2011-08-30, 18:15 | Link #521 | ||
阿賀野型3番艦、矢矧 Lv180
Graphic Designer
Moderator Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Belgium, Brussels
Age: 37
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Note that buying merchandise and BD/DVD is otherworldly expensive over there: you really don't buy things because it is "popular". Most spend their money on what they really like, whether or not it is a masterpiece. Frankly, Japan would be the very last place for an otaku to buy "things because they are popular", considering the steep price tags for most things, but also other stuff such like accomodations etc. I can see such stuff occuring in the western audience, but no way in hell simple popularity can drive japanese fans to buy things, especially as niche and frowned upon as Otaku stuff. Quote:
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2011-08-30, 18:20 | Link #522 | |||
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Because it casts aspersions on why people liked the show, and chose to buy it on DVD/Blu-Ray.
For a person who hates a show, it's much easier to attribute its success to things like "brand names", "marketability", "hype", and everything but simple widespread viewer satisfaction with the show and fan assessment of its merits. You don't want to accept the fact that a large number of viewers and purchasers may have simply considered K-On to be one of the best of its genre, and worth owning as such. Quote:
All three are KyoAni works. All three have source material fans (the Key fanbase, in fact, was probably larger than the K-On fanbase prior to K-On being adapted into an anime). All three are easy to market, and were well-marketed. Quote:
IS had the added benefit of having mechas in it, at a time when new/recent mecha anime was very hard to find. That likely helped its cross-genre marketability. Bake was helped by the Shinbo/SHAFT artistic style (which can be used in marketing), which is clearly quite popular (consider Madoka's success as well here). Quote:
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2011-08-30, 18:21 | Link #523 | |
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Join Date: Sep 2010
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I can point to at least one person who bought every volume of K-On (both seasons) for no reason other than love of the show: Me. And I'll say this; I was no otaku - much less a KyoAni fan - before I saw K-On. This anime just pushed all the right buttons for me, and it should be obvious to anyone that I am far from alone in that regard. You're just gonna have to accept the fact that there are many of us who are just that into K-On. You yourself pointed out the insane prices they charge for the BDs (though it's not like it's actually much more expensive than other Japanese releases of anime series on Blu-Ray, I think)... No one is going to pay that much if they don't actually want it. (Seriously, "otaku cred"? What the fuck?!) |
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2011-08-30, 18:34 | Link #524 | |
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The fact that K-On could sell well with that insane pricing tells me it was very highly regarded by a lot of anime fans. You don't regard something that highly if you don't think highly of its merits...
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2011-08-30, 18:49 | Link #525 | |||||
Bittersweet Distractor
Join Date: Nov 2007
Age: 32
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But keep in mind we're working within the framework of Akihabra culture here. Bringing in the idea that it's a frowned upon hobby is relevant to Japanese society as a whole only. Quote:
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Most criticisms I and others have of K-ON! have nothing to do with its marketability anyways, so I don't get why that matters. Quote:
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2011-08-30, 19:01 | Link #526 |
Gamilas Falls
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Republic of California
Age: 46
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I think the comparison form IS, Bake, and K-On (perhaps Madoka as well) is simply because they all sell well. But for different reasons. It is entirely possible they are all being bought by the same people, but that is not always the case. IS and Bake have harem and fanservice elements that would attract a more male audiance. K-On's girls having a fun time mixed with the music would seem to have attracted a female audiance as well as the male audiance. I've no idea what Madoka is attracting. One would think he Sailor Moon/other magical girls shows (the non-fanservice kind) crowd, but then things get weird and suffering...so I can't tell anymore.
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2011-08-30, 19:04 | Link #527 | |
Pretentious moe scholar
Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: Vancouver, Canada
Age: 37
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Would you pay 250 British pounds for the first season on DVD? Even if it was available for rental? Because that's what around forty thousand Japanese did. Anime makes up the vast majority of Bluray sales in Japan and a huge portion of DVD sales as well, despite being of interest to only a small segment of the population. I suspect everyone else just rents movies... like people did in the US and UK back when VHS movies were 50 pounds each. Otaku could rent. Since most shows are broadcast over the air, they could also record the show to DVD or Bluray (popular in Japan) or download it via the county's world class broadband connections - the latter being common among those who plan to watch shows on the go, from what I here. Under those sorts of circumstances, a 250 pound DVD set is going to be a status symbol. Even more so if its of a hot series. "I love K-On! enough to spend 250 pounds on DVDs!" That kind of thing. That's what I mean when I say it confers otaku cred. And again, I'm not saying K-On fans are any more prone to this sort of mentality than those of any other series... just that the series ability to attract and retain attention (which has to do with a lot of marketability factors like how catchy the OP and ED sequences are) mean its a series that more people are going to want to say "I spent 250 pounds!" about. Edit: I keep thinking that Madoka taped into some of the same factors that made NGE so popular. I've never analyzed the two shows enough to pick the exact factors out but with the sort of fanbases they have I'm sure someone could.
