| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
|
|
BigOnAnime
Encyclopedia Editor
Joined: 01 Jul 2010
Posts: 1265
Location: Minnesota, USA
|
 Posted: Fri Dec 27, 2024 1:20 am
|
 |
|
| Iritscen wrote: | | @BigOnAnime: That's a lot of information to absorb. Where do you think things are headed, since Japanese licensors are unhappy with C'roll and at the same time C'roll is becoming more corporate and unlikeable for American users? Is there any room for an upstart competitor on the Western side to come in and start "stealing" licenses to new shows before C'roll can get them? Or will the Japanese studios start building their own streaming pipeline to the West? After all, Funimation was originally started by a Toei executive's nephew as a way for Toei to bring Dragon Ball to the U.S. What's to stop the studios from making their own streaming site? |
I honestly don't know, you would think they'd be more willing to try to go to Sentai Filmworks so there'd be more competition and bidding wars again, but Sentai may not have enough cash for stuff despite being owned by AMC Networks. Another company entering the industry is looking unlikely. Like NISA threw its hat in the ring in 2010, and then when the Crunchyroll and FUNimation bidding wars happened starting in 2015/2016, they gave up and now all their anime releases are OOP.
| juaifan wrote: | | The Bloomberg article had a few interesting tidbits for me. On one hand "hiring fans" is always a double edged sword because you never know what kind of "fans" you're hiring. Plenty of people say they're fans of something and then immediately want to change everything about something. So I can understand wanting to treat anime purely as a business. It's probably safer for the customer to focus on success and sales as it's less of a risk you end up with stuff like Crunchyroll Originals made by "fans" no one actually wants
The bit about Crunchyroll using mangaka's characters in ways they don't approve of to be interesting. I'd love to know the examples there. |
Yeah, it should be noted, fans aren't always right and listening too much to them can lead to dumb business decisions (lots of mistakes were made in the anime DVD bubble). Please correct me if I'm wrong here anyone that was active on AnimeOnDVD and such back when, but I remember hearing fans pushed ADV Films to license Aura Battler Dunbine, and the show ended up flopping for them. Then there was when people at Geneon thought sports anime were going to be the next big thing (confirmed in the ANNCast I linked earlier), and there were multiple very costly failures because most sports anime bomb hard.
However, outright ignoring fans entirely like what the leadership at Crunchyroll seems to be doing now is much worse.
| Lord Geo wrote: | | For those unfamiliar, Daisuki early on had a series of online surveys to see what anime people would like to see made available for streaming in English. However, instead of doing something reasonable, like making a curated list of titles for people to choose from or simply letting anime fans write in some picks... Daisuki literally just made giant lists of every single anime listed on their partner companies' catalog websites. |
Oh yeah, and you posted said lists which we can still look at. There were many titles that could have been made legally available for the first time, and weren't. Daisuki wasted so much potential.
https://fandompost.vbulletin.net/forum/anime-manga-discussions/us-blu-ray-dvd-and-simulcast-industry-news/20440-1-only-daisuki-net-thread?p=326426#post326426
Some other things to note about Daisuki, they had Aikatsu!, it was the only place it could be legally streamed, and then after only 3 months it was removed and never seen ever again. They kept removing things quite quickly.
animenewsnetwork.com/news/2014-09-01/daisuki-to-stream-aikatsu-tv-anime/.78272
https://fandompost.vbulletin.net/forum/anime-manga-discussions/us-blu-ray-dvd-and-simulcast-industry-news/20440-1-only-daisuki-net-thread?p=434434#post434434
There were multiple broken promises, and it came at the expense of Japanese taxpayer money.
https://fandompost.vbulletin.net/forum/anime-manga-discussions/us-blu-ray-dvd-and-simulcast-industry-news/20440-1-only-daisuki-net-thread?p=475767#post475767
https://fandompost.vbulletin.net/forum/anime-manga-discussions/us-blu-ray-dvd-and-simulcast-industry-news/20440-1-only-daisuki-net-thread/page20#post581086
No really, Japanese taxpayer money was wasted on that horribly managed endeavor.
| Quote: | | The platform will deliver simulcast new anime titles and older series in various languages. The company will launch on November 7 and expects to be in full operation by April 2015. Daisuki, Inc will merge with Anime Consortium Japan with funding by the Japanese government's Cool Japan initiative. The initiative will invest one billion yen (about US$9.1 million) in the project. |
animenewsnetwork.com/news/2014-10-30/bandai-namco-adk-aniplex-establish-anime-consortium-japan-streaming-service/.80509
They also in the beginning were uploading shows like Dragon Ball Z and One Piece at the rate of 1 episode per week from the very beginning, when other places already had all the episodes up. Boggles the mind how horribly everything was handled. But then again, consider the following when the industry tried to fight piracy.
https://www.crunchyroll.com/news/latest/2014/7/29/details-of-japanese-governments-manga-anime-guardians-project
animenewsnetwork.com/interest/2014-10-22/more-characters-join-mag-fight-against-piracy/.80223
https://web.archive.org/web/20140813131725/https://manga-anime-here.com/ (They literally thought this was a good idea for a name of a website meant to show where people can watch stuff legally...)
