let's make a deal

[davemerrill]

So apparently there's a fan group (thanks kikaiju) called "The Anime Defense Project" that's started a website called "Keep Anime Alive" devoted to supporting the R1 anime industry by convincing people that they need to spend all the money they can on the R1 anime industry. Okay, fine, R1 anime industry, what do you have for me to spend money on?

Do you have SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO RESURRECTION? Do you have SHIN MAZINGER SHOUGEKI Z-HEN? No you don't. You have cybernetic schoolgirl murderers, you have motorcycle people murdering murderous cybernetic corpses, something called "Needless" (finally, truth in advertising), you have a sequel to a show that involves connecting the plots of four other shows ( During their journey, the group discovers that Syaoran is in reality a clone imbued with half the heart of the original Syaoran. Several years ago, Fei-Wang took the original Syaoran prisoner and created the clone to collect Sakura's feathers. Finally breaking free of Fei-Wang's hold, the half heart sealed within his clone returns to rendering the clone emotionless and a puppet to Fei-Wang's will, causing him to betray the group. ). SOLD!! There's IKKI TOUSEN in which our heroine shrugs off her shredded skirts and tattered tops with a flurry of busty badassery while fighting to unite seven rival schools and there's GUN X SWORD, about which one reviewer said "The first eight episodes do almost nothing to advance the plot, and the later ones feel padded with repetitions, mawkish sentimentality, pointless subplots, fan service cleavage shots, and endless nattering." SOLD!!!

And of course we should continue to spend money on DRAGONBALL Z - who cares if you've already bought all eleventy-thousand episodes, buy 'em again! The R1 industry needs your money! - and CASE CLOSED and FULL METAL ALCHEMIST. Just open that wallet up and start shovelling that cash out for things you already own. Why you will have to get a second job to pay for it all, and that will cut into your anime-watching time, but it's worth it to keep the R1 anime industry alive! They'd do it for you, you know.

In fact I will soon be starting the group "The Dave Defense Project" featuring the website "Keep Dave Alive". I'll be selling comics you don't want and videos you've already seen, but dammit, you have to keep me alive or I might not one day potentially bring you something you find interesting! Can we afford to take that chance?

I just have one question for the R1 anime industry, and that is, do you have any plans to make money that don't involve selling physical DVDs? Because "selling physical DVDs" is going away, and as a character in MESSAGE FROM SPACE said, "There's nothing you can do to change that."

But if you want MY money, you have to actually SELL ME THINGS I WANT. And I don't want DRAGONBALL Z or your flurries of busty badassery or anything by CLAMP, and you can't guilt me into thinking otherwise.

Comments

[redneckgaijin.livejournal.com]

To be perfectly honest, I've been running the KEEP KRIS ALIVE movement for several years now...

[childings.livejournal.com]

I would still rather own a dvd than a file because it feels more tangible to me. And I like the packaging. But I agree that nobody is licensing anything I want to buy.

And to be honest, I am pretty excited about the remastered Utena dvds that are coming out from Right Stuf, but mostly because the Software Sculptors dvds were pretty terrible and now the first season boxset is really hard to find (and I'm still missing it).

[tochiro998.livejournal.com]

I feel your pain, and you know I'm mostly on the same page.

However, a minor correction if I may. While Hollywood pushes 'nobody buys DVDs anymore!' hard within the industry, the truth is two-pronged.

a. Nobody buys DVDs is actually 'nobody buys what they consider to be overpriced DVDs', the value of media has been driven down by the deep discounting actions of the Big Boxes. It's the same business model that killed the music industry, deep discounting key new releases while keeping catalog at high MSRP. Oh, there's lots and lots of talk about 'volume' and so on and that's valid, but the reality is none of that matters to the average person.

TRSi sells Dirty Pair for, what, $50 for 13 episodes? (I don't mean the pre-order price, I mean right now and yes, there might be sales and discounts for members and blah blah, to have a meaningful discussion we have to address MSRP) (anyway). That's not too bad a price, we can all agree it's much better than 4 single disc releases at $29.99 MSRP. It's still too much. Harsh reality is, $50 is a lot of money for half a series of *GASP* an old show. Heck, Media Blasters was selling those three disc books for Tekkaman Blade at $29.99 originally and dropped to $19.99 pretty quick, and those have something like 15 or 18 episodes each!

