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

[(Anonymous)]

I'm sorry if that sounded a little dickish ^_^ What I meant was, I'm in the industry, so I can get comps, but I'm in the industry, so I also know the score--licenses cost money, adaptations cost money, marketing and distribution costs money. So when there's a title I like, I take care to buy it, rather than find excuses not to. Maybe I can't make them succeed by myself, but at least I'll have shown up to vote, as it were.

--C.

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

I have no problem paying money for things I like. I bought "Sea Prince & Fire Child" and that's not even a very good movie!

Back in the 1990s I bought almost ZERO anime. I think I bought the Voyager Be Forever and the AnimEigo My Youth In Arcadia on VHS. It wasn't until DVDs came along and made things cheaper that I started actually buying actual anime. And sure, I'm a cheap guy, but I was super broke throughout most of the 1990s.

Part of the problem is that the R1 industry seems to be aiming right directly at an audience of late teens and early 20s - EXACTLY the brokest-ass people in the world. You and me, we're boring old peoples with jobs, we can afford to buy DVDs. God forbid they'd try to sell things to the people who have money.

[(Anonymous)]

Well, you're right about the age demographics of R1, which is why I am grateful to those youths (pronounced Brooklyn, "yootes") who do buy it. This is also why I'm big on letters columns, even in tankobon; I want people to feel that they can be a part of the book, too. It may be possible to make other models succeed: I get the distinct impression Vertical's market is older, and not the standard manga readership (the fact many of their books are flopped is indicative of this; I'll submit that a manga that succeeds--i.e., finds an appreciative readership--flopped may be better than one that fails, unflopped). Even in Japan, of course, it's true that the highest-circulation manga magazines are meant for those college age and younger, as is much (nearly all, excepting otaku) of anime.

--C.

[animejump.livejournal.com]

Wait a minute, you BOUGHT anime, Carl? You're shattering my illusion of a Carl Horn who absorbs and retains all of the anime data he needs in his mind, leaving his modest studio apartment relatively spacious. You once told me that you kept a small collection because you "internalize"-- I wish I could internalize 800 DVDs.

Last thing I bought with money was the Dirty Pair sets. Just seemed like a colossal no-brainer to me.

Since you brought up Eden of the East, it reminds me of something I wonder about-- the volume of sales that anime conventions are responsible for. Funimation, at least, tend to sell out of several titles at every 'big' con they go to At NYAF, they brought several thousand EDEN OF THE EASTs a few days before street date, and sold every single one.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, but even my buying of anime is abstract, because it's done as a symbolic gesture ^_^

If anime cons can be successfully used to launch DVDs (the right venue and opportunity will not always come together), it serves as one counterargument to a charge you often hear against cons these days--that they may be profitable as get-togethers, but they do nothing to help the industry (in particular, there were reports that painted NYAF as marginalized even within the larger New York comic convention). Also, this was Eden of the East, which can't be easily dismissed as pandering to squealing and glomping fans.

--C.