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This Week in Anime - Retro Anime, Kickstarter, and Broken Promises

Still, though, maybe crowdfunding has inherently limited applications in the anime sphere. I'm going wayyy back again, but AnimeSols seemed to do everything right. They went after niche titles. They let you stream the anime from the campaigns. The discs were nice and reasonably priced, and you could buy them off Right Stuf after they were fully funded. AnimeSols was especially dear to my heart because they were the first to give Dear Brother a physical set in the US. And they still folded after just a few years.

I've come to feel that, in the end, you can't really make people care about something they knew nothing about before. You can only catch their interest & hope that those who are now interested already are the kind of people who would care beforehand, and that's honestly a small percentage of people.

The cost-benefit analysis of Kickstarter is firmly in the negative at this point a decade in. The best use of it to me was Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. A B+ reskin of Koji Igarashi´s greatest hits. The documentary PsychOdyssey is also fairly interesting and better than Psychonauts 2 itself.
Anyone who gave more than the minimum amount to get full access to a product, a more risky pre-order, is also a rube.

What's going on with Dirty Pair is pretty crazy, but not nearly as crazy as the kickstarter for Grisaia Phantom Trigger The Animation. I am kinda surprised it wasn't even mentioned in the column.

When you look back at every anime KS that's been done in this fashion, almost every single one of them was for a re-release of something that had previously been released in English in the past. Aria, Emma, Dirty Pair, Escaflowne, Megazone 23, Bubblegum Crisis, Riding Bean, Otaku no Video, Dagger of Kamui, Gunsmith Cats, & even Skip Beat! all had some sort of prior English release, with SB! being the only one that was previously streaming-only. Mai Mai Miracle from Anime Limited was the literal only one that had an official English release done first via Kickstarter, but that was both a movie & was only five years old when Anime Limited announced its crowdfunding campaign for it, which reduced a lot of the risk, ironically enough. Even AnimEigo's Robert Woodhead himself once stated that he'd consider giving something a go via KS that hadn't previously been released in English before, but with only one more possible campaign left in him after Dagger of Kamui before retiring it doesn't seem likely that he'll actually go through with that.

Thank you for your patience as we give you an update on production on the dub version of the classic 1985 series, Dirty Pair. Thanks to all of the production staff and voices who contributed to this project, and of course, you, for pledging your contribution to it.
The series is still in post-production, and, as with many productions, delays do sometimes occur.

You should be receiving updates on Dirty Pair every 2-4 weeks until the release. We hope that a new cadence and frequency of communications will help alleviate any concerns you may have. Please know that we remain fully committed to this production, especially given the passionate fanbase eagerly awaiting its release.

As part of your commitment to the Kickstarter, beginning September 3rd, we will begin shipping out available portions of your Backer Rewards while the series is being prepped for post-production, editing and shipping.

Stay tuned to this space for additional (and regular) updates soon.

Not totally true, Little Witch Academia (both versions), Santa Company, Patema Inverted (via Anime Limited) and Time of Eve movie were all first time releases. Some of the Aria release was also new in the west in the Kickstarter release.

Also Animeigo did do a couple of in house laserdisc/VHS crowdfunded subscriptions before Kickstarter was a thing, The re-release of Bubblegum Crisis on LD, Urusei Yatsura and Orange Road TV series (they had only done the OAVs and movie prior to that) come to mind