Of course, that takes me to my second part, people can't buy it if there's no place where they can buy it. I know I've beaten that horse past death but it's true. Best Buy is about done as far as being a source for anime (down to 8 linear feet and mostly bare, mainly Funi titles stocked), the only retailer with any kind of selection is Transworld/FYE, and there's no telling how long they will last.

Borders will be dead soon, they're in the last gasp mode now. This mainly affects the manga crowd but they used to have decent DVD stock at one time. So that's gone.

Price is the only factor that matters to most. Make it cheap and it'll sell if you can get it out to people.

Tell you a tale, direct observation. Remember the film 'The Big Red One'? WW II drama starring Mark Hammill and Lee Marvin? Sam Fuller's last film? Well, there was a 2-disc special edition with the film recut to Fuller's original cut, and it was part of a 'war movie dump' that Walmart got. 12 copies. $5. Five Dollars US for what was a $28 MSRP release. Gone in a couple of days. Are there really that many people who burn to watch that movie? Dunno, but clearly $5 was the trigger point. I hate myself for thinking it'd be there when I returned because I spent my little pocket change for the 2-disc 12 o'clock high and 2-disc Patton at $5 each. (they were both gone too, BTW. 24 copies of each of those in the dump. Yes I checked).

Walmart goes thru a TON of $5 DVDs. meanwhile 200 copies of Avatar at $24.99 sit and sat until they were returned.

It's all perception. When they had the 5 disc Blade Runner at $15 I begged mom to buy it. When they had the 2-disc edition of 2001 for $5 I grabbed it. I would have paid more had I the money back in the day but damn, I can't resist those kind of prices.

The hope for physical media seems to be manufacture on demand. The fact that I can buy both The Green Slime and The World, The Flesh and The Devil from Warner Archives makes me giddy. Best of all, no pressure and fear of missing out! Unlike damn ADV and those last three Dunbine DVDs

[tochiro998.livejournal.com]

and I neglected to mention that Media Blasters has picked up Mazinkaizer SKL. It's not Shin Mazinger but it sounds pretty fun.

[warpig1979.livejournal.com]

I'd just like to take the opportunity here to note that Ikki Tousen is probably the worst filmed anything I've ever seen.

Meanwhile, lemme think, Japanese cartoons I would dish out real money for... Um. Is anybody gonna license Giant Gorg any time soon? I think it's pretty much down to Giant Gorg and anything from the Mushi Pro experimental/indie/whack-ass period. I'd drop 20 bucks on Belladonna of Sadness in a hot second.

[animejump.livejournal.com]

Waiting patiently for Turn A Gundam, over here.

[kidfenris.livejournal.com]

My problem is that anime, like any other entertainment subdivision, doesn't have much worth owning. A bunch of it is worth seeing, but it's hard for me to buy and keep something that I'll probably watch twice in ten years' time. Le Chevalier D'Eon is a good example. I own it, I watched it, I liked it, and I told other people to check it out. But I don't think I'm going to return to it. Same thing with, say, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. A good, enjoyable movie, but I'm OK if I never see it again.

And this isn't confined to those fancy-pants new anime things. It applies to just about any era. Giant Gorg? Hey, that's a fun show! Would I buy it on DVD? Nah. I'd rent it, watch it once, and then move on.

That said, I'd buy The Tatami Galaxy if FUNimation actually released it on DVD. They already streamed it, after all.

[(Anonymous)]

It's kinda interesting to me that in the beginning, "ownership" was essential. It was the only way to go if you were really into anime. Otherwise your only way to see it was at the occasional convention or at a friend's house. But even that was contingent on "ownership" of video copies.

Now that the stuff is much easier to get and we're practically glutted with it, ownership means very little. Lots of people have collections, and the only limit is how much you can store either physically or digitally.

But this is what we were all striving for, though, isn't it?

