@Malintex_Terek:
In economics we'd still call that a monopoly, only it would be double marginalization - one company sells exclusively to another, then that second company has sole control over a certain market. It's more efficient if the two companies become one, hence why VIZ Media is owned by Shueisha.
The issue of concern for me is both Shueisha and Shogakukan pump their manga through VIZ; if it was just Shogakukan and another company (formerly Raijin) existed for Sheuisha it wouldn't be a problem, but VIZ doesn't even pay premiums to Shueisha/Shogakukan - other companies have outbid VIZ on manga (or so representatives from TOKYOPOP claim) only to have the license still go to VIZ Media. Hakusensha is owned by Shueisha and Shogakukan and likewise usually only licenses manga to VIZ; this means that the three largest firms in manga all have a single distributor in the R1 region, making it an international cartel because they reduce a competitor (TOKYOPOP's) access to manga. This is why TOKYOPOP has all but exited the manga market in favour of "Amerimanga", though they occassionally license titles owned by companies with small shares of the manga market and still have Kodansha licenses and continue to get them.
As for GANTZ and Ten Ten, those are rare exceptions, not the rule. CMX is owned by DC who can pay huuuge amounts of cash (as in, several times the worth of the manga) for anything they want, and nobody wanted to touch GANTZ because it's such a niche title and is extremely graphic. VIZ Media went for years without any other companies getting Shueisha manga, and to this day, Kodansha's partner Del Rey does not have a single Shueisha/Shogakukan manga, nor TOKYOPOP the license to any, but the reverse (VIZ Media having a Kodansha manga) is true.
It's not an exclusive contract, though. Kodansha is technically a free licensor - most of its titles are actually split between TOKYOPOP and Del Rey. Del Rey has almost everything 2003+, TOKYOPOP everything before 2003 and a few titles past that as well. Kodansha is only the 3rd largest manga publisher, behind both Shueisha and Shogakukan and before Hakusensha and Kadokawa, yet the two largest firms in the industry plus the fourth largest have a single firm, while Kodansha's library is split between three companies, one of which is the firm of the triumvirate.
ADV hasn't licensed anything considerable since Elfen Lied, the company was quiet until grabbing Utawarerumono. The inability of ADV to have any staying power in TV has hurt its revenue considerably, and since the comapny has ceased production of many of their older titles, one has to wonder what they're doing. When they got Gurren-Lagann, it seemed like their next biggest hit, but yet the title scuttled away and ADV was left with a production bill. The company isn't doing well, I can say that much.
FUNimation…I'll concede that, Navarre might be failing right now but FUNimation doesn't seem that winded. They went for OP quickly because it has TV staying power, which is safer than relying on DVDs exclusively.
Bandai Visual should have died years ago but nobody knows why it hasn't, yet.
Bandai's only just begun, though - it wasn't even a player until it got Haruhi, which was so popular the DVD sales alone outstripped FMA several times without the benefit of any TV exposure - 60,000/DVD for a total of 240,000 units! Lucky Star, Geass, and Gurren-Lagann are all expected to make at least those numbers - and who would have guessed which company has all three titles?
They didn't lose the rights, but let the license lapse and didn't renew it.
Representatives have to be very careful when they say stuff, everything's methodical. You know this from your experience at conventions. We'll never know what ADV is thinking but I think that email was a small window into what was going on.
The positions are reversed.
Haruhi's dub and sub scripts were virtually ripped from the fansubs, to the point of "moe" being untranslated in the R1 with no contextual reference. There were similar cultural notes as well.
Bandai USA is not out for the average anime conumser, it's a niche pandering group. This has been the precedent for many years, since Bandai USA first got Mai Hime, which broke tradition with the company only licensing serious anime to supplemant its figurine lines.
In Bandai Visual's opinion, Americans are just selfish swine who refuse to buy anime, they're arrogant to the point of thinking they're appealing to the average anime fan.
