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INTEREST: Daily Video: Fans Launch 'Sustain the Industry' Movement


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GATSU



Joined: 03 Jan 2002
Posts: 15574
PostPosted: Wed Sep 01, 2010 11:14 pm Reply with quote
Hopefully, it'll do a better job than those anti-pirated porn PSAs.
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sykoeent



Joined: 17 Jul 2007
Posts: 160
PostPosted: Wed Sep 01, 2010 11:19 pm Reply with quote
NICE! I shall join in on this!
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jrnemanich



Joined: 24 Aug 2007
Posts: 238
Location: Denver
PostPosted: Wed Sep 01, 2010 11:20 pm Reply with quote
i wish i had a camera because i would do the same thing
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NJ_



Joined: 31 Oct 2009
Posts: 3111
Location: Wallington, NJ
PostPosted: Wed Sep 01, 2010 11:21 pm Reply with quote
Still waiting for her August video so that i can post my list of purchases from the month in the comment section and so that i can finally throw out my receipts. Sad

Last edited by NJ_ on Wed Sep 01, 2010 11:25 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Shenl742



Joined: 11 Feb 2010
Posts: 1525
PostPosted: Wed Sep 01, 2010 11:22 pm Reply with quote
All I can say is right on girl! The idea may seem a little corny to the cynical, but I think it's real great to see a fan stand up and take pride for contributing something to the industry.

Makes me want to take a camera and show off the box-openings for my monthly rightstuf fix...but I'm too shy to do it Embarassed
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Greed1914



Joined: 28 Oct 2007
Posts: 4640
PostPosted: Wed Sep 01, 2010 11:27 pm Reply with quote
I like the idea since it offers a counter to the, "What?! You actually pay for your anime!?" crowd. It's nice to see someone saying that they are proud to give something back.
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keikanna44



Joined: 12 Feb 2009
Posts: 155
Location: Virginia
PostPosted: Wed Sep 01, 2010 11:31 pm Reply with quote
I like her. I'm happy to see others joining in the saving the anime industry movement. I've heard about the problems the industry has been having especially since the recession. I've done my part by buying a whole lot of anime series this year in total I've bought over 25 anime series which I'm happy about. I confess I'm still not strong enough to stop illegal downloading and watching streams. I do this because I like previewing a series first to see if I like it or not, but if I do I always end up buying it. I enjoy collecting anime box sets and plushies and stuff. It's one of my hobbies. Smile

Anyway people if you watch anime online illegally please buy series that you like to do your part in saving the industry otherwise you won't be watching anime online for very long!!!!! Evil or Very Mad

That goes for games, manga and other merchandise!

Join the movement!
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Dagon123



Joined: 01 Jul 2010
Posts: 194
PostPosted: Wed Sep 01, 2010 11:48 pm Reply with quote
I'm glad that people are standing up and being proud of buying, because I was getting real tired of the "What you pay for Anime LOL, you bad" crowd thinking they are anime fans and putting down those who do things like this
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CareyGrant



Joined: 18 Nov 2009
Posts: 453
PostPosted: Wed Sep 01, 2010 11:55 pm Reply with quote
What a genius idea! I think it's fantastic of her, and I hope more contribute to it. Frankly, it's not just anime that could use the support. I can't begin to tell you how many kids/teens/YA's I know who steal/pirate EVERYTHING off the web, from movies to TV to music, etc. etc.

The "steal everything that's not nailed down" mindset of our tech savy youth could use a page from this girl's book (not digitally, of course).

It's refreshing to see such support for doing what's right rather than what's easy (and illegal).

Now, if the American/Japanese studios wanted to be super cool, they'd highlight/applaud her efforts in a way that garnered her praise and publicity (like giving her free stuff, shwag, etc., or just a shout out for doing something so simple, but so impacting).
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minakichan





PostPosted: Thu Sep 02, 2010 12:34 am Reply with quote
Oh, this is absolutely excellent. Telling fans to stop pirating is futile; telling fans to start buying is so much more constructive!

I wonder if a viable supplement or alternative to buying, for the absolutely impoverished, would be to systematically click ads on Crunchyroll and Funimation...
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Fronzel



Joined: 11 Sep 2003
Posts: 1906
PostPosted: Thu Sep 02, 2010 12:38 am Reply with quote
I don't really understand. I'm still only going to buy the things I like. How could I do anything else?

Of course, I've never been a pure pirate...but if they are the intended audience, would they ever listen?

