Forum - View topicNEWS: Funimation Parent Navarre Reports Q4 Anime Sales Dip
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Sheleigha
 Posts: 1674 |
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Why do people get so excited when a company may cease to exist? Do you not want anime over here ever? Sometimes, I don't think people realize HOW much you support the industry from buying their items. It really does go back to the main company itself! Heck, I'm guessing the only reason Inuyasha was able to continue, was from the sales of the orginal series' DVDs... I also learned after an old Gary Coleman interview that at one point, he only got cheques in the mail because someone, somewhere, was buying copies of his DVDs. Heck, the ONLY reason Family Guy returned to TV was from DVD sales!
It's never a good thing when any company goes under, to also add to the growing unemployment in the country... Still, FUNI is still here for now, so we can't be too sure about anything, just yet... |
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mglittlerobin
 Posts: 1071 |
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Dumb, stupid "fans" want American anime to fail, it's just stupid, Funimation's the only company I have consistently bought from. I rarely buy Bleach from Viz Media even though I like that show. I want them to be around 'cause I'm going to buy FMA: Brotherhood season sets from them. Sales rise and fall all the time. I'm not worried because Funimation keeps releasing good shows. I['m going to buy some shows soon, I just have to get some extra money, D. Gray Man is on my list as well as Slayers Evolution-R, along with FMA: Brotherhood Season sets when they come out.
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Sheleigha
Posts: 1674 |
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I think the worst part is when people hate a company because of translations or some grammatical errors. It amazes me to no end how picky people can be... I've seen subs where English was NOT the subber's first language and that was hard to read and follow along! Still, if it's in English and there's no issue in the grammar etc what's the big deal?
I understand purists will always ne purists, many won't turn their head to a dub, but if the words in a sub aren't conveyed "properly" is that really a sufficient reason to not watch it? Or download because the official subs aren't what YOU want? With the.exception of one I can think of.off the top of my head (one which used dub terms in Japanese subbers content...), I just don't understand... |
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unready
 Posts: 409 Location: Illinois, USA |
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Yes and no. Classifying Funimation as a discontinued operation isolates Funimation's financials from Navarre. It's only discontinued from Navarre's point of view. Navarre puts no more money in, but it also takes no more money out. Funimation continues to operate as normal, and any change in net worth of Funimation is due entirely to its operations as an independent unit. |
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GrilledEelHamatsu
 Posts: 703 |
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Exactly. That's how Texas business works. Without Navarre, Funimation would be like ADV/Section 23 an independant label without a parent company holder. |
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mudduck454
 Posts: 303 |
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sooner or later they will have to stop kicking that dead horse they call dragonball Z, and have to find the next long series they can milk like viz media does with bleach,
they already dropped the ball with gintama, so now maybe they need to focus on a show that can get the girls into watching more anime, I am talking about Shugo Chara........ they would only need the first and second seasons, which consists of shugo chara, and shugo chara doki, that is the only arc that matters since the new one was trash. and I think an English dub would do wonders, and I know the neigh Sayers will say that it will never be broadcasted here because of the boy who dresses like a girl, but I say, if they can put crap like flapjack and chowder, along with that new show adventure time, I think shugo chara would be a fit for cartoon network. I think even disney would consider it, out of all the crap being rescued, I think if you didn't buy it when it was available, then why would you buy it now that funimation has it???????? seriously we all know they are going to release chobits like they released love hina, they are going to shove 7 episodes per disc, it will have no extras, I made the mistake and bought the love hina collection from funi, only to trade it in at moviestop and go out and find the original bandia releases, and I found all nine DVDs and they are in mint condition and only cost a little more than the funimation set, but I have all the OVAs and love hina again special. if they want to make more money, they need to be a little faster in releasing their announced shows, because as much as I enjoy rosario vampire, I might forget about it by this time next year, and how long are we going to have to wait for a dance in the vampire bund release???? |
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GrilledEelHamatsu
Posts: 703 |
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Like Sentai is with thier quick sub box sets? |
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Dark Paladin X
 Posts: 268 |
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Yeah, something like that. I think the approach of subbing first then dub if done financially well and high demand is the best business approach for distributing anime under this tough economy. However, if the entire world gets out of the recession in the future, then there may be more dubbing. However, with the age of Internet, I don't think we'll see the glory days of dubbing like 2000-2007. You do know that dubbing a series does take a long time. According to the ANNCast with Bang Zoom! Entertainment CEO Eric P. Sherman about a month ago, it usually takes around about a week to dub an episode. So if you want to dub a 26 episode series (which most anime series are bundled into, it takes about half a year. So a 52 episode series like Hayate the Cobmat Butler! would take a year to dub. Also, after two years of the initial announcement of the licensing, dubbing a series that was first released subbed is less economical. Note that Funimation is based in Texas and Texan dubbing studios are mostly non-union, so they may dub a series much quicker than Californian ones. Funimation looks like it's slowly going down the drain, but sales loss kinda tells us it's a warning sign, so it's not a 100% definite sure that they will fall within the next few years. Bandai appears to be doing much worse than Funimation (despite the claim saying that they have a "good year" in 2009. Yeah, explain why you laid off 90% of your staff, constantly delaying your releases, and failed to get Hayate the Combat Butler dubbed, which happens to be quite popular in U.S. and Japan). It would be really bad if Funimation shuts few years after becoming independent from Navarre. As TV Tropes would point out: If Funimation did not exist, anime distribution in North America would be extinct by now! |
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dks86
Posts: 1 |
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Did you miss the part about co-productions? You know, where Funimation wants to take big name American brands and turn them into anime. Sort of like what Yen Press did with the Twilight manga, take a look at the charts and see how that is working out for them. 