I'm sure I've seen Bandai's name in the credits for GL as a sponsor. Like King Records, it's a sponsor but perhaps not so major as to recieve production credit. That is what production is, right? Paying for the anime to be made? >_>
This is true.
Since always, it is quite common to see people bemoan ADV's dubs as flat and unexciting; two years ago on this forum I had a discussion with Cosmic about that very subject.
As for the negative stigma of an ADV GL dub, ADV usually balances out its reputation for mediocrity with low cost - not even FUNimation can beat out ADV's prices for thin-packs, which don't appear long after the last DVD has been produced. Bandai charges a high price for its DVDs and has no shame in putting an economy-class dub on their products.
Slip of the tongue, sorry.
Haruhi smashing FMA's record as the highest grossing DVD in American history, without promotion or TV exposure; licensing of Lucky Star (which beat out Haruhi in Japan) and Code Geass (which beat out both Lucky Star and Haruhi) plus the first major title from Gainax in a long time.
In comparison, what does FUNimation have? A below-expectation selling super shounen that got booted off television (whether for new episodes or not, there should be tons of reruns) under promoted and ill-recieved titles licensed from MFI, and an aging cash cows that can't be milked forever (DBZ, FMA).
FUNimation was only the leader in the anime scene IMV because the other companies were faltering. VIZ Media has Naruto, Bleach and Death Note all of which attract attention but sell more manga than DVDs. VIZ Media isn't much beyond a manga magnate.
Like GL, Ouran was sponsored by Bandai and Bandai USA tried to get the license before being outbid by FUNimation - this was before the LS, CG, and GL aquisiton. Ouran was only aquired because of extensive lobbying by fans at conventions and abroad; If Bandai still wants Ouran, it certainly has the money now to take it back.
IMV, if Bandai manages to take Ouran from FUNimation like how GL was taken from ADV, I'll know several things:
1. The whole "we don't know what's going on" addive is codswallop.
2. Bandai USA is aiming to license only the most "popular" anime.
3. Bandai USA seeks dominance in the anime market.
You're describing the Narutard, not the 4channer. The kind of people who mailed Maile Flanagan death threats for her portrayal of Naruto in the English dub. I don't think anyone on Anime & Manga has the time, nor inclination to do something so blatantly rabid.
Most of the folks up there are people who've grown up over the years with classic anime and have seen enough to have developed a sophisticated taste for certain shows; they're also extremely mature and intelligent, the average poster is a college sophomore. Compared to the far more hereogenous communities of NarutoFan and the purely homogeneous (14-year old) makeup of GaiaOnline, it's the largest think tank of the anime community.
In the 1980's, most cartoons were dubbed by then "second rate" professional voice actors who got into their work by mere chance. People like Jim Cummings, Peter Cullen, Frank Welker, Rob Paulsen, Maurice LaMarche, etc. Most of them had professional narrative training or obtained it after some time in their careers.
By the 1990's, these people were considered the top of their field. Anime dubbers couldn't afford them and so outsourced their dubs to the Ocean Group in Canada. Those people had a lot less training but were otherwise fair substitues for the actors in America.
In the 2000's, now Ocean Group is considered a top class dubbing studio, with only "flagship" shows getting sent there for dubbing because of the cost (Shakugan no Shana, Death Note), meaning fewer dubs come out of Canada than in the 1990's. In response to this, voice actor pools appeared in New York, Texas and California and gave rise to the "second class" American voice actors.
The big difference between the first-class American actors and the second is that the second-class actors have NO PROFESSIONAL NARRATIVE TRAINING! Some have acting experience, but live action acting doesn't carry on well to the voice acting department (which grew out of narration) in either culture of the US or Japan. This difference is notable when compared; many of these second-class actors started out as anime fans, which helps explain why so many of them sound amateurish. One need only watch Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, followed by Inu-Yasha, then Code Geass to recognize the increasingly depreciative quality of the dubbing.
