Japan Asks America to Stop Illegal Net Releases of Anime

[cyth]

Originally Posted by Kamui4356

It was Air that started to make a name for KyoAni in the minds of western fans through fansubs. Once that was over KyoAni had set the bar and we start to see things like "KyoAni has done it again" on english forums.
[...]
Maybe SuzuHaru would have given KyoAni that name in the west without fansubs, but by the time it was released KyoAni's reputation had already been made by exposure to fansubs.

By looking at the population of this forum, your observation about KyoAni being a name is a bit off. By the time AIR TV stopped airing, the most widely recognised opinion of the series was "either you love it or you hate it". While Kyoto Animation did show off its qualities to western fans starting with AIR TV, it was already apparent to Japan with Full Metal Panic! fumoffu. At least the Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu thread was anything but big before it started airing, much unlike the Raki☆Suta thread before airing.
KyoAni had become widely recognised in the west with the advent of Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu. Generally people were well aware of KyoAni's qualities beforehand, but the rave started after Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu happened. Raki☆Suta's popularity is a spill-over of the Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu anime. Because of its status it would've been licensed regardless of fansub availability. However, I put my hand on blazing fire that Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu wouldn't be where it is now without fansubs. So in a way fansubs did have something to do with Raki☆Suta's licence.

Originally Posted by Mentar

So what's the alternative? Netflix? That's not gonna save the industry.
[...]
Because - brutally said - the higher the prices, the more attractive fansubs and DVDrips get. And those will always exist. Fact.

Why not? It's certainly making money in Japan. DVD renting business is big in Japan because the majority of people can't afford them or don't wish to purchase them at such high prices. Those purchases are left to the "minority" of DVD collectors.

Can I ask for one good reason why high DVD prices + cheap DVD renting wouldn't work in the U.S.?

Originally Posted by Mentar

The way I see it, there are two different ways to go now: Either, trying to keep lowering the prices to make stuff more widely available and hoping to expand the sales this way (trying to get into the mainstream more) or doing the opposite and retreating into a niche market by slapping extra premiums on anime releases, squeezing out the otakus (the Japanese model). Both approaches are possible, but I suspect that the latter one would fail. Fansubs and DVD-rips will prevent it from succeeding.

If it makes you feel any better, at least the industry is thinking about lowering prices on anime (I should've mentioned this earlier). A few days ago, Publishers Weekly posted an interview with Milton Griepp, CEO of pop-culture site ICv2. I suggest you read the whole interview, but one important thing he noted was the following:

Originally Posted by Milton Griepp

There’s a great future but the old model for DVD sales—single episodes on a $30 DVD released every three months—is breaking down. These days you can’t wait that long to release the episodes, and the price is just too high. There’s a shift to DVDs offering a full-season collection, which lowers the per episode cost. The market is in transition, split between the two models, but it will eventually go straight to a season DVD collection.

Both ways have issues, and I think that's the reason why the industry has been sticking to the DVD singles market for so long. I hold the same opinion as Tri-ring and N-Bomb on the issue of anime breaking into mainstream. It's futile because there will always be other (domestic) programming to fill those TV slots. Lowering prices for something that will always stay in the niché is simply a bad idea due to very small profit margins on box collections, unless the casual anime consumer body is much bigger than anyone outside the industry ever imagined. While I'd like to believe that, senses tingling tell me otherwise.
There are certainly issues going the Japanese way. Leaving aside high prices and focusing on the hardcore anime consumer market only, one problem would be almost complete reliance on fansubs to establish market potential for their customer base (this conflicts with your opinion that fansubs/DVD-rips wouldn't let the market succeed this way), one other is increased competition from bootleg distribution.
If the industry ever takes the latter route, it will most definitely have to promote a cheaper alternative to watching anime, be it legal online distribution or inducing heavy promotion of anime DVDs/media for rent.

Originally Posted by Vexx

In fact, a great deal of the forum population *does* have the "if there was a legal and fairly priced way I'd do that rather than something illegally".

I'm with you on this. Personally, I'd rather do this legally than illegally.

[Tri-ring]

Originally Posted by Toua

If the industry ever takes the latter route, it will most definitely have to promote a cheaper alternative to watching anime, be it legal online distribution or inducing heavy promotion of anime DVDs/media for rent.I'm with you on this.

Well I already wrote a possible alternative by using the present on-line streaming sites. Here is a recap FYI.

My speculation is that the above free of price on-line streaming service's business model is pay pre-view for both licensing fee and commercial viewing but has a cluase within the contract by the marketers that it must be a domestic viewer to collect 1 view so the on-line streaming company have no choice but to block out overseas viewers or they themselves will need to pick up the licence cost for each uncollectable view.

