Forum - View topicNEWS: Sentai Filmworks Adds Clannad After Story, Ghost Hound, He is My Master
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Xanas
Posts: 2058 |
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Long release timelines aren't mine or many others main concern. In fact, I'd like to know why you or anyone else cares so much about that issue? Is it any different if you get a show released in 2007 or one released in 2009 if it's new to you? If you watched in fansub and don't want to "wait to own it" why? Just for a DVD package with no extras? ADV may not release the same exact packing as Funimation does now but the new Clannad sets aren't miraculously awesome. They are just as plain as the latest Kaze no Stigma release from Funimation, except they don't even get a dub. I am not sure why you would look at these new ADV releases as better in any way (including packaging) unless you just haven't bought them both, and I have. It's not that I like waiting a long time for series I watched on fansub, but I'd rather be waiting for something different, than waiting for the same thing. If it's just watching the show I want to do, I can still do that just fine. But if I'm going out of my way to buy something, I kind of expect it to include reasons for me to do so beyond doing what I can already do. Some kind of extras, whether it be art cards, etc. or a dub (and I prefer the latter more than the former) are a necessity, but with Sentai Filmworks releases.. you don't get either. You get sub only and you don't even get good subs. I think people are supporting ADV now out of a feeling of loyalty because of what they used to do, which is fine and all, but I have no faith in them whatsoever. They haven't proven anything to me and I am not a loyal type so I'll go with who provides me what I want. As far as "assembly line" dubs go, I disagree with that line. Even though dub qualities may be going down slightly (not paying for them doesn't help this situation) I haven't experienced that too much. I like the Kaze no Stigma dub, and Baccano/Darker than Black have been good as well. I am kind of not sure which of the latest Funimation series is just bad, but then there are shows that earned poor reviews even prior to licensing that I don't watch, so it could be those. (Now, I do buy sub-only to do whatever minimalistic support that provides, but I won't go out of my way for it because I think R1 isn't doing right when they go that route. They aren't providing additional value in my opinion with no extras and no dub.) |
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Kid Ryan
Posts: 506 Location: Sacramento, California |
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I'm going to pass on all of these, subbed only R1 releases want to make me puke and barf.
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Sarkozy
Posts: 132 |
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You'd be surprised how wrong you are about that. There's a huge portion of people who want it as fast and as legally as possible.
The only series I'm going to buy from FUNimation for the rest of 2009 is Big Windup then next year I only plan to get Seto no Hanayme, Soul Eater and Eden of the East in terms of series. Evangelion 1.11 as well later next year. Back to this year though, Big Windup will apparently have the same packaging as Kaze no Stigma. That packaging irks me as well, 2 discs overlapping one another unnecessarily. Ugh. That can only drive me away quite a bit further.
I don't think so. They are supporting ADV because ADV is getting series people actually want and its only a 2-3 month wait instead of a 6mo-1yr wait and the fact they have some of the cheapest DVDs out on the market. I bought Princess Resurrection out of loyalty and He is My Master out of loyalty as well. ADV was the beginning of my fandom and the day they no longer exist is the day my interest in anime goes with them. Geneon was a tough one to lose, Bandai Visual USA was as well for me personally and for a sec there I thought I lost ADV. The quality companies are the ones that always face problems or troubles, while the the crap companies stay unfazed. |
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dragonrider_cody
Posts: 2541 |
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I'm sorry, I forgot Voice Actors are the only employed people who are important. Really, who cares about anyone else who needs to pay for the house, or feed their children. F*ck em, and their kids. They can starve! And yes, the office employments is than 100 people for them, and almost every other anime distributor (probably including Funimation.) Bandai, at last count, only had about 20+ employees (though we don't know exactly how many were laid off) , while ADV had over 30. Even in it's heyday, ADV barely, if ever, crossed the 100 employee threshold, and this included it's Newtype, manga, and Anime Network divisions. As for Nozomi's extra's, let's not forget that they pick and choose which titles get them. Gakuen Alice, for instance, is a bare bones release with minimal extras. It's only true advantage over Clannad, is the nice packaging. And reducing extras is hardly something new. Everyone from Funimation, to Bandai has been doing this for at least two years now. Much like the move to more sub only, it's a sad truth that we will have to live with less extras. I'm really surprised we don't see more people complaining that we don't get animated menus anymore, considering everything else is constantly being complained about. Seriously, I think the long term, a lot of the complaining is just getting pretty trivial and a bit annoying. All I ever read anymore, are reasons why someone isn't buying a particular release, whether it be no dub, cheap packaging, bad video quality, cheap dub, or even I don't like the coloring of the lettering on the box. But then some of the loudest complainers, who constantly come up with reasons not to buy something, are also the ones who don't understand why sales continue to fall and why other things must be omitted, like dubs or packaging.