-Tim Eldred

[(Anonymous)]

I got Dave's point and agreed with it, but was observing something else about the changing nature of ownership in anime collecting.

Would I have bought my faves had they been released here in the heyday? Hell, yeah. I'd buy them now for premium prices, even. But the thing about the heyday is that you could put out anything and make money off it because it was a time of discovery when the demand was growing faster than the supply. Under those conditions, nobody drops their prices. Asking them to do so would have only gotten you funny looks, especially since they were probably paying huge licensing fees.

And most companies only look about a year ahead anyway. It would be nice if that were not the case, but that's a luxury. Always was.

I'd like to know if licensing fees have dropped at all now that supply outstrips demand. They must have, since prices are generally lower these days, right?

-Tim E.

[kikaiju.livejournal.com]

The problem with this stupid "Keep Anime Alive" thing is foremost that Anime is not dead.

So DVD sales are down. There's a good couple of reasons: fewer companies are still in business because they learned a hard lesson that people will not, in fact, buy everything put on a shelf. This change is good. What existed before was a false reality built upon unsound business practices.

And lately there are streaming sites offering up casual anime viewing for free. Legally. No DVD sales needed. Is there someone to blame for this? Probably.

Ultimately the issue is that the daily bookings are way down for actors who do dubs, but that's a reflection of market realities brought to the front now after a decade-plus of importers spending money left and right on dubs of things people didn't buy. The easy money has dried up. Companies are gone. Less stuff gets dubbed.

Various companies have realized that subs are cheaper to do, to. So that makes for starving voice actors.

OH CRY ME A RIVER!

Look back as far into history as you want. Acting has never come with a guaranteed paycheck. Actors always serve at the behest of whoever pays them. When the money goes away, so do the actors.

Traveling from con to con and trying to live off the guest stipends and well-wishes of groupies is not going to put much food on the table, and that's just the way it is. The answer is not to create a "Save my job!" website. The answer is, go find a regular job like everyone else.

The other problem with this "save the industry" thing is that the entire R1 anime industry could fall off the face of the earth, and the anime industry back in Japan would continue on largely as it is. It's not the healthiest industries but it does not need R1 that badly.

Meanwhile, without that industry turning out stuff, there would be NO R1 industry. All these guys care about is R1.

[(Anonymous)]

I bought Eden of the East, although I could have gotten the discs for free. I bought Baccano! But I respected those series and wanted to send the right message, however small. I also remember the 1990s, when a 26-episode series on VHS, often sold two episodes to the tape, could easily cost $300 and up (in '90s dollars)--sub or dub only, no special features, and, of course, VHS quality. Today's DVDs seem a good bargain by comparison.

--Carl

[ferricide.livejournal.com]

just popping in to say the obvious, i do support the R1 anime industry! when it publishes shit i want! this seems obvious. i bought eden of the east and am buying summer wars. and as mike says i will happily buy turn A!

duh?

[brakusjs.livejournal.com]

Look, there's things from Japan that I wish would come over here too. No one wants to take a risk and bring them over since it's just a niche appeal and won't make much money over here. I lament that I can't buy any bara manga or artbooks and that I have to get stuff illegally sometimes. I personally have been wanting someone to license some manga titles that could do well if given the chance (KenIchi The Mightiest Disciple comes to mind), but since no one has done so yet, I've been reading scanlations. Shame on me, but no company wants any of my money that I would gladly fork over because no one has licensed it yet.

And even though nostalgia buffs like you lament about all the giant robot stuff that you can't buy, there are others that lament that they can't get more recent stuff like Maceoss Frontier legally since no one has licensed it here. I freely admit that the R1 industry I'd flawed. But if they have or get what I want, then they will get my money.

Support the R1/2/4 anime industry the way you want it to. Believe it or not, nobody is forcing you to buy DBZ or FMA or Ikki Tousen or whatever big-title-of-the-month is being advertised. Buy and cherish the things you like from the people that will give them to you at the right price, and perhaps more of it will be made or brought over for you..

Nobody is cramping on you for your choice of anime that you want. If you know where to go, you can find it and have it for you. And no one should make you feel guilty about your choices you make.