since they haven't really done anything creative.

configspace wrote:

DomFortress wrote:

Because the anime studios and production companies only have the copyrights on their intellectual properties known as anime, and that means they only get paid for selling their anime on DVD. So when anime DVD sales drop while no TV networks showing anime, the anime studios and production companies don't get paid for their anime.

Secondly, no, their rights extend most of the time to merchandise as well, since they have essentially bought the rights.

Think again. Why should anime studios and production companies get royalties from anime character related merchandises based on intellectual properties not from the animated TV advertisements, but rather from the Japanese corporate distributors consisted of medias publishers(mangas, novels, musics), game developers(consoles, arcades, PC games), and toy manufacturers(figures, model kits, toys), when the Japanese corporate distributors are the ones who own the licenses of the original intellectual properties such as the story plots, characters and mechanical designs, dialogs, even the background musics, that the anime studios and production companies were subcontracted to make animated TV advertisements based on these production elements that aren't theirs to begin with, and then fork up the bulk of the production cost because the anime studios and production companies own the copyrights of the animated TV advertisements, which they produced under their limited licensing agreements with the Japanese corporate distributors, who are also responsible for broadcasting the animated TV advertisements on Japanese TV network with their own ad venues sponsorships, and for distributing the animated TV advertisements on the niche Japanese anime market later on as anime DVD?

DomFortress wrote:

Think again. Why should anime studios and production companies get royalties from anime character related merchandises based on intellectual properties not from the animated TV advertisements, but rather from the Japanese corporate distributors consisted of medias publishers(mangas, novels, musics), game developers(consoles, arcades, PC games), and toy manufacturers(figures, model kits, toys), when the Japanese corporate distributors are the ones who own the licenses of the original intellectual properties such as the story plots, characters and mechanical designs, dialogs, even the background musics, that the anime studios and production companies were subcontracted to make animated TV advertisements based on these production elements that aren't theirs to begin with, and then fork up the bulk of the production cost because the anime studios and production companies own the copyrights of the animated TV advertisements, which they produced under their limited licensing agreements with the Japanese corporate distributors, who are also responsible for broadcasting the animated TV advertisements on Japanese TV network with their own ad venues sponsorships, and for distributing the animated TV advertisements on the niche Japanese anime market later on as anime DVD?

It's hard to follow what you're saying.. but I think we're confusing terms here. I am differentiating "anime studio" (production staff) from "production company" aka "production committee" (production investors / sponsors -- rights holders). That is who I mean owns the rights and where all of the profits go to. Might be akin your description of corporate distiributors but even if some company handles all of the distribution (or broadcasting, or advertising deals), it still doesn't mean they own the rights.

configspace wrote:

DomFortress wrote:

Think again. Why should anime studios and production companies get royalties from anime character related merchandises based on intellectual properties not from the animated TV advertisements, but rather from the Japanese corporate distributors consisted of medias publishers(mangas, novels, musics), game developers(consoles, arcades, PC games), and toy manufacturers(figures, model kits, toys), when the Japanese corporate distributors are the ones who own the licenses of the original intellectual properties such as the story plots, characters and mechanical designs, dialogs, even the background musics, that the anime studios and production companies were subcontracted to make animated TV advertisements based on these production elements that aren't theirs to begin with, and then fork up the bulk of the production cost because the anime studios and production companies own the copyrights of the animated TV advertisements, which they produced under their limited licensing agreements with the Japanese corporate distributors, who are also responsible for broadcasting the animated TV advertisements on Japanese TV network with their own ad venues sponsorships, and for distributing the animated TV advertisements on the niche Japanese anime market later on as anime DVD?

It's hard to follow what you're saying.. but I think we're confusing terms here. I am differentiating "anime studio" (production staff) from "production company" aka "production committee" (production investors / sponsors -- rights holders). That is who I mean owns the rights and where all of the profits go to. Might be akin your description of corporate distiributors but even if some company handles all of the distribution (or broadcasting, or advertising deals), it still doesn't mean they own the rights.

