November 17, 2011

Schemes to Annoy the Virtuous Fan

Ubu speculates and rants on what may (or may not) be a worrisome development.



His concern is that the Japanese companies are simply going to cut the US distributors off. Instead of going that route they might start providing subtitles on their Blu Ray discs like they have done with Dog Days which provided English, French, and Chinese subtitle tracks. Given the seemingly rather myopic and desperate business plan of much of the anime industry, this does not seem far fetched, especially given that the US and Japan share the same region in Blu Ray. One thing is curious about this example though....France and China do NOT have the same region coding as the US and Japan (though of course there are the Quebecois). France, however, is a lucrative anime market and China is just plain huge, so this may be a reflection on the accessibility of region free players. Still, I'd be more concerned about this particular development if the language tracks were Portuguese, Spanish and English.  So don't go to pieces just yet...


If this DID happen it would be unfortunate. The US releases would almost certainly penetrate deeper into the US market. There is also the fact that companies that bring this stuff over would be nuked and their now quite talented cadre of Voice Actors dispersed.

Then there is cost...Japanese discs cost several times what the US disks do. The business plan for the Japanese companies seems to revolve around really exorbitant BD with lots of extras and steam removal. This has contributed to the narrowing of the market in Japan, where the merchandise is priced high which weeds out the less fanatical enthusiasts which results in a smaller, more intense market which demands more fan service, which appalls polite society, further shrinking the market which causes the companies to raise prices which shrinks the market yet more thereby increasing the percentage of maladroit fandom demanding panty shots which further marginalizes the market until you get hemlines halfway up the buttocks and plots revolving around bust size competitions (oh wait). Eventually the market will consist entirely of 47 rich trustfunder NEETS who will die out never having touched a woman thus ending the industry.

Only moderate BD prices and Josei can save us from this fate.

.....but I digress.

On a related note there is this.

A new company backed by the government will buy the rights to Japanese anime, toys and other creative products and tout them to Hollywood producers.

All Nippon Entertainment Works Co., which has received 6 billion yen (about $80 million) from the 90-percent government-sponsored Innovation Network Corp. of Japan (INCJ), will begin acquiring rights this month. It plans to invest 3 billion yen over the next three years to acquire the rights to 10 products and get movies made.


This strange bit of corporatism could have interesting results...not necessarily good ones mind you.  I do note that this seems to be a sop to the biggest media conglomerates and they are only going for really big ticket properties.  Therefore, it most likely will not affect most anime releases and certainly won't have much affect on more obscure shows. Dan Kanimitsu has thoughts. I for one wonder why they dont just have Toho and Daiei hire international actors and a few directors for international adaptations.

Of course, perspective is important. None of this is in any way the end of the world.
 

"Fandom...doomed...must..tweet EVERYBODY!"

...but of course your mileage may vary.
 

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 02:24 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 585 words, total size 5 kb.

1 Picture is...too... cute... can't..resist.....SQUEEEEEEE!!!!

Posted by: ubu at Thu Dec 1 04:46:13 2011 (GfCSm)

2 Suthun' gentlemen do naht "squee"....they vomit.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Thu Dec 1 21:18:03 2011 (EJaOX)

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