Forum - View topicNEWS: Media Blasters Picks up More Yaoi
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tripperdan99
 Posts: 136 |
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Niche for sure, not the part of anime that will make improved market strives.
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hikaru004
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So, do you think that they'll license a mainstream title anytime soon?
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tripperdan99
Posts: 136 |
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Nope, LOL (just kidding) |
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Tenchi
 Posts: 4556 Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer. |
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Media Blasters has Ah My Goddess!, which, while not on CN/AS, is certainly a "mainstream" title within the fandom niche. And they distribute Rurouni Kenshin, which was about as "mainstream" as non-kiddy merchandising franchise anime got back in the early part of this decade. And I have a weird hunch that Media Blasters will be the ones to snag the highly-coveted The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya license. As for the "magic bullet" niche-expanding anime that will make anime "mainstream" with a large North American audience significantly older than the Naruto/Inu Yasha audience and significantly wider than the audience that watches the late-night cable anime on Adult Swim, I think that was number 4 on the recent Discovery Channel special, Things that Some People Believe Exist but Which Probably Don't Exist, behind the Loch Ness Monster, the Yeti, and Sasquatch, but ahead of Ogopogo. And if the North American licensors decided to only touch the A-list shounen action titles like Naruto and Bleach, they'd lose my business, since all the anime I buy is niche in one way or another. (And now that Bleach has been licensed, I don't think there's anything currently on the air in Japan that has the same relative "mainstream" potential.) |
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jsyxx
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You guys bitch too much. Stop pretending like you are a self-appointed anime market analyst. Last edited by jsyxx on Thu Oct 12, 2006 3:16 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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hikaru004
Posts: 2306 |
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Chill already. Kenshin is an "old title". Ah! My Goddess TV is the only recent mainstream license from them IIRC. The rest have been shonen ai/yaoi, fanservice or old school mech titles which aren't mainstream by a long shot.
I just feel that they need to get out of that niche rut that they're in right now. You are what you license, after all. Somebody needs to bring over Haruhi. If it's them, then "Good job!". Otherwise, get a move on and license some mainstream titles. |
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tripperdan99
Posts: 136 |
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I think I was just called Ugly by a Frog... |
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Tenchi
Posts: 4556 Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer. |
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I doubt Media Blasters has the financial resources to license more than one or two "A-List" titles at a time, and they recently spent what was probably quite a pretty penny on the second season of Ah My Goddess!, so I doubt we'll be hearing any huge new licensing announcements from them anytime soon. Not that the period from October through December is a major time of year for announcing big new licenses anyhow, since, in the run-up to the holiday season, companies are generally more concerned with actually selling the titles they announced at conventions or in press releases earlier in the year.
And if Media Blasters keeps on licensing yaoi/shounen-ai titles on the side, that indicates to me that there's a small-but-viable market for the genre, and, if, at the end of the day, they make more money back from yaoi than they spend licensing, translating, and distributing it, more power to them. |
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Wolverine Princess
 Posts: 1100 |
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Yikes, the grammar errors in the encyclopedia plot summary for this title make my skin crawl.
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jsyxx
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[quote="tripperdan99"]
*crickets chirping*
Am I the only one who remembers a time when shoujo manga was referred to as niche? 
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tripperdan99
Posts: 136 |
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Anime/manga is STILL a niche. There's nothing main stream about it yet. Media Blasters operates as all businesses do, "No Margin, No Mission" But I do consider there market "bottom of the bucket" stuff. |
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mangajunky
Company Representative
 Posts: 72 Location: New York City |
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That's so silly. Voltron / GoLion King of the Braves: GaoGaiGar Tekkaman Blade / Teknoman Ah! My Goddess |
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Saturn
 Posts: 513 |
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@tripperdan99:
I think J-Syxx was referring to back in the day (which was like a decade ago) when not that many major manga-publishing companies would lay a finger on shoujo manga-- and when they did they still tried to market them like shonen manga. But then of course companies like Tokyopop finally hit it big with shoujo, in spite of everyone laughing at them for a long time, and now all the manga publishers are liscensing ever banal shoujo thing they can get their hands on. 
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Neverwhere
 Posts: 351 Location: socal |
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I can't believe things like Kenshin are being dismissed for being 'old' and thus irrelevant. Some of the best titles are 'old', and you would do well to give them a try. (Sadly, the second half of Kenshin does not qualify as one of them.)
Why is targeting (if indeed that is what they are doing) a 'niche' fanbase wrong? Who are you to decide what is 'niche' anyway? I think 'mainstream' companies would have an extremely difficult time arguing for something as seemingly 'niche' as Suzumiya Haruhi on american television. Can you honestly say it belongs to a specific demographic, one that will actually bring in money? No, of course not. Or how about Mushishi, which is utterly indefinable in terms of being marketed at a specific audience, but is undeniably one of the greatest series in years? It would seem to be completely out of place with series like Naruto and other 'mainstream' titles, so does that make it thus unworthy of our notice? OF COURSE NOT. As pointed out earlier, all anime is niche, and you should be bloody grateful to see any of it at all, regardless of what 'type' it is. Can't you just be happy things are being licensed, and realize that if more things come over here, regardless of what they are, the more we will be able to see the *good* stuff as well? |
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hikaru004
Posts: 2306 |
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It's not irrelevant. It's "old", as in not one of the many newer titles that's not being licensed. Even that OVA is 8 years old.
You are what you license. If you want to remain viable, you license a variety of things, not just cheaper shonen ai/yaoi or old school mecha titles in an attempt to generate profits with little effort imo. Ah! My Goddess TV is a start, but they need to license more titles closer to mainstream or "special" titles (award winners, high end niche, etc). They need some balance. Since Mushishi is an award winner and a big franchise and actually did not have any problems with mainstream watchers that I hang with, it's marketable as a "special" title imo. Besides, there are no guarantees that if they bring niche title over first then they will license more mainstream titles later. |
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