Im kinda like that too but, if dubbing doesn't continue then if you saw something that is in japan and in the works for dubbing how could we ever see it here?!

This sounds exactly like the FUD the record industry's been giving us for years.  I want a source for numbers like "more than 80% of people who watch anime watch it on YouTube, or download it, and never, ever pay for it."  It's been shown that people will buy things and it's the minority of people who are pirates.  It may be slightly more skewed for the anime industry, I'll give them that, because of all the fan love of fansubbing.  But I would guess that fansubbing does more to create interest and the series make money that way.  For example, I never would have bought Haruhi Suzumiya without fansubs, and I never would have bought Utena without illegally downloading it first.  Becuase I wouldn't have known how good they were.

Well, the ANN op/ed you linked is nearly a decade old, and the US anime industry is nothing like it was then...  the dub quality debate will go on forever.

Also, I don't buy the whole R1 'sky is falling' argument yet.  Yes, we just lost Geneon, but rumor has it they are seeking an arrangement like Kadokawa has with Bandai.  That's how Haruhi got over here.

Anyway, let them cry wolf and act all Chicken Little.  Anime is, always has been, and always will be a niche market (not unlike foreign films in general), and those that support it will continue to do so, and the companies that work to make it available to us here will do so in the way most beneficial to everyone involved.

So yeah, call me a skeptic on the whole "OH NOEZ TEH ANIME IZ GONE!" panic attack going around the internet...


And this isn't aimed at you, KTK, it's aimed at the movement of that sector of people who think the anime apocalypse is nigh.

Last edited by Imaginary Bad Bug (11-07-2007 07:15:04 PM)

Imaginary Bad Bug wrote:

And this isn't aimed at you, KTK, it's aimed at the movement of that sector of people who think the anime apocalypse is nigh.

I don't see why it would be aimed at me. Im not the one who wrote it. Just sharing the rumor.

Um, Onion Prince? KTK didn't write that.

I doubt that they would abandon anime altogether as they used to inport anime and rescript it to make it more appealing to English speaking audiences, the more recent tend up til now has been to try and keep as much of the Japaneseness of an anime as possible because more fans have been demanding it.

If worse comes to worse, US and Canadian companies will revert back to only getting animes that they believe will appeal to the general cartoon fans and most likely see the return to the scripting like they did back in the 80s and before while hard-core anime fans who love their fansub animes will continue getting copies from Japanese TV and DVDs and subtitling them.

The main people this will affect will be those who want to either watch an English dub of the show (I enjoy watching a good dub myself/ bad dubs can GAFM!) and anyone who likes to watch a high quality subtitle on a big screen TV instead of a lower quality one window on their PC/Laptop.

I cannot claim to have supported anime too much as I have only spent maybe $250 in buying anime ($90 of which was the Utena series and Utena movie) and about $300 in hiring it in the last 3 years, but I have certainly supported manga as I have forked out about $4,000 in the same period.

satyreyes wrote:

Wait a second.  So the worst-case scenario is that U.S. companies stop licensing anime, meaning that animesuki can resume carrying good series and not cutting them off halfway through because some licenser got interested?

Actually, I think the true worst case scenario would be fewer anime in general even being created.  The licensing fees paid by American companies like Funimation as well as financial involvement with the original productions (some licensrs are also involved in financially backing series before they even hit the air in Japan) help pay for the anime being created.  If that money dries up because NA licensors drop out of the market due to poor sales, the Japanese side of the market will also take a hit now that it's gotten used to having NA money in the mix.  And it wouldn't necessarily be that there would just be a few, really good anime available.  Rather, I think it's the popular (but not necessarily good) series that would continue being made, whereas shows such as Haibane Renmei or Kino's Journey would find it an even harder path to traverse due to lack of funding.

That's just a little speculation on my part from what I've gathered in the 50 billion fansub debates I've perused on ANN over the past couple of years.

purplepolecat wrote:

2) Bare bones DVD release with subtitles only, released at the same time here as in Japan, fairly cheap. The English dubbing is hugely expensive, AND takes months to complete. A lot of people download the fansubs just because they don't want to wait months for the official release, they want to see it when Japan sees it.

Actually, Media Blasters is doing that now with Princess Princess, Gakuen Heaven, and quite a few other titles.  There's several other distributors heading in that direction too.

