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The Anime Economy - Part 3: Digital Pennies

The real damage they do is more subtle: they allow unsuspecting and uneducated fans to consume anime outside the system, never engaging, never seeing an opportunity to give back. It's a loss of something even less tangible than a potential sale: it's the loss of mindshare.

I'm sure you can only speculate, but how hard to you imagine Crunchyroll will be hit by the ending of Bleach? I guess it's good Naruto has a Rock Lee spinoff that will be able to hopefully bring in some views.

Probably the biggest announcement of the year should be coming within a month.

Can't confirm or deny anything.

The real damage they do is more subtle: they allow unsuspecting and uneducated fans to consume anime outside the system, never engaging, never seeing an opportunity to give back. It's a loss of something even less tangible than a potential sale: it's the loss of mindshare.

As a side note, $6.95 is the per month rate ~ Crunchyroll also has $19.95/3mth and $59.95/12mth, and has had $50/12mth Premium (anime+drama) memberships the last two Cyber Mondays.

TV shows, generally, are meant to be disposable entertainment. The entire medium was designed with impermanence in mind: before the VCR, a show aired once or twice and was gone forever.

Just google "streaming anime", and you'll get a huge list of websites offering instant access to the latest shows.

The last article in Schoolgirl Milky Crisis (the book) repeats something that I heard a producer say eight years ago: "the next format is no format." Regional lockout is an anomaly. It'll be gone in ten years, because media will be more centralised. Or rather, you will still be locked out in your region until you pay up, but then access will be immediate. There will, however, be other collateral damage: SMC - Blu-Ray Blues

The simulcasting model is the future. When there are no packaged goods to put a price tag on, media will be swiftly centralised on servers. Of course, that's going to kill an entire stratum of retail, and probably marketing, too, in many countries. But more work for tech support and programmers.

It's also worth remembering that the concept of paying directly for anime, apart from via movie tickets, is a relatively new development. It was only introduced in 1983 with the advent of home video. For the bulk of anime's 94-year history, and for the majority of anime's thousands of hours of content, it has been given away, for "free" to consumers in exchange for advertising messages about chocolate, or product placement and context integration selling robot toys. So I suspect that in a decade's time we may be regarding the period 1983-2013 as something of an anomaly, and everything may well return to "normal".

I would say that the vast majority of anime fans that do stream/torrent/etc. are probably well educated.

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The real damage they do is more subtle: they allow unsuspecting and uneducated fans to consume anime outside the system, never engaging, never seeing an opportunity to give back. It's a loss of something even less tangible than a potential sale: it's the loss of mindshare.

I would say that the vast majority of anime fans that do stream/torrent/etc. are probably well educated. They know what they like and they know how to find their fix. Many of these same fans are the ones that attend conventions (where they talk about what they watch/read), buy DVDs/BluRay and other merchandise, both domestic and import.

Justin: I get Anime Network "On Demand" as part of my DirecTV package. Is there any meaningful flow of money from my DirecTV subscriber fee back to AN (and ultimately back to Japan) as part of this, or is it only valuable as an advertisement for DVDs from Sentai (and [rarely] partners like Nozomi)?

Also, would a VOD network get a straight per-subscriber fee, or would it be based on the actual number of episodes downloaded by subscribers?

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The real damage they do is more subtle: they allow unsuspecting and uneducated fans to consume anime outside the system, never engaging, never seeing an opportunity to give back. It's a loss of something even less tangible than a potential sale: it's the loss of mindshare.

I've always been amused by how much people affliated with the industry think that those who refuse to pay for this week's episode of whatever anime du jour refuse to buy any legally released anime products. It's as if the industry thinks that these anime fans (or what I assume are probably the vast majority of fans) sit at home in their parents' basement, unemployed, downloading/streaming anime, wearing stained sweat pants and holding a slightly warm cup of Top Ramen.

I would say that the vast majority of anime fans that do stream/torrent/etc. are probably well educated.

They know what they like and they know how to find their fix. Many of these same fans are the ones that attend conventions (where they talk about what they watch/read), buy DVDs/BluRay and other merchandise, both domestic and import.

I'm not saying that we should present streaming/torrent sites an award for their service to anime fans worldwide. But I'm saying that they deserve at least some credit in the relative speed that anime is now released outside of Japan.

The real damage they do is more subtle: they allow unsuspecting and uneducated fans to consume anime outside the system, never engaging, never seeing an opportunity to give back. It's a loss of something even less tangible than a potential sale: it's the loss of mindshare.

But even if it is, hey, you know what? That's their decision to offer it for free, so I certainly can't fault you for taking it! You're already an engaged fan, you know where to get the DVDs if you want them, and they're probably making you sit through a few promos before the show starts. That doesn't seem like such a terrible deal to me, but yeah, I can't really check an "I supported the industry" checkbox for that one.