Is consumption that heroic?
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Aura Ichadora



Joined: 25 Apr 2008
Posts: 2303
Location: In front of my computer
PostPosted: Thu Sep 02, 2010 12:45 am Reply with quote
I actually love this idea. Yes, while most people will find this effort to be futile and probably very stupid in order to try and promote the whole "stop pirating anime and purchase your anime/manga" thing, I think it's pretty cool that she and other people are doing this. Plus, it's always nice to show off a bit, especially if you're proud of something you just picked up.

Guess I'm going to be looking for my camera this weekend.
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timesteel



Joined: 04 Aug 2009
Posts: 202
Location: California
PostPosted: Thu Sep 02, 2010 12:53 am Reply with quote
buying stuff only covers half of the problem anime is barely advertised anymore most channels that had animation blocks have long since taken them off. one way of fixing the problem would be for Cartoon network to bring back toonami every weekday and for G4 to bring back anime unleashed the 1990s- about 2004 for the glory years for anime sales but Cartoon network had to go ruin it

Last edited by timesteel on Thu Sep 02, 2010 12:53 am; edited 1 time in total
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ArsenicSteel



Joined: 12 Jan 2010
Posts: 2370
PostPosted: Thu Sep 02, 2010 12:53 am Reply with quote
Quote:
Is consumption that heroic?


Nope but maybe the added documentation and free PR improves it...somehow.
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_V_



Joined: 13 Apr 2009
Posts: 619
PostPosted: Thu Sep 02, 2010 12:55 am Reply with quote
"hahahahaha...and I thought my jokes were bad....as for the televisions *so-called "Plan"..."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpSoEIN18WI

(sigh)

once again, it falls to a guy in a mask to state the obvious:


The people making these youtube videos are not "supporting" the anime industry; they are destroying it


"Buying DVDs" no longer directly equates to "supporting the industry"

To sum up briefly what happened: the North America anime distribution industry started up in the early 1990's. Back then, with no high speed internet for downloads and not even much of a direct-import industry, young new anime companies could only produce a handful of new titles a year.

It was a "collector's market" -- anime was so rare that people would *automatically buy whatever few VHS tapes were released*

This is why some of the earlier shows left such a big impact: almost every single anime fan in 1997 saw "Evangelion", because there were maybe a dozen other titles out at the time.

I actually submitted a panel on the Anime Crash to NYAF, though it was not accepted (few were)

Basically, you had reps from the likes of FUNimation and ADV saying "anime marketing is an oxymoron....fans just automatically buy whatever we license!"

and at the time, this was true.

Over time, however, 2 separate things happened which destroyed the anime industry:

1 - high speed internet made it possible to simply download or stream anime online, allowing the fansubbed bootlegs to increase exponentially

2 - the anime companies just kept expanding, never stopping.


I would point you to the astonishing ANNcast interview with Chad Kime, head of marketing at Geneon USA
Quote:


It seems that these companies failed to....conceptually understand, that things would reach a point where one fan couldn't buy all of their new releases. In 1997, if there were six new series, yes one fan could buy that. But 20 a year? Who could afford that?

They weren't "expanding" they were "over-saturating". It was bad timing that this happened at around the same time that online downloading became a major problem.

The exact same thing happened with the comics industry in the Comics Collectors Crash of 1993.

They kept thinking of "anime" in 1995 terms: its this incredibly rare thing that people automatically buy, because there are only a few titles.

But its not anymore: it truly became "a popular entertainment market"...not a "collector market"

Which is kind of absurd....if you remember that the whole point of how "manga" got started was that after World War II, the Japanese needed CHEAP popular entertainment, there weren't really surviving movie theaters, and comics sort of filled the void.

It went from that, to Bandai Visual demanding $100 for titles that were probably worth less than $30 even by contemporary standards.


This was the mentality that led people to believe that Heat Guy J DVDs were worth as much as Fullmetal Alchemist DVDs


If both were released in 1995, they'd have been one of maybe a dozen new titles that year, and yes, HGJ would have been worth as much as FMA (more or less) because everyone bought it...because it was *there*. Nowadays, people can pick and choose, there's anime everywhere....so they're not going to automatically buy Heat Guy J.

Heat Guy J. Heat Guy J. Heat Guy J.

....okay, apparently saying the name 3 times in a row doesn't magically summon Zac, the way it does with Biggie Smalls.

This "Support the Industry: Buy DVDs!" set of fan vids on youtube...is basically a prayer. Simply, a prayer. Not "a plan"

It doesn't question *why* DVD sales are down, what the "market forces" are...simply begging people to keep buying DVDs.

