Fansub hits, dvd flops? I'm curious.

[Misuzu]

Are there any shows that were hits in the fansubbing community, but flopped when they got licensed?

I was thinking about why some really popular shows never get licensed, and that got me wondering how much fansub popularity indicates dvd sales.

[eelozano]

I think fansub popularity is pretty indicative of the DVD popularity. If you look at the torrents for files you will see that.

Older anime's with solid stories that won't make it in the U.S. run with a max of around 500 dowloads at any one time and thats only for the first day or so.

Animes (lets just say Naruto when it wasn't liscensed) that are popular are getting upwards of 20k downloads at a time and that maintains at about a 10-15k level for a few days.

I think the only way to answer your question is to decide at what point an anime has become a 'hit' in the fansub community?

[bayoab]

Originally Posted by eelozano

I think fansub popularity is pretty indicative of the DVD popularity. If you look at the torrents for files you will see that.

Completely incorrect. Companies have explicity said multiple times that fansubs have killed sales of some series.

Quoth Industry Rep: We look and see it got 50k bittorent downloads and we look at the sales and there is definitely a gap. (This is paraphrased of an exact quote with some editing, he did not explicity mention bittorrent.)

Quoth Geneon(Otakon 03, (and 04?)): "Fansubs help sales of good series, fansubs hurt sales of bad series".

Geneon has actually spit out a list of underpreformers multiple times, but I never really take a note.

Older anime's with solid stories that won't make it in the U.S. run with a max of around 500 dowloads at any one time and thats only for the first day or so.

GGG got licensed and it has ~1k dls per ep according to its subbers.

[dan88]

I think the lenght of the series is important too.

Even if a series is super popular how many people are going to buy a whole +10 DVD's series.
Imagine how many DVD's Naruto would fit on!

[Dagger]

Originally Posted by dan88

I think the lenght of the series is important too.

Even if a series is super popular how many people are going to buy a whole +10 DVD's series.
Imagine how many DVD's Naruto would fit on!

Not really. Naruto is already tearing up the sales charts because it's Naruto; length doesn't have that much to do with it. And the uncut version hasn't even started coming out yet!

Kimi ga Nozomu Eien was licensed by FUNimation because of its fansub popularity, although they didn't say that in quite so many words. If it flops, it'll send a clear message to companies that they can't take risks on fansub hits, either because such shows won't appeal to regular consumers, or because people who helped make an anime popular when it was being fansubbed won't support the official release.

[bayoab]

Originally Posted by Magus IX

Kimi ga Nozomu Eien was licensed by FUNimation because of its fansub popularity, although they didn't say that in quite so many words. If it flops, it'll send a clear message to companies that they can't take risks on fansub hits, either because such shows won't appeal to regular consumers, or because people who helped make an anime popular when it was being fansubbed won't support the official release.

If it flops, it will also teach them not to listen to ratings on sites like animenfo all the time. (Which is where KGNE's rating has always been extremely high.)


And this just appeared today (see on AoD): Interview with Viz on piracy

ACTIVE ANIME:
How do you think "Bittorrent" and other forms of downloading are affecting the anime and manga industry in the United States?

EVELYN DUBOCQ: If anime piracy continues to grow in North America, at the expense of legitimate product...

Yes, part corporate face, but how much?

[Dagger]

Originally Posted by bayoab

Yes, part corporate face, but how much?

To be honest, I'm not inclined to pay much attention to Viz on this issue. Only a week or so prior to the release of that interview, there was an interview with one of the guys over at CPM, who pretty much said the exact opposite (of course, CPM is a smaller and more fan-friendly company to begin with).

But anyway, those who are interested in seeing a different industry perspective can read the PDF transcript of the CPM interview here.

[dan88]

Originally Posted by Magus IX

Not really. Naruto is already tearing up the sales charts because it's Naruto; length doesn't have that much to do with it.

Is this related to TV or Fansubs? I wonder how Naruto would have done if it was not first show on TV in the USA.

There are rumours that Naruto might be shown on one of the UK satellite cartoon channels..... (we can still only dream of an Anime channel).

[DaFool]

Kinda scary reading about CPM's bankruptcy less than a month after that interview was published.

[physics223]

People tend to rely more on fansubs because despite being free, almost all of the time these are made with quality. It is because fansubbing is volunteer work to help propagate the anime community, and often times, volunteer work is much more passionate and colorful and helpful than paid, dreary, boring work.

You have to take into perspective the hearts of the fansubbers. They can be among the only ones who produce quality work, really, because they don't plan on lessening the quality because 'the DVD's cheap' or any other monetary excuses.

[bayoab]

Originally Posted by physics223

People tend to rely more on fansubs because despite being free, almost all of the time these are made with quality.

This is the "leecher illusion", the belief that fansubs are decent work when most aren't.

It is because fansubbing is volunteer work to help propagate the anime community, and often times, volunteer work is much more passionate and colorful and helpful than paid, dreary, boring work.