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2011-08-30, 19:08 | Link #528 | |
~Official Slacker~
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Location: Xanadu
Age: 29
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2011-08-30, 19:16 | Link #529 | |
Pretentious moe scholar
Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: Vancouver, Canada
Age: 37
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Conversely, I suspect that Nichijou's sales failure is in large part because it never attained the same profile. Something I see due to a number of factors. For one, I don't think its as marketable as K-On! Second, I wonder if the sheer scale of K-On!'s success probably actually made it harder for KyoAni to follow up on it - old project retaining attention that could go to the new one, basically.
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2011-08-30, 19:17 | Link #530 |
Gamilas Falls
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Republic of California
Age: 46
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The Japanese could rent, but you don't get the "exclusive" items if you rent.
However some people just want to have to own. I don't even want to think of the hundreds...perhaps even thousands,of VHS, Beta, and DVDs we own in my family. While most of the Beta and VHS stuff is recorded off television, all the DVDs are bought. And very, very little of it is anime. Most is westerns, TV series, American movies, science fiction, and the like. I probably only have maybe 20 series of anime total, most of it sci-fi from the 70s 80s and 90s. Most of the more recent stuff I can find on the Internet someplace if I want to see something. People just like to collect things they want to see. Otaku cred is not needed for that. One just has to have a desire to own things to watch whenever they want, rather than have to go rent it or wait for Netflixs or a stream to finish, or he whims of copy protections on say Youtube.
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2011-08-30, 19:42 | Link #531 | |||
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Join Date: Jul 2009
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Producers understand this, and they're now changing marketing strategies and business models (which includes release timing and a greater reliance on online communication) to better suit their needs. I don't think it's any coincidence that we've recently seen a spike in the number of abnormally successful titles. ....all of which is good for the industry. Inability to monetize their product (despite popularity) has continued to haunt producers. http://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=129934 http://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=296000 Quote:
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2011-08-30, 19:46 | Link #532 | |
Pretentious moe scholar
Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: Vancouver, Canada
Age: 37
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Edit: I'm thinking TJR's "souvenir" explanation might be better than my theory. Doesn't change the fact the "otaku social phenomenon" element is absolutely vital to generating sales, though.
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Again, the question I ask: would you spend 400 US Dollars on a series and if so, why? And I'm not saying that there aren't people who don't spend that much just on love of the show alone. I'm just saying that being able to say "I love this show this much" is a big incentive.
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2011-08-30, 20:02 | Link #533 |
Gamilas Falls
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Republic of California
Age: 46
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DVD recorders aren't as common in the US likely due to the VCR being extremely common (and relatively cheap) and that VCRs didn't get blocked by random copy protection from some stations on cable. That and by the time VHS started to dry up Divo and cable provided hard drive like recording systems had become common enough to replace the VCR without having to get a DVD recorder...for TV purposes. Some people have them anyway, but use them to transfere stuff they recorded on Betamax or VHS to disc. Home movies, old television shows or things that aren't on DVD or BD at all
My question: because it came up when going over my grandmother's place, What do you do with old VHS tapes? We got hundreds of them.
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Last edited by Ithekro; 2011-08-30 at 20:16. |
2011-08-30, 20:15 | Link #534 | ||
Banned
Join Date: Dec 2006
Age: 38
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2011-08-30, 20:22 | Link #535 |
Gamilas Falls
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Republic of California
Age: 46
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Haruhi as an anime series and light novel series, has generated a massive amount of talk about how indepth it is, or the more often the nature of time travel, religion, high level sciences, and history in some cases. It gets pretty deep in some threads. Even in the years it wasn't onthe air, it still generated discussion. Even to the point of having indepth debates on how the series works just to make a believable genderbent version of itself right here on AnimeSuki.