Then just think of the Japanese corporate distributors are the production investors / sponsors -- rights holders, that consisted the bulk of an animated TV advertisement "production committee", who then subcontracted the anime production companies and studios as the actual "production staff", to produce the said animated TV advertisement. Then you'll see the whole big picture that's the Japanese anime industry: an advertisement industry that use anime as a medium to promote anime character related merchandises owned by medias publishers(mangas, novels, musics), game developers(consoles, arcades, PC games), and toy manufacturers(figures, model kits, toys). Which is what your production flowchart is saying in plain English:http://i107.photobucket.com/albums/m313/DomFortress/flowchartrev01.jpg

Domfortress wrote:

That's because people stop watching anime programs on TV due to illegal fansub distributions on the internet, while no company want to waste disposable income on TV programs that nobody wants to watch.

Ok, I'll grant that this is probably true. Because people have other options they use them instead, but they use them because they are significantly more convenient options. Hell, even those shows which I WILL NOT watch fansubs of (because I'm committed to the dub) I won't watch on TV but wait for the DVD release. And why? Because I've come to despise everything about the channels that show anime. I hate the advertisements on Adult Swim and have hated them for years.

I also think you could be right on your other point that in theory if DVDs had been "the only way" to get anime, that the international industry through license agreements would have given the Japanese anime production companies another revenue route and even a chance at fairer prices and distribution.

Even so, I think these things were all fairly unavoidable, and also predictable.

At the point Napster developed in the late 90s it should have been foreseen that this was going to happen, and absolutely inevitable to affect others industries as well. And even before Napster, honestly, the technology and internet trends should have made it clear that people were more and more looking to get things conveniently and on demand. The entire media industry has almost utterly failed. It took them at least 5-6 years longer than it should have to create the service infrastructures once this became apparent that it's what many people were wanting.

Everyone can say that "patience is a virtue" but on the other hand, being slow to adapt, inflexible, etc. are absolutely not virtues. Thinking that you can win by trying to sue people for wanting things on demand has been an abysmal failure.

And it may seem like I'm being rather cold here but I really do think it's a shame. I think that this failure has been extremely unfair on the people working for the industry. I think the executives and the people who should have been forward thinking totally got lost on this world of new physical media (DVD) when they should have all been thinking about the possibilities the technology provided them. If they thought that alternate revenue streams were an awesome idea before because the industry could directly tap into international distributors, they should have thought about going one step further and directly getting the money from the individual consumers. They would no longer be limited to dependence on "middle-man" distribution companies.

There is no reason the internet had to be an enemy to the production industry. It became this because rather than addressing consumer desires quickly, all of the involved companies allowed that addressing to be done by the masses who wanted to share with one another. To a certain extent, it wasn't production companies fault. As previously said, there are a myriad of these licensing agreements that hampered the ability to address issues. But I really think this went on much longer than it should even with that.

Mr. sickVisionz wrote:

Ehh, I agree with the part about anime being insanely expensive. I just purchased 13 episodes of a 1 hour TV show on Blu-Ray, brand new for $26 on Amazon.com. 13 half-hour episodes of standard definition Naruto retails for $34-44 on Amazon. And thats actually one of the better priced shows. You basically get half the video quality, half the running time, but double the price...

Was that 13 episode 585 minute series a foreign language TV show, imported from another country, and translated into your native language, possibly with a native dub track and enhanced sound? Did the company that you bought the series from actually produce the show in your country, or did they buy the rights to have the privilege to make it available to a much wider audience, mainly the local demographic in which you reside? If the answer is no, then you are not comparing apples and apples, your comparing apples and toothbrushes. I will assume you are from the States, so let me explain a few things that anime doesn't have going for it. It doesn't have a wide audience, yes even adding every fansub and legit watcher put together, it's still just a drop in the bucket when talking about the entertainment market. It doesn't have millions of people tuning in every night to make sure they can talk about it with there friends at the water cooler the next day. It doesn't have multi-billion dollar corporations competitively biding and marketing behind it; even Navarre is small compared to Hollywood studios. It isn't watchable in it's raw form by the super majority of the country, i.e. something must be done to it for it to be watchable. It isn't owned by anyone, except the people whom created and funded it in the first place, and they so happen to live in another country, speak a different language, and have different methods and measures of economic accomplishment and execution.