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
Errinundra
Moderator
Joined: 14 Jun 2008
Posts: 6599
Location: Melbourne, Oz
|
|
Posted: Fri Dec 27, 2024 7:29 am
|
|
|
| Shay Guy wrote: |
| Iritscen wrote: | | Moderation isn't that difficult. Most parts of the Internet manage just fine with a small team of moderators. |
Oh?
Hey, ANN forum moderators! Would you say moderating Internet communities is easy? |
Mostly, but every now and then it's a proper pain.
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
Iritscen
 Subscriber
Joined: 25 Apr 2006
Posts: 825
|
|
Posted: Fri Dec 27, 2024 10:21 am
|
|
|
|
I should probably add here that I've been a moderator in other communities myself. Moderating is indeed a pain at times. I simply don't want to give any excuses to Crunchyroll, a profitable company, for their decision to remove user content rather than pay moderators to oversee it.
@BigOnAnime: Wow, interesting details on Daisuki. I've always heard that Japanese executives are inflexible and uninterested in adapting to the American market, but it's still surprising to me. It's like they hate making money. Without some intermediary to smooth over the cultural differences and play to the U.S. market, it seems like they will always insist on doing things a certain way because "that's just the way that they're done". Releasing one episode a week of DBZ and OP, starting in 2013, was an absurd idea.
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
Greed1914
Joined: 28 Oct 2007
Posts: 4684
|
|
Posted: Fri Dec 27, 2024 10:27 am
|
|
|
| BigOnAnime wrote: | |
They also in the beginning were uploading shows like Dragon Ball Z and One Piece at the rate of 1 episode per week from the very beginning, when other places already had all the episodes up. Boggles the mind how horribly everything was handled. But then again, consider the following when the industry tried to fight piracy.
) |
One episode per week sounds like another "we know the market" moment which amounted to treat it the same instead of adapting to the new ways customers interacted with the content. 1 episode per week was how those aired on TV, so why wouldn't customers sign up for that?  I remember when official simulcasts were just starting, there were detractors saying they didn't want to wait for it to catch up with fansubs. Heck, when the revived Toonami first started One Piece, it skipped several arcs because they knew people could stream those episodes already, so they jumped anything that was technically a rerun for the network.
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
BigOnAnime
Encyclopedia Editor
Joined: 01 Jul 2010
Posts: 1265
Location: Minnesota, USA
|
|
Posted: Fri Dec 27, 2024 8:24 pm
|
|
|
| Iritscen wrote: | | @BigOnAnime: Wow, interesting details on Daisuki. I've always heard that Japanese executives are inflexible and uninterested in adapting to the American market, but it's still surprising to me. It's like they hate making money. Without some intermediary to smooth over the cultural differences and play to the U.S. market, it seems like they will always insist on doing things a certain way because "that's just the way that they're done". Releasing one episode a week of DBZ and OP, starting in 2013, was an absurd idea. |
This may also interest you, want to know why it took so long for Dragon Ball Z to get licensed in the UK (took until 2012)? Because Toei wouldn't allow the series to get licensed for home video unless it got put on TV. I still have this saved here, the tweets don't work anymore as Jerome deleted his account long ago. BTW, he just took over Answerman, give those articles a look (I really need to do the same).
| Jerome_Mazandarani wrote: | | That isn't my fault and it isn't Manga's fault. I'm serious. You have no idea how long and how hard I fought to get the DBZ license for the UK. Do you know why it took so long? Because Toei did not want to license it for DVD b4 they managed to get it back onto TV here. It was only once they realised UK TV channels are crap that we got the deal done. That's what is eternally frustrating to me. I get so much shit from "fans" for things that are totally out of my control. That's the boring reality. |
https://twitter.com/AskJeromeMaz/status/625701102118400000
https://twitter.com/AskJeromeMaz/status/625701211312889856
https://twitter.com/AskJeromeMaz/status/625701353986367489
https://twitter.com/AskJeromeMaz/status/625701459250778112
https://twitter.com/AskJeromeMaz/status/625701537529131008
This is also what killed Mermaid Melody for ADV Films here.
animenewsnetwork.com/bbs/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=5433563#5433563
Another example of refusing to adapt to the market, I remember reading FUNimation had issues getting Evangelion 1.0 because Studio Khara wanted it to be screened in 1,000+ theaters like a regular movie. Yeah uh, no way that was going to work in 2008 or 2009. Anime in theaters didn't truly become viable until around 2017, and even then, most things are still limited screenings. Lately anime screenings are seeing location counts scaled back significantly due to them not doing that well. The theater I work at stopped getting lots of stuff as many anime movies didn't do well, and I've had to go to a different one to see stuff. My theater didn't even get My Hero Academia: You're Next which I found surprising as Heroes Rising did well.