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Killtheshrew
 Posts: 118 |
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I don't understand how can Funimation be doing poorly?
I just bought the FMAB on blu ray and the whole series of BECK. Isn't that enough to make them a profit? Why don't they release popular shows like Pokemon and Gundam and sell them cheap to make more money. This is an outrage, Funimation should be doing more to protect Anime is America they're an absolute disgrace. Why don't they try to licence shows like 24, The Wire and Glee as well as Japanimation, they sell really well in the USA. |
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jsevakis
Former ANN Editor in Chief
 Posts: 1684 Location: Los Angeles, CA |
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QFT. All of media, including entertainment, newspapers, are struggling with this now, but anime, being a niche market on the ass-end of a bubble, is in a particular spot because nobody ever had to figure out how to market it to the mainstream during the good years. Now that we need that marketing know-how, we don't have it. (Arguably, the only person that did have that ability was the late Carl Macek. And even he only had a few big successes.) But this is entertainment, THE most volatile, unpredictable business there is. If you're going to have a strong emotional attachment to any business, you're going to have to harden yourself to the fact that nobody ever knows what really makes a hit. Let's not forget that it was as recently as the 1970s that the Hollywood studios were teetering on bankruptcy. So it really helps to think as long term and as Zen about these things as possible. |
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Dark Paladin X
Posts: 268 |
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You are right about that, only a few titles manage to get mainstream success (Pokemon, Digimon, Dragonball series, Naruto, Bleach, and Gundam), but they mostly aired around the time when access to the Internet was limited during the 1990s (although Bleach and Naruto aired DURING the early age of the Internet). Heck, I know even some popular titles in both Japan and United States are still a bit niche (Haruhi Suzumiya, Lucky Star, Fullmetal Alchemist. There isn't really much miracle on getting anime mainstream unless someone does a documentary about it. |
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_V_
 Posts: 619 |
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Diff'rent Strokes and Family Guy have something in common: they both aired on TV in North America. There was thus already "demand" for it. Virtually all anime these days *does not* air on Television, there is no buzz for it at all, no demand. You cannot possibly think people would be willing to pay DVD-money for such niche titles. They WOULD be willing to watch it online, in return for watching embedded ads. Streaming needs to become the new TV. |
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ZenErik
 Posts: 392 Location: Boston |
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I believe a series like Nana has a good shot at mainstream success in the USA. While a little more mature than a typical teen drama, it could do well on a channel that is geared towards teen - college girls. CW maybe?
But who am I kidding? It would probably flop regardless of how good it is. |
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_V_
Posts: 619 |
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What really, really disturbs me Mr. Sevakis, is... ...well as an outsider looking in, I just watched what anime was on TV, didn't even read magazines, until the big 2008 crash grabbed everyone's attention. So since then I've been trying to retroactively read through industry news posts and... ...after Musicland's collapse in January 2006, things were getting worse, but before the Geneon shutdown stopped any capacity for rational thought. This was the time for a big change to happen and it didn't. But what really, really disturbed me...is that say from spring 2007, I've seen panel summaries, news posts, etc....from all companies, ADV, Geneon, FUNimation... ...in which the people who actually were "in charge" not low-level people, were openly complaining that "wow, we used to just be able to sell everything..." "...but now, its like, there's...three levels of anime...A, B, and C stuff....and A stuff is only the must-buy stuff, and all this time people would still collect B and C stuff but...wow, now we actually have to pick and choose what anime we license" I mean the TONE they had, they really seemed like "Marketing" was an ALIEN CONCEPT to them, and were now trying to describe it as a deaf person can conceptually describe sound. Did they even have..."target demographics"? Girls I know like Hetalia and Spice & Wolf. Granted, FUNimation got these....but because they were already doing well in bootlegs. I saw Hetalia cosplayers TWO YEARS ago. They can't just wait to see what's already popular, because by then its already out. ....was the *functional mentality* this whole time, that "anime fandom" was an outgrowth of the original conventions from the late 1980's/early 1990's, that existed PURELY within anime conventions where people bought physical VHS tapes....when anime was so rare, that people would just buy whatever was physically on sale? People couldn't even pick and choose then! that was the most disturbing part though: going through the old news posts and seeing people IN CHARGE of some of these companies, conceptually grappling with this new concept to them of "people don't automatically buy everything we produce on DVD anymore" To use another bad example I got because I just watched a South Park rerun: In the episode in which Butters becomes a pimp, he gives a speech about how "good companies practice *innovation*"...and he says "maybe every boy isn't willing to pay $5 for a kiss. So lets make a sliding scale, and charge $2 for just a hug"....and this actually works because it fulfills a need. We're not all obsessive collectors with a wall of anime DVDs. Yes, I realize that...if you take 100 people, and watching online earns $1 and a DVD is $100....and 99 people watch online (for $99) and that one guy buys the DVD (for $100 ) ...that one guy's purchasing power, his fan-voice, is bigger than all of those other 99 people combined. So the answer is that Quantity has a Quality all its own. Find even more people to watch online, You can reach something like 5 times the size of the proportionate viewerbase per cost invested with streaming. Streaming isn't doing that great because 1 - it is new and poorly marketed and 2 - ...a lot of titles like "Dance in the Vampire Bund" aren't exactly going to be popular with most teenagers 12-18 !! Anime got so niche, pandered so much to the DVD collectors, that its difficult to dig our way out of this whole. Last edited by _V_ on Fri Jun 04, 2010 8:42 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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