This second-class system of dubs enrages me because the actors with real talent and training like the first-class folk never get their time to shine in a major role and move up in the food chain, the only people who land the top roles are those who go to anime conventions and make themselves known so that people recognize them in the dubs by name. People like Johnny Yong Bosch and Crispin Freeman. To further sustain this cycle certain anime companies like, oh, Bang Zoom! only hire actors they're comfortable working with, meaning the same people always get the same type of roles.
You might notice that the music and sound effects in dubs are a lot more quiet than in subs, and the voices much more awkward and loud - this is the sound overlay problem. It's ubiquitous, though, except for stuff handled by Disney.
Probably, but I've disliked almost every dub that's come out of California in the past three years - most of them are written by the same people and so the dubbing style is persistant.
Take Fate/stay night, where Archer has a poem called "Unlimited Blade Works" he recites IN ENGLISH. The dub totally bastardized the words and added a lot of "wordiness" to it, like how "I am the bone of my sword" turned into "I am the body, bone and flesh of my sword". Totally unnessary.
I mentioned Haruhi, both dubs handled by Bang Zoom! Entertainment. Higurashi also suffered from mis-pronunciation of names and semi-literal translations for idioms, which is ridiculous.
You're in a fandom on a One Piece website. Just because AP is a fantastic community (even now!) doesn't mean that the rest of the internet is just as good. There's only one other forum I know of better than AP and it's an old, abandoned Pokemon one.
As for introductions, refer to what I said about barriers to entry. Most people get exposed to anime from TV, not online. A lot of people are too stupid to use torrents, only a fraction of the people at my college even know what they are!
That's typically how most people start out, reading the manga by themselves and enjoying it for what it is. But enjoyment is always augmented by discussion with friends and eventually people become dependent on it. Wasn't there a philosopher who talked about people needing people? >_>
As long as you stay at AP and avoid the Manga forum for extended periods of time, you won't end up "spoiled" like me but at the same time you'll be shielded from a lot of good anime, as adventuring into the past and future of anime sometimes yields great treasure troves. Truthfully, though, I'd rather go back to being an OP-only manga reader. D:
There hasn't been anime new action anime on [adult swim] in a long time, but I see how there could be a correlation there. One thing I will note though is that Geass from R1 has always had a maddeningly high rate of deltion on YouTube, the moderators there catch videos within minutes of uploading if not during the uploading process itself. Geass had to be viewed through torrents or IRC (the latter of which I used) at the time, now there are multiple websites that people have sneaked episodes on-to.
You're spot on about the fans, but I encourage you to read about the "endless summer" of Usenet - that is what I ultimately fear. Our status quo of moderation and intelligence getting washed away because we can't adjust quickly enough to massive numbers of newbies.
GaiaOnline could very well be the future of the anime world. I'd prefer it to more resemble Yotsuba, but a place like AP would be best.
Crunchyroll I dunno about, I never dealt with that site much. YouTube was definitely a no, I know from having gone their week after week that YT moderators had little tolerance for uploaders of Geass episodes. They were almost always caught and very quickly.
From my perspective, not anyone else's, it's a waste of funds because I'm getting anime for free right now and I place no value on superficial stuff like packages, posters and trinkets/baubles.
Even before I was a knowledgable pirate, I could never understand why people didn't see things the way I do. I had a revelation some time later - I always picked up pencils and coins on the ground at school but a long-time friend of mind criticized me for it, calling it indirect theft.
Basically it's just how I see things. To paraphrase Kamina, try to understand me while I try to understand you!
It's gotten that bad. I suspect it's not only me either, but the people in my situation have all but retreated from places like AP.
Oh, I don't even find those people funny anymore. I've gotten so intolerant of them - it's my nature I guess to try and give everyone equal attention, which makes me susceptible to trolling, but I always have the faint hope I can turn a troll into a true poster with conversation.
This said, it's always awkward to ignore people who spread retard or troll here on AP; in debate, we have some kind of axiom like "silence is concedence" or something along those lines, not addressing someone is like agreeing with them. I always get that awkward feeling so I am compelled to address them.