One solution is to find a sponsor to place an ad in those on-line streaming companies to pay for your nation of origin's viewing. The added cost to seperate viewing content based on nationality is trivial and since anime is a niche contents targeting the M1 group, I think marketers such as soft drink manufacturer like Coca-cola, Games software producers like MS, sports and/or casual apparel manufacturers like Nike and GAP would be more than interested if they know how large and narrow targeted the audience is.
Advertisement agencies of your nation are probably not aware of this medium that attracts people so there is a possibility that they have overlooked the possiblity also.
One thing to that needs to be pointed out is that although the names I have written out are international, their marketing budgets are usually regional so it is un-likely for one international sponsor to pick up the global tab unless there was a major volume discount.
Since this community is pretty intellectual, I bet someone can develop a proposition with some statistics to presuade your regional marketer to fork out some dough to pay for your entertainment. Good Luck.

Oh I forgot, one way to come out with the needed figures can probably be obtained through Fan-subbers if they can count the number of torrent seeds that had been downloaded by nation per title.

I think the ball is in the oversea fan's court.

[Mentar]

Originally Posted by Toua

Why not? It's certainly making money in Japan. DVD renting business is big in Japan because the majority of people can't afford them or don't wish to purchase them at such high prices. Those purchases are left to the "minority" of DVD collectors.

I don't know if things are different in US rentals, but exactly because anime is NOT mainstream for example in Germany, the contingent of anime DVDs over here is minimal. If you artificially inflate the prices for DVDs, I can see that working in Japan, but over here? Rentals are already under heavy price pressure, and why should they place overpriced (compared to normal productions) obscure anime DVDs in their racks? What makes you think that this could work?

Can I ask for one good reason why high DVD prices + cheap DVD renting wouldn't work in the U.S.?

See above, why SHOULD it work? It will antagonize the "normal" purchasers, it will further diminish Wal-mart style retail chances (which mom would pick a 40$ anime over a 10$ Futurama?), and I see no compelling reason why video rentals alone would carry them.

*shrug*

I will not purchase any anime single DVD for anything above 25$, and even that is highly unlikely. Right now with the weak dollar and discounted, anime DVDs have reached the 10-15 Euro range, and this is where I'm currently filling up my collection from, PARTICULARLY from the cheap all-season releases (Elfen Lied, GTO etc). If you say that people like me are too commercially insignificant, and that they should rather raise the prices into heaven and pray some rentals bail them out - more power to you/them. But then I don't want to hear a single WORD of the old "bohoo, those fansubs are killing us" whining.

Originally Posted by Tri-ring

Well I already wrote a possible alternative by using the present on-line streaming sites. Here is a recap FYI.

Streaming just like DRM is dead on arrival for me, and not just for me, I'm sure. I purchase to own, not to temporarily consume in low quality in an inconvenient setup.

[Seditary]

Just curious, how much could the price of western anime dvds be lowered if they didn't bother with dubbing, and just subbed? (plus how much faster could titles be released)

Are there any companies that do this?

[SaintessHeart]

I think Japan is seriously screwed in the way it distributes its media.

You people have probably heard of the facist distributor Odex. The quality of it's goods simply sucked (imagine watching the naughty anime Girls Bravo at 640x480 resolution with squares all over the place) and the the anime company never bothered to ask the distributor to increase the quality. That is why people resort to downloads, and both the distributor and the licenser lose money in the process.

They then sought to repair the problem by suing the downloaders. Not a very intelligent way of doing business.

Besides technology is advancing so fast (hyper threading was replaced by dual core in a year), so anyone who rides with the wave will benefit from the market. Although it may be slightly true that doing things the good old way may prevent unecessarily huge losses in business, the old ways will also eventually lead to a stagnating business. After all, doing a business is about making losing and winning, you can't win all the time, but you can use the experience in your losses to try and win again.

This is just my half-cent worth of thoughts. Feel free to debate it.

[WanderingKnight]

Why not? It's certainly making money in Japan. DVD renting business is big in Japan because the majority of people can't afford them or don't wish to purchase them at such high prices. Those purchases are left to the "minority" of DVD collectors.

Can I ask for one good reason why high DVD prices + cheap DVD renting wouldn't work in the U.S.?

Just to add something to this point, here in Argentina you have that option with American series. You can go to any Blockbuster store and rent a DVD of any series, watch all the episodes at home and give it back, all for the price you would pay to rent a movie. The style of business certainly does work around here, so there's actually no reason at all why it shouldn't work in the US, especially considering that American DVDs don't sell as cheap here as you all claim they do over there (which would be a nice parallel to selling Japanese DVDs in the US).

Of course, there's always the help of good ol' libdvdcss , but the fact that most people rip the DVDs they rent doesn't seem to be bothering these guys at all.

