Quote:
Originally Posted by teh_nubkilr
Indifferent, or aware and deliberately choosing to withhold it? From a business perspective, it's probably more sound to encourage sales of a product on a larger market, as that yields greater profit. I honestly can't think of any reason to not release it for the international market, as that would simply result in reduced profit.  |
For many, many anime properties, the world outside of Japan just doesn't bring in the kinds of money that midnight anime otaku do. For most anime properties, the world outside of Japan is an afterthought that gets their releases a year or a year and a half after the Japanese do (and that's driven by
domestic market concerns. We get anime released so late to prevent
Japanese customers from reverse-importing the product, since we pay all of $5 per episode compared to the $40 per episode Japanese people will pay for an episode of K-ON!!. It's why Japanese releases come with all these cutesy little extras that you'll never see in Western releases (postercards and special art and the like.) Sure, it probably adds, like, fifty cents to the cost of the disc for the production company, but the otaku feel like they're getting their money's worth, and the distributors are laughing all the way to the bank.)
An example of a production company who's aware of how much of their product moves in the market outside of Japan are the makers and distributors of
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood who licensed it to Funimation to sub the and distribute the show online no less than six days after the initial airings in Japan. TBS and Animax were part of that effort, and both, by the way, are distributors of
K-ON!