Thanks for getting that link. I was referring to it earlier, but I didn't have the time to look it up. You are much more patient than I. There are just so many people who fail to understand how small the anime market truly is. Just like the people who said they didn't care about the Best Buy story a few months ago, because they don't shop there. They failed to understand the bigger picture. You know, I have had to deal with a lot of different groups in my time. But I have never dealt with one where so many of the "fans" feel entitled to everything. I've also never dealt with a group where it seems so many people don't care about the people making their hobby, or the ones bringing it to them. This certainly isn't true of the majority of anime fans, but you have to admit the loud ones out there make it seem this way. And it's usually people like mario, among others, who sometimes make me ashamed of admitting I'm an anime fan. |
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zanarkand princess
Posts: 1484 |
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It would sell better in the US then Clannad did in the US. If Funimation releases it they might have another School Rumble on their hands. It's a Romantic Comedy not a Moe crying girl fest. Series like Toradora do better in the US then series like Clannad. |
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dragonrider_cody
Posts: 2541 |
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Yes, but don't forget that School Rumble recently went 50% off at Best Buy, because most stores are heavily over stocked with it, due to poor sell through. Well, poor sell through, and Funimation/Navarre's penchant for over-shipping product. Determining sales performance can be a very complicated matter. Especially when you factor in that a title that does well with "hardcore fans" and sell well online, at places like Right Stuf of Animenation, can completely bomb at B&M stores. With online sales, you have much lower returns. With a place like Best Buy, you have the potential for much, much higher return levels. (I have personally sent back entire initial shipments of Bandai and Funimation titles after not selling a single copy.) For instance, the sendbacks of Lucky Star earlier this year had to be pretty devastating for Bandai, considering how many thousands of copies were floating around. |
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Draneor
Posts: 355 |
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I take it you have access to Nielsen VideoScan? Also, you do know that both Clannad and ToraDora were made for essentially the same demographic in Japan, right? |
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zanarkand princess
Posts: 1484 |
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The Demographics for anime in Japan and in the US are often different.
In Japan they would call Toradora shounen romance in America many females would like it. Take Moon Phase as an example.That show was for male otaku in Japan but in the US Funi more or less marketed it to girls, because in the US that's who would be interested in it. And when I spoke about School Rumble I was talking more about how they managed to create a buzz with that series and the fact that they would sell to the same audience. They love to play it on their channel and it has a good sized fanbase. The fact that it did well on Rightstuf and Animenation should count for something too because no one really expects series that aren't Naruto to be amazing sellers at B&M stores anyway right? Like you said Funimation has a habit of shipping to much product out. |
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ZeetherKID77
Posts: 982 |
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You again? |
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TheGoddesswatcher
Posts: 26 |
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Its like talking to a brick wall, dude you won't get it or try to get it on why they are doing this. So why not give it a rest on here. |
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PetrifiedJello
Posts: 3782 |
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This is the second time someone linked to this particular post from an ANN staff member, but I must contest it. If we look at basic math, that "barely 2000" equates to "barely 40 copies per state". Think about that long and hard. Anyone here trying to tell me 40 copies of a particularly interesting anime is hard to sell isn't going to convince me all the while trying to tell me a business is basically hemorrhaging cash to dub them and stay afloat. I'm sorry, I just can't swallow this "math". I don't discount a title or two may be difficult (word of mouth says it sucks), but certainly not all. Strike another one up to the "Secret Society of Players in the Anime World" to know the real facts. |
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Xanas
Posts: 2058 |
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I spoke for myself and others, not for everyone or even for most people. I said "many" and I am sure of that by looking at the fact there are several others here who have the same position I do on these issues. Aside from that, I'm not exactly hearing why it matters to people to get bare minimum releases at a quick turnaround. I mean, if you really don't care about extras why not buy the Japanese release? And if it's the pricing why not buy only some of the shows and not buy others? Is it really that important to simply say you have a case for every anime you watch regardless of the fact that no more actual dollars are going to produce it by doing that?