[bayoab]

Originally Posted by Seditary

Just curious, how much could the price of western anime dvds be lowered if they didn't bother with dubbing, and just subbed? (plus how much faster could titles be released)

Are there any companies that do this?

Media Blasters does it with their yaoi and yuri titles and TRSI does it with its niche titles. The MSRP is 19.99 for Media Blasters and TRSI widely varies. As for speed, it really depends.

[OutPhase]

Originally Posted by Mentar

You know, that's easy for YOU to say, where you get TV airings of 70+ shows in a language you can understand

Now let's have a look at a 14 year old US teenager from a middle class family. How much of his monthly allowance should he spend on anime? Let's say 50$?

Do don't get $50 handed to me a month, and I do around half of the chores around the house despite five people living in the same house. Personally, I do not find the DVDs all that expensive, and the only time when price becomes an issue is when you are buying several series at around the same time and they have DVD releases only a week or two apart.

Since he's an upright and responsible anime viewer just like our industry sages tell us, he's not watching evil fansubs or fiendish DVDrips, nope - he PURCHASES his anime. Which gives him the amazing amount of... well... around 1 hour of anime per week to watch. Or, in other words, 2 shows. 4 hours of enjoyment for 50$.

This also sounds like the circumstances I was under for over three years. Also, you're making it sound like that anime DVDs have a tag price that doesn't budge. I could afford the new DVDs, but I also wanted to pick up titles that have been out longer, and this was during the days when I was getting in DDR, so I was dumping around $15 to $20 of tokens a month on average. I could buy several DVDs and still enjoy a trip to the arcade. How? I pinched my pennies and found tokens that people dropped or left behind.

Besides, the majority of the buyers are those who have jobs, whether it be full or part-time.

So what's the alternative? Netflix? That's not gonna save the industry.

I find Netflix a great alternative to buying anime since I only cared to watch the DVD once. Besides, it's doing more for the anime industry that bootlegs and fan-subs. Renting DVDs of anime in Japan isn't an uncommon thing since the prices for DVDs with only two episodes can cost more than full-season box-sets for American shows that have 20+ episodes, commentary, and special bonus footage.

There's hypocrisy and dishonesty in both directions. While one can rightfully argue that 20-25$ is not overly expensive, it's way too much for any serious anime fan who is NOT loaded (usually, most anime fans aren't) to pursue their hobby in a fully legal way

I can thanks to Netflix, Anime OnDemand, and DVDs becoming cheaper for anime, and I don't even have an actual job yet. No skin off my back. If you can't find a sale on DVDs at your store, you can go online to official anime DVD distributing sites.

No, DVD sales are effectively "rewards" the fansub-watching anime fans give to those shows they liked best. I'm convinced that without the foundation of downloadable fansubs, the anime market outside of Japan would shrink to stone age size in no time. Then again, I take relief in the fact that I don't see this happen anytime soon.

Prove that fan-subs are really making that huge of an impact on the Anime industry.

[HurricaneHige]

Originally Posted by Vexx

@HurricaneHige: I'd just appreciate it if you'd stop "shorthand texting" your posts. It makes them rather difficult to read. This is a forum, so there's no need to type 'leet' style (and the forum rules discourage it).

In fact, a great deal of the forum population *does* have the "if there was a legal and fairly priced way I'd do that rather than something illegally". So Aohige's assertion is at least true for a significant number of people here. Personally (but sadly) I think fansubs are a perfectly legitimate (if illegal) way to view unlicensed subs until someone provides a functionally equivalent (legal) way -- the market is being constrained by outmoded business models. Of course, I differentiate between unlicensed and licensed/dvdrips as well as I think the latter are offlimits (which may upset some people).

Man typing out every word is such a bother, but okay i'll do it for this post, since u raise some interesting points:

what Aoi said was that "I dont care if its legal or not, i did nothing wrong so fuck the law" I don't think that's how most of the forum feels, I think it's more along the lines of: "Its illegal, I know, but even if there's a legal way, I will still download it even if it is wrong" There's a difference between doing something wrong and admits it, and doing something wrong and don't admit it.

[ZeusIrae]

Originally Posted by Razer_2mb

Prove that fan-subs are really making that huge of an impact on the Anime industry.

I they didn't then why are talking about a crisis?The whole discussion is based on the assumption that fansubs do have an impact.If it doesn't then there's no crisis and no reason to scream "fansubs are killing us!".

[JustInn14]

Here's a good question...... Was the anime that you're talking about, able to be conveniently under-stood, by people in other countries? I mean that, as in, with out dubbing the crap out of it? ... Well?!