Then there's the ridiculous expectations Bandai Visual USA had for the Patlabor movies, they pulled an Atari with ET.
animenewsnetwork.com/answerman/2014-11-14/.80961 (Second question)
Just so many instances of Japanese companies failing to understand or adapt to the market, which is what led to the track record of them handling things themselves being poor. Though I will say, they do better with manga, probably as that's much harder to screw up, Kodansha USA has been quite successful.
| Greed1914 wrote: | One episode per week sounds like another "we know the market" moment which amounted to treat it the same instead of adapting to the new ways customers interacted with the content. 1 episode per week was how those aired on TV, so why wouldn't customers sign up for that? I remember when official simulcasts were just starting, there were detractors saying they didn't want to wait for it to catch up with fansubs. Heck, when the revived Toonami first started One Piece, it skipped several arcs because they knew people could stream those episodes already, so they jumped anything that was technically a rerun for the network. |
I really wish I knew what Toei was smoking because it must have been incredible, like what even would be "we know the market" with that. I don't think that's how things went in Japan when they first started streaming them there. It would have taken Daisuki almost 6 years to get all of DBZ up, and then gawd, decades to catch up on One Piece? And again, other sites already had way more episodes up. Very few people watch catalog titles at the rate of one episode per week, especially shows that are dozens to hundreds of episodes long. Releasing one episode per week on a catalog title only really works if it's like something like Hareluya II Boy, something that wasn't legally available before and isn't very long, or something like Iroduku: The World in Colors which wasn't widely available to people that didn't have Amazon Prime.
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
Iritscen
Subscriber
Joined: 25 Apr 2006
Posts: 825
|
|
Posted: Fri Dec 27, 2024 9:41 pm
|
|
|
|
Well, let's see, if One Piece started streaming on Daisuki in 2013, that was 14 years after it started airing in Japan, so at a rate of 1 episode per week Daisuki would have "caught up" to the broadcast 14 years after the show ends some day (not accounting for the occasional preemptions in the weekly airing schedule or the current reprise of the Fishman Island Arc).
It's sad, but I'm not surprised that there is too little interest in anime in theaters. Anecdotally, I will say that when I saw Ninja Scroll in the theater just recently, there were only two guys in the theater with me, but that was one more than when I saw Heretic, the horror film from A24 that just came out. Whereas when I saw both Gurren Lagann movies earlier this year, they were very well attended by lots of teenagers who must have been embryos when the original show came out.
I'm curious, how is manga harder to screw up?
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
RupanSansei
Joined: 20 Sep 2024
Posts: 162
|
|
Posted: Sat Dec 28, 2024 3:38 pm
|
|
|
|
@BigOnAnime do you have any subscribers numbers for Retrocrush? just curious as that is my favorite legal anime source
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
BigOnAnime
Encyclopedia Editor
Joined: 01 Jul 2010
Posts: 1265
Location: Minnesota, USA
|
|
Posted: Sat Dec 28, 2024 5:52 pm
|
|
|
| Iritscen wrote: | | I'm curious, how is manga harder to screw up? |
Can't say definitely, but there's less costs, you're dealing with print and digital books that typically cost like $15 or less. You're not trying to maybe dub stuff (dubs are expensive) and release it at much higher price points like Bandai Visual USA was notorious for. The distribution for manga is also much wider, it can be found in way more places through online retail and brick & mortar. Very few of the attempts of Japanese companies releasing manga themselves have gone poorly.
| RupanSansei wrote: | | @BigOnAnime do you have any subscribers numbers for Retrocrush? just curious as that is my favorite legal anime source |
I don't. Only reason I have them for HIDIVE is because when I was looking at John Ledford's encyclopedia page a few years ago (a few months before I became an Encyclopedia Editor here), I noticed someone had submitted a recent picture and I looked up the source to see where it came from, so that's how I found that interview he had with a Houston news outlet where he revealed near the end of it that HIDIVE had 300,000 subscribers. Really wish there was some way we could get updated numbers, or subscribers for RetroCrush and such, we get them only for Crunchyroll. BTW, said interview was quite interesting to read the whole thing, non-paywalled version can be read here where I copied the entire thing before the paywall showed up.
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
Iritscen
Subscriber
Joined: 25 Apr 2006
Posts: 825
|
|
Posted: Sat Dec 28, 2024 6:25 pm
|
|
|
|
Fwiw if you see a valuable interview that might not stick around, it's nice to slap it into the archive.org Wayback Machine's Save Page Now field to make a permanent copy. Or save it in archive.today, which loads archived pages much faster and can bypass a lot of paywalls.
Anyway, I hadn't realized that it would be cheaper to print a manga volume than a DVD, but I guess that would explain why it works out better for Japanese companies. I was really surprised back when they began to release translated Weekly Shonen Jump issues in the U.S. I thought that surely there wouldn't be enough interest in the raw, unadulterated "phone books" and American readers would only want to buy tankobons for individual series. But apparently those translated WSJ issues were physically sold in the U.S. from 2002-2012 before they went digital.
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