I admire your tolerance for trolls and retards, but even at the stage you've described I don't think things are as bad as what I fear will come if anime becomes "mainstream".
I don't see what's so pitiful about the theatre analogy - if you've ever been in a chat room like those in IRC, the noise of people talking/holding conversations makes legitimate discussion impossible. That's the whole goal of people from Yotsuba's Random board /b/ when they invade other forums - they spam the chat rooms with memes and the like to make discussion impossible.
As for expecting maturity, whatever. I belong to an old Pokemon forum that gets new members once in a while and all the new members, however young, quickly conform to our status quo and standard of acceptable content. If they don't, they'll be embarassed and if they break the rules banned.
My response to that is: LOL GAINAX!
I dunno, technically I don't see VIZ as having a monopoly. They're just a subsidiary. That's almost like saying Nickelodeon has a monopoly over Viacom's kids' cartoons. Shueisha still has the final say on which company gets which manga, but VIZ just has first dibs. A monopoly is when a company has control over the market of a certain good or service and there's no competition, which isn't the case with VIZ and Shueisha.
Yeah, I know what you mean with TokyoPop. Japanese and Korean comics are still their meat and potatoes but I don't know what they're gonna do after "Fruits Basket". I'm sure there's some quality titles out there that they can manage to get their hands, whether it's from the three big publishers or not. It's not like VIZ and Del Rey have unlimited resources.
"Gantz" isn't a niche title. It's quite possibly the most popular seinen title today and it's been one of the most asked-for manga from fans to come to the U.S.A. Dark Horse had to work extra hard to get it because as we know Shueisha is in bed with VIZ, and during that time at one point VIZ looked at it and decided not to publish it because of all the sex (this is according to Dallas from Del Rey from when he worked at VIZ). But eventually Shueisha decided to give it to Dark Horse, probably because they saw how willing they were to publish it and because they had such good experience in publishing seinen manga.
Yeah, I know it's not an exclusive agreement between Del Rey and Kodansha. Del Rey has said that they're looking at manga from other companies but we haven't seen any fruits of that. It just seems like now that Del Rey will get all the A and half the B titles from Del Rey while TokyoPop will get other B titles and C titles, and VIZ could get a little bit of both.
ADV has been consistently licensing titles, but just in recent months after everything for 2007 was announced they just went quiet, which is understandable what with how they're struggling. They've been releasing "Devil May Cry" since earlier this year and it's one of the best-selling anime titles in America at the moment. The most significant thing they have at the moment is "Sgt. Frog", which they announced in late 2006 and still hasn't been released (I wouldn't be surprised if Bandai picks that up too, and it was made by Sunrise in the first place anyway). The last new thing they announced was "Kiba", I think that was back at Sakuracon a month or so ago. Right now they're just releasing all their current titles they announced back last year that haven't finished their release and pumping out collections and thinpaks of their old stuff (that they still have the rights to). In the meantime, like you said, they're not doing well, but so far they're weathering the storm.
Yeah, FUNimation has it together, I mean they've got "Dragonball Z", "One Piece", and "Shin-Chan", and I'm sure they'll get "Ouran" released at some point. Unfortunately they still have more anime without an official release date.
I think the reason Bandai Visual U.S.A. hasn't died out is because they don't have much to lose, because they haven't conformed to the U.S.A. market, which ironically is the reason why they have such a negative stigma. I wouldn't really consider Bandai Visual U.S.A. a full-blown subsidiary, all their DVDs are the exact same thing as what's available in Japan, except they're Region 1 and have English subtitles, they're even printed in the same facilities as their Region 2 counterparts, and on top of that they don't spend a dime on English dubbing. They've lost major retailer support probably because their prices didn't appeal to someone who shops at Best Buy and the like which lead to low sales, so everything is sold exclusively online. I think they know they're reaching a very niche portion of the market, and unfortunately in the process they're alienating a lot of potential fans. But I imagine they're not losing much money, but at the same time they're not making much money either.