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2011-08-30, 20:23 | Link #536 | ||||||||
Also a Lolicon
Join Date: Apr 2010
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1. Munto. Obviously people buy things when they see KyoAni on it. Not. 2. Outside the otaku market, KyoAni means even less. K-On seems to be succeeding outside the otaku market, so it isn't KyoAni driving the sales, but a quality product with wide appeal. Marketability is directly related to how wide the appeal of the show is and the quality of the product. I don't see how anime transcends what it really is by being a quality show with wide appeal, and thus marketable. Quote:
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2011-08-30, 20:41 | Link #537 | |
~Official Slacker~
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Location: Xanadu
Age: 29
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2011-08-31, 05:15 | Link #538 | |
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Join Date: Sep 2010
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You know, I think I figured out why it's so hard for you to believe people bought K-On just for the love of it... I could be wrong, but it sounds to me that the idea of wanting to own physical copies of ones favorite TV shows and movies is foreign to you. I shouldn't be surprised at that, considering this is a torrent listing site and all, but the point is there are still a lot of us left, that being people like me for whom it is the most natural thing in the world to want to own actual physical copies of our entertainment - not rent, not download, but own it to keep on the shelf and be able to pull it out and watch any time we want to. Personally, I'm the type of person who will buy pretty much any movie or TV show box set I have even the slightest interest in so when something like K-On comes along that I absolutely love, a scary price tag isn't going to get in my way. I'm willing to pay (the equivalent of) 250 British pounds not because it's something to brag about, but because that is what it costs. |
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2011-08-31, 10:27 | Link #539 | |
Pretentious moe scholar
Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: Vancouver, Canada
Age: 37
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I simply was looking for an explanation of why shows that become social phenomenon within the otaku community experience a bluray sales boost that is proportionally much larger than the boost in ratings. I theorized that spending on shows is admired in the otaku community and that some otaku spend money to gain this admiration, hence creating a preference for spending even more on popular shows than their popularity would suggest. It's not exactly rocket science, prestige is frequently invoked to explain why something (ie. sports cars) sells. For reference, I own a couple shelves of R1 discs, which I buy for two reasons: first, because I want to support the creators, and second, because I don't want to be known as the guy who only downloads and never buys. So yes, its partly image driven. I will admit I do not buy just to own a physical copy (exception: NIS America box sets, which are gorgeous) as I don't need a pressed disc for backup because I'm really good about backing my stuff up and I watch most stuff on a PC rather than a DVD player anyway. I also rarely use torrents and use this site strictly for the discussions, but that's another matter.
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2011-08-31, 11:47 | Link #540 | ||
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I mean, the novelty aspect of K-On doesn't simply effect how marketable it is, it also directly effects its content. The same is true of K-On's "pureness and harmlessness". K-On!, and many KyoAni shows, offer "moe minus ecchi", which is actually not the easiest combination to find. Most moe-driven VN adaptations that I've watched have at least some ecchi (i.e. sexual fanservice) in them. K-On (and the KyoAni/Key works) have almost none. Yes, it has beach episodes, but it doesn't go out of its way to give "pervy camera angles", IIRC. Perhaps there's a significant number of DVD/Blu-Ray buyers that like the "moe without ecchi" content of K-On, and find that of distinctive merit. In fact, I would say that this is probably one of the main reasons that a significant number of real life teenage girls are attracted to K-On, whereas they might not be attracted to a show where the female characters are frequently sexually objectified. I mean, would you and I as heterosexual adult males be attracted to works that spend a huge chunk of the time sexually objectifying male characters? I suspect that the answer is "no" (I know that it's "no" for me at least). So it only makes sense that many heterosexual teenage girls would be turned off by works that spend a huge chunk of time sexually objectifying teenage girl characters. By K-On almost never sexually objectifying Yui, Ritsu, Mio, and Mugi, it perhaps makes it easier for female teenage viewers to take these characters seriously, and maybe even to live vicariously through them (much as male viewers sometimes do through male anime leads). Quote:
For example, I thoroughly enjoyed Higurashi, and rated it highly, but I realize that its blend of moe with slasher-horror action is a bit of an acquired taste. Basically, to like Higurashi, you either have to like the contrast in and of itself, and/or you have to like both elements of that contrast separately. For those otakus that dislike slasher-horror elements, Higurashi simply can't sell to them. K-On, perhaps amusingly without its own creators even realizing it, managed to create teenage female characters that appeal both to male otakus and to (some) real life teenage girls. They hit a cross-demographic "sweet spot", so to speak. There's also few if any elements in K-On that make it an instant "no go" for some otakus. Its "pureness and harmlessness", as Reck puts it, is part of its appeal to many paying customers, I think. Not every anime show has that. In fact, most don't have that.
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Last edited by Triple_R; 2011-08-31 at 11:57. |
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