You do realize that the industry is just legal fansubbing with paid people in order to get a better quality product before deadlines.

[ACDragonMaster]

Originally Posted by Magus IX

Kimi ga Nozomu Eien was licensed by FUNimation because of its fansub popularity, although they didn't say that in quite so many words. If it flops, it'll send a clear message to companies that they can't take risks on fansub hits, either because such shows won't appeal to regular consumers, or because people who helped make an anime popular when it was being fansubbed won't support the official release.

Not entirely. Fansub popularity may have justified the license, but I've heard it said that someone in the company happened to be a huge fan and pushed for the license for that reason. So in that case Funi might not be expecting to make a huge profit off of it or anything. Kinda like how Adult Swim originally aired Paranoia Agent just because the people there thought it was cool, not expecting it to be a huge hit (which it was anyway, in that case).

[Thelastguardian]

Originally Posted by bayoab

Quoth Geneon(Otakon 03, (and 04?)): "Fansubs help sales of good series, fansubs hurt sales of bad series".

This seriously irks me. The companies admit it themselve- some series are b-a-d. Yet when the sales are bad, they blame the problem on fansub.

I see two problems

1. Maybe the sales are bad because, you know, they are bad and the fans know about this even before watching the fansubs? When did bad series ever have good sales record?

2. So basically, the companies view us as "consumers" with unlimited amount of money. We are supposed to buy everything DVDs that are out, and hope that some of them are good.
You know, some of us will not buy anime DVDs if a large portion of the lottery-draw-style DVD purchases are bad...
And yet they try to force us down our throat knowing they are bad....

Where is the morality....

[Kurz]

Some Groups have translation notes, which clears up the meaning behind some cultural based dialog.

Translations will always be up to the ones opinion, of course some decisions are better than others.

Btw Last time I checked... Did DVD's have good quality Karaoke? In terms of flashyness.
(Though I've been spoiled with them, its still something to mention.)

If someone likes the series they'll buy the DVD's to support/Have a hard copy which has better quality than the TV rips.

Maybe Companies wont license any more crappy shows if we dont buy them?
It should work that way.

[bayoab]

Originally Posted by Thelastguardian

This seriously irks me. The companies admit it themselve- some series are b-a-d. Yet when the sales are bad, they blame the problem on fansub.

I see two problems

1. Maybe the sales are bad because, you know, they are bad and the fans know about this even before watching the fansubs? When did bad series ever have good sales record?

I am not sure if bad in this case means that the series are bad. I believe it means that series with weak sales get even weaker. They might not be bad series, just bad sellers.

Originally Posted by Kurz

Btw Last time I checked... Did DVD's have good quality Karaoke? In terms of flashyness.
(Though I've been spoiled with them, its still something to mention.)

The DVD spec makes karaoke a PITA to do and a complete waste of time.

[guest]

So basically, there is still no scientific statictics or concrete evidence between the relationship of sales of dvd and popularity of fansub?

It seem that everyone has their opinions only based on just what variety of companies say, which is not exactly accuarte in reflecting the truth, I think. Companies would say things to raise their sales, regardless of the truth behind. Even if it is true, it might be partially true.

[Orchunter226]

Originally Posted by bayoab

This is the "leecher illusion", the belief that fansubs are decent work when most aren't.

You do realize that the industry is just legal fansubbing with paid people in order to get a better quality product before deadlines.

Actually I like some fansubs better than their DVD counterparts a lot more. Mainly because some fansubs are really well done. I also enjoy the cultural bits and information things fansubs often have. So while a lot of fansubs are done to about the same quality as a DVD (I rarely see ones that are less), many go above the DVD's subbing.

As for whether they hinder or boost sales. My friends and I all watch fansubs first, and buy the ones we like (we think as fans we should support those companies) and dont buy the ones we dislike. So I guess it could do both.

[ACDragonMaster]

Originally Posted by Kurz

Btw Last time I checked... Did DVD's have good quality Karaoke? In terms of flashyness.
(Though I've been spoiled with them, its still something to mention.)

Blargh, the needless karaoke is one of the things I like LEAST about fansubs. >_<

[Aoie_Emesai]

Wasn't there a research, well not a research but studies that say companies are more likely to choose more popular series of anime just because of its popularity on the net?

I hear that fansubs are like the test stages/beta for animes for the widespread uses after it's shown in Japan?? ^_^

[Kamui4356]

Originally Posted by Aoie_Emesai

Wasn't there a research, well not a research but studies that say companies are more likely to choose more popular series of anime just because of its popularity on the net?

I hear that fansubs are like the test stages/beta for animes for the widespread uses after it's shown in Japan?? ^_^

Companies generally deny this. Not to mention, I don't really see much evidence of it in titles that get picked up. There are a lot of popular titles sitting out there unlicensed, and there have been some that were unpopular as fansubs that have been licensed. There are only a few that seem to be licensed because of fansub popularity, such as Kiminozo, but ACDragonMaster debunked that assertion before.