Bandai has always been a big player in the American market, they've got "Gundam" and "Cowboy Bebop" and "Ghost in the Shell" and several other high-profile anime. I have a hard time believing that "Haruhi" outstripped "FMA", are you referring to when they first released or the overall picture? Where did you get those sales figures? I thought anime companies don't release them. From what I heard "Haruhi" sold well as expected, but not as well as Bang Zoom and Bandai would've hoped it would.
Where did you hear Bandai let the license for "Outlaw Star" lapse? I have a hard time believing that as well, "Outlaw Star" is one of their most popular titles and it doesn't make sense for them to favor getting the rights to reprint "Agent Aika" over keeping the "Outlaw Star" rights. Are you sure you're not referring to when Cartoon Network didn't renew the broadcast rights to "Outlaw Star"?
About ADV and choosing its words, you have a good point. I just wanted to bring up another possibility to tell you the truth.
Wait, what does "positions reversed" mean? What does the "Haruhi" DVD track have to do with my quote? You mean that if it emulates fansubs they're targeting the hardcore and not not casual consumer? That doesn't really matter, it appeals to both sets, and besides, more fans watch fansubs than buy DVDs, the average consumer mostly uses the Internet.
Like I said earlier, Bandai has always been a major player when you look at their lineup. They're not just going after the niche fan.
I wouldn't describe Bandai Visual U.S.A. as arrogant towards its fans, just stubborn and conservative.
Production doesn't simply mean putting money into a project. It involves creating the project, driving it in a certain direction, finding parties to put money into it, assembling the different roles that need to be filled, and so on. Sponsors don't own any copyright in a project, they just put money into it and if it does well that's good for them because they get successful advertising.
I know ADV has had a bad reputation with dubs, but I'm asking if it's any more or less notable in comparison to dubs in general.
Mediocrity or not doesn't have anything to do with how much a dub costs to make. The cost comes in using the equipment and hiring the actors, writers, and directors, and it's not like they make a lot of money anyway. Whether it's quality or not depends on how they act and write it out, which is priceless. And the single DVDs, which are most important when releasing a series, are more expensive generally from ADV, it doesn't really make a difference between them and Bandai.
Again, I highly doubt "Haruhi" broke "FMA" 's record, I want proof. And in the long-run "FMA" has definitely made more money. And Bandai may have "Code Geass", "Lucky Star", and "Gurren Lagann", but FUNimation has "Dragonball Z" which continues to sell more than most of the new stuff, "One Piece", and "Shin-Chan", I think FUNi is more likely to be #1.
I don't think any fans no if "One Piece" has really performed under expectations or not, the expectations haven't been stated. According to EvilGamerX who has seen FUNimation at NYCC "One Piece" Movie 8 did better than FUNimation expected. We haven't heard any actual ratings, but according to FUNi reps at New York Anime Festival at the Movie 8 panel the ratings for "One Piece" have slowly risen since September. We don't know why "One Piece" has been completely taken off Cartoon Network, for all we know it may just simply be a matter of schedule shifting. Only their second DVD (First Voyage) will be out soon and so far it seems to have been selling very well online.
FUNimation is the leader in the anime market because they focus on quality over quantity, something that Geneon and ADV haven't gotten right. None of Bandai's biggest properties could ever touch "DBZ" in the long-term.
We don't know if Bandai can really get "Ouran" back, we don't know what FUNimation is doing with it and we don't know if Bandai can allocate the resources for it if it's available, they haven't even become "#1" yet. Sponsoring the show in Japan has nothing to do with it either.
If you're prediction comes true, it won't mean the whole "we don't know what's going on" thing is codswallop, it'll just mean that in this particular case you were right, and even then unless you get everything officially confirmed you won't know how exactly it happened. As long as there are situations where all we can do is use pure speculation the whole "we don't know what's going on" thing will remain true in those situations. And you don't need Bandai to get "Ouran" to know they seek dominance, companies have always seeked dominance in their respective markets.