A random article at AnimeNation wrote:

A cost of $10,000 to dub an average 25 minute anime TV episode has been tossed about in American anime community discussion. At today's expenses, $10,000 is actually around the low end of dubbing cost. Naturally, dubbing costs vary by ADR studio, talent, number of actors needed, and amount of dialogue to be dubbed. But using the low end estimate of $10,000 per episode, a 26 episode series would cost $260,000 to dub. If a distributor releases that series on 7 DVD volumes at a $15 wholesale cost per volume, the distributor has to sell roughly 2,500 copies of each disc just to recover the dubbing cost. Regrettably, there are numerous anime series released in America which don't sell even 2,500 copies per disc. Dubbing does increase an anime DVDs' market viability, but it's beginning to seem as though an optional English dub does not attract enough additional consumers to justify the expense of dubbing. The expense of dubbing can be the difference between a domestic release being profitable or losing money.

Now I don't guarantee the accuracy of the numbers, but I doubt they're completely off.

Last edited by Raven Nightshade (11-08-2007 03:46:53 PM)

I've got to say... the person who wrote this seems to have no clue. I'm completely with satyreyes on the "watching TV" point, and even with my minimal exposure to Japanese culture, I can see how horrifically arrogant it to say that the exports to the US are the only thing keeping a form of mainstream Japanese entertainment going.

Still, it bears thinking about. Thanks for sharing it with us, KTK.

Last edited by ShatteredMirror (11-09-2007 12:04:00 AM)

Lissa wrote:

Granted, fansubs and pirated series are a large problem, but that's in the television industry in general. It's not just anime.

Comparing the itty bitty anime market to the extremely large television market isn't exactly accurate though.  Anime is a niche.  A few series went 'mainstream,' but it was mainstream by anime standards, not by overall television standards (except Pokemon, but I try not to remember that particular series :p)  With companies posting fairly large losses and places like Geneon having to totally shut down (hopefully only temporarily), I think that says anime is being affected by something a heck of a lot more than television as a whole.  I personally think a fair amount of it is due to the glut in the anime market with the really bad being licensed with the really good that's causing part of the problem.  While I'm happy that also pulls in good, 'niche' (I'm using that more to refer to thinking anime rather than the moe niche, etc) series that wouldn't have otherwise been licensed, it also pulls in some truly awful series too.  There just aren't that many anime fans in the first place, and I think quite a few of the new fans are going straight to piracy rather than purchasing DVDs--especially since unlike with music, there isn't really much of a paid, official download alternative for anime (yeah, there are some on iTunes, but they're typically dub-only and not released until well after the Japanese run).  Of the 6 anime fans I've met in the past two years, only one purchases any anime.  The rest pirate, and pirate exclusively.  One, if he likes the series, will buy bootleg merchandise.  Yes, that's only five people, however, the American anime scene isn't all that big to begin with.  That's not to mention the 20 or 30 people I know online that exclusively download anime, licensed or not.  Those small numbers start stacking up when you're discussing a niche market.

I personally believe bootlegs play a pretty hefty role in the downturn the anime market is facing (and yes, it is facing a downturn--CPM is virtually gone, Geneon's keeling over, ADV's doing some restructuring--which will hopefully fair well, Funimation is posting losses [although still within their earnings projections, so that's good]) given how rampant they are on Amazon Marketplace and the like, and the people who shop there often don't know any better and don't necessarily care either.  But I do think the bigger problem is that while anime is still talked about as much in its niche as it was a few years ago, a smaller portion of that niche is actually buying anything.  Licensors might look and see, "Wow, everyone's talking about this Rozen Maiden, let's get it!"  They release it, with a pretty velvet box, nice DVD covers, and what happens?  No one buys it.  I do not know the source of the rumor, but it's been pretty widely stated that Rozen Maiden was a flop in sales.  All the talk, the hype, and the 4chan memes, and hardly anyone bought it.  It's currently slated not to be completed, either.  I have the whole first season, but since Traumend isn't going to be completed as of yet (if ever), I held off buying the rest, as I don't want an incomplete season (and I didn't like Traumend all that well anyway...but I'd still like to own the whole story.)  Same could be said of When They Cry - Higurashi which was everywhere on the net, but appears to have sold rather poorly.  And you're not going to get concrete numbers for sales.  Those are well-kept secrets that can be purchased from firms that calculate them (namely Nielson's Videoscan), but aren't widely available otherwise aside from reps on AoD mentioning that sales weren't as good as predicted, or the recent report of Funimation posting losses over the same quarter last year (although some of that does have to do with changing HQ locations.)