The Sentai filmworks Clannad set isn't really better, and most of what I'm seeing these days isn't. I also don't really think the overlapping is that big a deal, but then.. I'll admit that I don't use the discs more than once, because I prefer to encode them and watch them from external hard drives.
You are hilarious. The strawman arguments are amazing. I never said they should starve or anything akin to that. I said there aren't that many people involved and that I don't care if this particular employment of theirs goes away. I don't want them not to get another job, and you are pretending like they couldn't get anything but this, which is ridiculous. So should we stop advancing technology so people can keep jobs? Should those who write software not fix bugs so they can keep their jobs alive (some probably actually do this, but do you think that's actually a good thing???). I know you can say I'm using a strawman on your position, because you never actually stated any of this, but at the same time the implications of what you are saying are exactly this, so I don't think I'm doing that at all. You also talk about "complaining" as if you are somehow not... complaining, when you actually are, but instead of complaining about not getting what you want you are complaining about others complaining about not getting what they want. It's "pretty trivial and annoying" for you to have to hear what they have to say. It'd be pretty easy and trivial for you to .. ignore them, but ... just like I prefer to complain about things not being what I'd like, you obviously prefer to do the same about others. And you also were wrong when you said I'm giving you reasons "I'm not buying a particular release" when I am not doing that. I'm saying why I don't want this, and that I am in fact buying these releases, but that I won't go out of my way to buy them quickly, nor will I buy other shows blindly or on a whim like I would do if they had dubs. I like Clannad, so I did buy it. I will buy Afterstory, but this Ghost series... and whatever else they care to release... is not interesting because I am not going to buy something they believed was so niche that they couldn't even attempt to market it outside the already existing fansub viewer base. I do want to just clarify one other thing about the "VA job loss" as I want to make it clear I'm not complaining about that for the VA's sake alone. I like would prefer no one to lose his/her job, but that's not how life works. The reason I don't like VA loss specifically is that unlike "license negotiators" or "executives and administrative personnel", VAs are unique and when they are lost there is less distinction to be found between one show and another. |
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Kruszer
Posts: 7994 Location: Minnesota, USA |
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Alright! Yay for Ghost Hound, that show was great. I'm definitely going to pick it up. Also wouldn't mind owning Clannad: After Story either since it was also good, so double score.
I can't exactly say I'm excited for more half-assed dubless releases though. I really don't like sub only (or dub only for that matter) releases that don't give you a darn language choice. |
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Sakagami Tomoyo
Posts: 947 Location: Melbourne, VIC, Australia |
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To me, movies and TV series were intended to be watched in whatever language they were originally made in. And the argument that the audience was not intended to read subtitles instead of looking at the pretty pictures annoys me a great deal (it is not actually impossible to read subtitles and look at the pretty pictures at the same time), and I wish people would stop using it. People should watch it whichever way they find more comfortable, and stop trying to force everyone else to do things their way. (This goes for both sides of the argument.)
Oh, certainly not all anime titles would struggle to do 40 sales statewide/2000 sales nationwide. Some, like Bleach, could easily see 40 sales from a single brick and mortar retail store. But very few titles have that sort of popularity. Most would have only a fraction of that. Now, "a particularly interesting anime". Not everyone is interested in the same things. Some things, like people beating the crap out of each other, a lot of people find interesting and therefore will sell like hotcakes. But other things, like the daily lives of Japanese Catholic schoolgirls who may or may not be lesbians, or the daily lives of girls who row gondolas on Mars, are interesting to only a small number of people and therefore are unlikely to sell terribly many copies.
Look at the flip side of this, though. Just as it is not impossible for translators, rights negotiators, etc to find other employment, it is not impossible for the voice actors to find other employment either. It might have to be in a different field, but that is true of both of them. And I would say it's better for some jobs to be saved rather than none. And, well, you may not care if they're not around to put out what releases they can, but others do. |
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Draneor
Posts: 355 |
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Justin Sevakis isn't just an ANN staff member--he's also a former member of the industry. More importantly, I believe ANN has access to Nielsen VideoScan, not to mention contacts within the industry itself. In short, I don't personally see a reason to doubt what he wrote. Ah, and keep in mind that there are only around 1,400 Best Buys in the US (not all of which stock most anime). Certainly, BB isn't the only retailer that sells anime, but I believe it is the largest by volume. |
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