About retarded fanboys, the way you first described 4channers and Narutards just sound like two different type of retarded fanboys, who focus on different things and through different forms of expression.
Yeah, that's my only real beef with English anime dubs; it's the same people over and over again and many times they barely change their voices for each role. Other than that they seem to give each show they work on justice. As long as the show is good I don't notice any particular low-quality in the acting, I still hear talent and I'm not picky on making comparisons.
Yeah, you're definitely over-generalizing and nitpicking about dubs. It can get annoying to hear the same dubbing style over and over again, but as long as you're not watching the same type of show over and over again it's not important. And for an English dub to be good it doesn't need to have a completely accurate translation, it doesn't need to have perfect pronounciation. What matters is being able to convey the same story, the same characters, and the same emotions through your native language. Also keep in mind that there's word-for-word translation and emotional/contextual translation. Because of the differences in languages it's possible that sometimes if you use a word-for-word literal translation you'll lose the emotional/contextual translation.
I wouldn't the Internet seriously enough to describe any of its communities in "drama" and "factions". They're just nerdy message boards, it's something you do in your spare time. If I don't like a message board that's that, whatever, and if I get on a message board with interesting topics and people I might become friends with that's great, life goes on. And yes, T.V. has been the most responsible for the anime boom this decade but in the long-term things have evolved. With better Internet connections, streaming video-sharing sites like YouTube and Crunchyroll, and just plain word-of-mouth it's gotten to the point where most fans watch fansubs on the Internet more often, and through it more people learn how to use torrents and irc. I'm not tech-savvy at all but with barely any effort at all it didn't take long at all to learn how to download "One Piece". When you count how fansubs can deilver anime very quickly they air in Japan and how the Internet can provide much more anime than American T.V., the high growth of fans using that medium more than T.V. is easy to understand. How else do you explain DVD sales going down so much? It'd surprise me if the decline in [adult swim] anime ratings wasn't related either.
I'm not dependent at all on discussing "One Piece" in order to enjoy it now that I participate at AP forums. In fact most of the time I'm here I'm not even here to do that, I'm mainly here to get new developments on what's going on with FUNimation's release of "One Piece". When I first joined here I only joined because I found out about this site and figured this would be a good place to tell other fans to call Toei Animation so that "One Piece" might become more successful in America and get un-cancelled. I didn't expect to stick around here, it just sort-of happened. And yes people need people, but that's in general, you don't need a philosopher to tell you that. In the last few years "Crayon Shin-Chan" has become one my favorite cartoons ever and I've gotten more invested in it the more I watch and learn about it. During that time I haven't gotten invested in any fan community of some sort, I talk to some friends about it sometimes and I've started a short-lived topic about it a forum, but that's the full extent and right now I'm more into than ever and without talking to other fans about it.
I doubt I'll ever get "spoiled" on a forum, I'm not like that, and I have many other ways of finding out about different anime and manga.
The "endless summer" of Usenet sounds familiar, I'll be sure to check it out, thanks.
Also as an anime fan you should do some research on Crunchyroll, it's become a big deal in the anime world.
About merchandise being a waste of time, I wasn't sure if you were referring to yourself personally or in broad terms. Thanks for clearing that up. Personally I think if you're not gonna enjoy a lot and you only use it once, it's a waste.
Thanks for admiring my tolerance, I appreciate it. But I'm curious, what do you mean by a stage I'm describing and things not becoming that bad if anime becomes "mainstream".
About the theater analogy, I thought you were just talking about message boards. Putting chat rooms in there makes more sense actually.
What I meant by the maturity factor is it's one thing that a person should act appropriately in certain situations/places, they're obligated, but not accepting that people will be stupid and that's their nature is a bad. Sorry if I wasn't clear on that.
Finally, yeah, good old GAINAX, they'll fit in their perverted fantasies somewhere in their anime no matter how.