Or, to put things more succinctly.

It's an import people. When will you get that through your thick skulls. Not only that, but it has gotten steadily cheaper and cheaper over time, which by all measures means import companies are working with customers not against them. Sorry, but imported anime is a steal compared to the history, but no let's remain jaded instead.

Let's take an example of a popular Hollywood TV series. Lost for instance. Season 4 on Amazon United States is $36.99. On Amazon Germany it's €48,95 ($65.95). Almost $29 more expensive! The horror! That's the same price those yanks pay for a 26 episode series!(actually less these days) The Germans shall rise again to this great injustice, and whine incessantly. Well, given the industrious nature of it's people, that probably won't happen. But when I buy a BMW, I will be sure to complain, of which I am sure a reply will be offered, "you just can't buy a BMW for that little, Saturn is right down the street Laughing

". See, both will get me from point A to point B, but if I want a Beemer I have to pay a premium for it. Just like if I want to watch a non-American TV show I also have to pay a premium for it.

I'm not claiming that anime DVD sales in North America aren't going down in general, but one thing you do have to take into consideration about, say, 2004 numbers compared to 2007 numbers, is that, back in 2004, the bulk of DVD sales of anime series was probably still single disks, but, by 2007, thinpacks of series, including series sold straight to thinpack (as opposed to re-releases of series originally sold as singles), had really started to gain steam, with the numbers of series sold as single disks in decline.

Even if you take into account the higher distribution costs of multiple single volumes versus that of a series sold as a single thinpack, the profit margins almost certainly were a bit higher when anime fans were paying around five dollars per episode compared to just two or three dollars per episode with thinpacks. I know that more people will buy a series as a thinpack than as single volumes, but I doubt the niche market for most anime series is big enough for economics of scale to kick in to that great a degree.

Tenchi wrote:

2004 numbers compared to 2007 numbers, is that, back in 2004, the bulk of DVD sales of anime series was probably still single disks, but, by 2007, thinpacks of series, including series sold straight to thinpack (as opposed to re-releases of series originally sold as singles)

That's a very fair and valid point, but it's important to note that with a high percentage of those thinpacks being rereleases, they were likely also a reason for a reduction in sales(those of us who bought the Fullmetal Alchemist single disc releases, for example, weren't likely to jump at the 13 episode thinpacks). I would be curious to see the total numbers of DVDs(single and thinpacks) from year to year to get an idea of just how different the sales, in dollars and quantity, really are from year to year.

I've noticed some people are still comparing the DVD sales and the merchandise sales and inclusive, instead of exclusive(which they are).
The major bulk of the merchandise sales is going to come from little kids seeing stuff on TV(as mentioned in a few earlier posts), for some reason I can't see many 6 and 7 year olds sitting through fansubs and wanting to read the script instead of hearing it. Meanwhile, the majority of DVD sales are coming from the teen and adult fans, who are the ones watching a fansub 2, 3, 4 or more times while claiming "it's not good enough to buy".
Simply put, while the original financial aspects are inclusive, the actual sales of the two categories are very exclusive.

Quote:

Let's take an example of a popular Hollywood TV series. Lost for instance. Season 4 on Amazon United States is $36.99. On Amazon Germany it's €48,95 ($65.95).

That's a great point. Licensing fees for imports will make season box sets of Case Closed require more sales or higher prices to make a profit then say seasons of Law and Order. If only more people could understand that importing properties cost a lot of money, and DVD sales have to make up for the lack of income from commercials that come with original TV airings of domestic shows.

Thanks. Cool

Xanas wrote:

Everyone can say that "patience is a virtue" but on the other hand, being slow to adapt, inflexible, etc. are absolutely not virtues. Thinking that you can win by trying to sue people for wanting things on demand has been an abysmal failure.

So why can't the anime pirates learn about this virtue called "patience"? Why they so insisting on over saturating the international anime market with illegal distributions of fansubs and scanslations, before the anime industry can do so legally with licensing and broadcasting internationally? Are they that bored?

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