Perhaps it's Geneon's fault for taking a chance on these series and their fans.  Maybe it should have done a better job advertising (although for both series it ran short marketing "guess the license" campaigns over at ANN to garner attention).  Who knows?  But there sure was a hell of a lot of buzz when these series were in fansub form, and then suddenly no one was around to buy them when they came out on DVD.  Do I think the anime market in NA is going to disappear?  No.  I think it's going to shrink some though (and unfortunately, when that happens, it's going to be the definite money makers like shounen series rather than things like Kino's Journey that will likely be licensed).  Do I think fansubs are part of the problem?  Yes.  The whole problem?  No.  But they're definitely part of it.  When over 1/2 of the fans I know in "RL" do not actually buy the product (or even support anime by getting merchandise like posters or figurines), that's not a good sign.  There's a product out there, often a very good product, and its not getting paid for in quite a few cases.  And yes, this could affect Japan.  At this point, the creators of anime are used to the flow of money brought it from the series being licensed by America.  This money in turn is used to make more series.  If that money starts drying up, there is going to be a change in Japan.  Will everyone willingly take a big pay cut?  Or will just fewer series be made?  Even if this is just a downturn  in the American market (I really don't believe the market is going to implode and give birth to squirrels anytime soon), it will have some effect on Japan, even if it's only for a short while until they get used to not having that extra flow of money into the market.

Am I anti-fansub?  Not at all.  I'm watching Dennou Coil right now.  However, I do think fansubs are starting to impact the North American anime market in ways that it didn't before.  It's starting to become a negative rather than positive impact (before, it really was advertising).  If you don't care about getting unpirated anime, it's no skin off your nose, but if you like to financially support your hobby, it's going to start being more difficult for at least awhile until the licensors figure out how to make a profit with the market in the state that it currently is.

Also, the manga and anime markets are pretty separate beings.  Manga is still doing pretty darn well, but even its facing a few downturns.  Not all anime fans are manga fans, and not all manga fans are anime fans.  Except for Viz, manga companies tend to stick strictly to manga, and anime companies stick strictly to anime.  ADV's released a few manga, and boy that's been like pulling teeth (hiatus status for most of their series for a couple of years, etc.)  Tokyopop released a few anime, but at this point they've turned to Funimation to take care of the anime series they've licensed, and have allowed the first half of Marmalade Boy expire (which sucks, I was looking forward to buying the Funi release of that...)  If either market goes belly up, the other will probably be affected in some way, but they aren't linked so that if one goes the other does too.  So the shaky anime market could go under even with a fairly strong manga market out there.  I still want to reiterate I don't think that's going to happen, but if it did, I don't think they're completely linked.

Anyway, that's enough ramblings from me.   The anime market is facing some serious challenges right now, and as someone who does enjoy owning my anime legally (as well as checking out some series on fansubs), I do hope the licensors are able to figure out some way to continue forward with a wide variety of anime available.  I do not want to go back to the days when the anime selection was dominated by DBZ and mecha anime.  Yuck.

Last edited by Cerise (11-09-2007 08:32:16 AM)

I don't doubt what you're saying at all, Cerise. I'm lucky I have three real-life friends who watch anime. One of them will ONLY buy licensed subs. In fact, she's the one that I got all my VHS anime from: she gave them to me when she moved so she'd have less to lug around. One out and out admits she buys fansubs and pirated series because she can't afford the regular series. And the third one? I don't know. I have a DVD he bought that I never got back to him before he left the place we worked at, and when he came back, he already had a new copy of it. However, he talks all the time about going to CrunchyRoll.com. However, from my understanding, they show fansubs, but the moment someone gets the license, they pull it.

Oh, and let's not forget the "Official Bootleg Edition" of Sailormoon StarS that Amazon.com had listed a while back. XD

I guess what I'm saying is that, yeah, that note does bring up some good points, but I smell a lot of bullshit in it, too. It's almost like someone took these stats, saw what's going on with the SWG, and went "Oh, noes!!! We're doomed!!! It's the end of anime!!!!!" and took it over the deep end.