The problem is that anime is moving into being a "mixed market" of not just DVDs but also online streaming.

Paying $30 for a DVD of Heat Guy J is an insult. Watching it ad-supported on ANN's own video section? Not an insult. Because I don't want to "collect" this show, I just want to watch it.

Imagine if Barnes&Noble's *functional plan* for dealing with the rise of e-readers, was to essentially beg fans to buy physical books, as the "right way" to read. Ignoring digital distribution.

That's actually sort of what they did....and look where that got them.

Imagine if the old "music stores" (you might not remember them, they were physical stores you bought music CDs from in the 1990's)....imagine if they, in their dying days....mounted a giant campaign begging fans to "support the industry; buy CDs!"

excuse me, but major companies have liquid capital and large resources; why didn't *they* buy up or make their own digital distribution venues? Barnes & Noble didn't develop Kindle, even though arguably they had more resources at one point than Amazon.com did in its early days.

"Support the industry: Buy DVDs!" ????

Support the music industry: continue to buy physical CDs at brick'n'mortar music stores!

Support the buggy whip industry: don't buy an automobile!

An anime industry based entirely on physical media sales, DVDs and even Blu Rays, is dead. I didn't kill it. Don't blame me. It was dead when I got here. It's too late for prayers. For even if the prayers were answered, and a miracle occurred, and the yen did this, and the dollar did that, and the infrastructure did the other thing, we would still be dead.

You know why? Digital distribution. New technologies. Obsolescence. We're dead alright. We're just not broke. And you know the surest way to go broke? Keep getting an increasing share of a shrinking market.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfL7STmWZ1c

Down the tubes. Slow but sure. Which reminds me:

Quote:
FUNimation has expanded to control over 60% of anime DVD sales!....

....and Q4 sales have posted another record low, and Navarre finally realized its worth in 2010 about a fifth of what they paid for it in 2005.


Why at Katsucon 2010, I even overheard major industry panels stated to the audience that "we have to train new fans that the right way to watch anime is on DVD"

What?

The teenagers that many of these shows were marketed towards, aren't going to spend $200-300 worth of money on DVDs...which have become the "collector's item" in the age of the cheap streaming anime simulcast.

If you want to "support the anime industry", here's how:

*FUNimation's online video player (link)

*The Anime Network's online player (link) - which is streaming ADV's large library of titles; many with paid registration only...but their annual package is about $7 a month...that's what I spend on candybars. And the first episode of each show is free as a preview.

*VizAnime.com - Viz's online streaming video player (ink)



So instead of insisting that fans are obligated to buy anime they cannot possibly afford, and which it was probably a mistake to license, here's a homework assignment:

1 - go through these legal online streaming sites and look for titles you like

2 - e-mail a link to friends you think would like it as well. If at all possible, try to watch with them. Tell them to in turn, mail it to people they know, paying it forward.

We need to crowdsource this because the industry, despite fledgling attempts at online presence....is still mired in the mindset that "eventually fans are going to start buying DVDs again, at the level they were in the 1990's...we just have to wait for the next Pokemon"

*there is never going to be another Pokemon-scale anime explosion due to the popularity of a random show. Moreover, you can't predict that kind of thing; that was unique.

When the *functional plan* is "sit around hoping a new big hit comes around and more people buy the DVDs which are all collectors items"....there IS no "plan", only prayers.

A big problem is that....the industry needs to learn how to "market" anime. Again, these are people who openly boast that "people automatically buy whatever we sell!" -- or at least, that's how it worked in the 1990's, and its how it SHOULD work now.

but it won't. the World has changed. Forever. There *is* no going back.

But we're still functioning under the mentality that "we should passively tolerate illegal bootleg fan-subtitles copies of our licenses during their early runs....because it helps build up hype about the show!"


Okay let me spell this out for you:

When you have to rely on fans stealing your entertainment properties and illegally sharing them, in order to get "buzz" or "hype" spread about those properties....you *do not have* a "marketing department"

They don't think this is a problem, because they think the definition of "anime fan" is "people who collect DVDs, even if its just alternate box art, for the sake of owning it and having it as a display item"


The only DVDs Media Blasters even sells anymore is the hentai stuff; because those are the fans who have a perverse need to "own" that stuff, old habit.


When did the "model fan" become the crazed super-otaku from "Perfect Blue", who walks into a store then dumps a literal armful of "Cham" DVDs onto the checkout counter?


Last edited by _V_ on Thu Sep 02, 2010 12:57 am; edited 2 times in total
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