[sakuravs]

Fansub is not wrong, but in general I think fansubs are creating a more competitive atmosphere between anime makers, now that more and more people will have a chance to review a full anime before buying it, then, two chances will happen:

If a studio makes a fantastic anime with both an interesting plot and visually appealing, then, yes, although the number of people downloading fansub releases will be high (because they have no choice or can not understand Japanese). BUT...Of course there'll be Japanese people who are more obsessed & would NOT just satisfy with just looking at their anime on a 4:3 or 16:9 screen (at the average resolution of fansub release) and want more out of it, eventually many of them will go out & buy not just the DVD but also the real merchandise with all kinds of extra features & bonus items, etc. Needless to say that the chance an American company would license it will be high, too. In the long run, that studio still make profits. (I think Kyoto Animation is a classic example here.)

So, what about the other chance? Well, as for studios producing average-looking anime with an average or decent plot,then "Ah.....better save some bucks and sacrifice a little bit of hard drive space or a blank DVD, that's it! and good luck with the sales!"

[Xanas]

Originally Posted by ZeusIrae

I they didn't then why are talking about a crisis?The whole discussion is based on the assumption that fansubs do have an impact.If it doesn't then there's no crisis and no reason to scream "fansubs are killing us!".

Assuming there is a crises, there is a very real possibility it exists for reasons other than fansubs and the industry is just choosing the easiest target to place blame on. After all, a huge base of non-paying fans is always going to look bad to them. They are picking the obvious target, but that doesn't mean it's the correct target. The reason could be competition, lack of disposable income in the anime-buying population, or just a set of bad releases that didn't interest people as much.

Honestly I think without numbers to compare the industry w/ fansubs vs. industry w/o fansubs we can't make a conclusion. Since fansubs existed before and after the downturn, it doesn't make sense to me to place absolute blame on them. It's possible fansubs have just made fans more discerning so they are better about not buying the series they don't like very much. This is bad for the industry in the short run, but releasing things that consumers don't like will end up having a detrimental effect eventually anyway (it'll push some consumers away permanently if they end up buying something they hate).

[Seditary]

Originally Posted by bayoab

Media Blasters does it with their yaoi and yuri titles and TRSI does it with its niche titles. The MSRP is 19.99 for Media Blasters and TRSI widely varies. As for speed, it really depends.

Granted, I don't know the market for yuri and yaoi titles, but that sounds to me like niche, niche and niche, so they could pretty much reduce their costs of putting this stuff out without dubs while still selling it at high prices because of the smaller consumer base.

[raikage]

Originally Posted by HurricaneHige

I like fansubs for wat it brings to the anime fans over on this side of the world, fast, often reliable translations, and most importantly: ACCESS to up-to-dated anime. Unlike Japan, North Americans do not have access to series unless it has been Licensed and dub, putting the dub quality aside, the license process alone takes at least 1 year. This makes great series that we want to watch quite "obsolete" when we acutally have access to it. The fact that anime is only a niche market here also makes the budget for dubbing quite low, and in turn very very few voice actors can really match up to their Japanese counterpart (Yori L being one of the few whos actually good).

I don't see how this matters. It's entertainment, not technology -- who cares if it's new or cutting-edge?

If there were no fansubs in N. America and we all had to rent/purchase the DVD's as they came out (assuming we all do so), discussions on N. American forums can be just as timely and relevant. The latest would still be the latest as far as we'd be concerned.

Originally Posted by Seditary

Just curious, how much could the price of western anime dvds be lowered if they didn't bother with dubbing, and just subbed? (plus how much faster could titles be released)

Are there any companies that do this?

I don't see the prices dropping all that much.

In the first place, this kind of flips back to the dubs vs subs argument -- as I believe a lack of dubs would limit sales. Not everyone enjoys reading; some viewers want to put a DVD in the machine and sit back and enjoy the animation without being distracted by the subs.

In the second place, I think the bulk of the cost comes from licensing, not from paying voice actors. I could be wrong, though.

And related to the first point, if something is subbed-only there is no chance it'll make Cartoon Network or G4 or Sci-Fi. There goes another revenue stream...

Originally Posted by Toua

Can I ask for one good reason why high DVD prices + cheap DVD renting wouldn't work in the U.S.?

I'd say high DVD prices + cheap renting + merchandising.

Though the insane popularity of the show baffles me just a bit, I have little doubt a Haruhi bunny-guitar statue would sell like hotcakes.

I've seen people in my comics shop playing Yu-Gi-Oh, Naruto, and Gundam collectible card games.

[N-Bomb]

Originally Posted by Mentar

*shrug*

If you seriously think that ramping UP the prices Japan-style will help them, then let's just agree to disagree. It's a rush into a dead end.

They don't have to be ridiculously priced like in Japan, but getting $20/4 animu DVDs is not a good idea in such a niche market. $30-40 should be a happy medium, IMO. Hell, I bought Macross Plus when it was running like $40 a volume, and I really had no complaints.

Originally Posted by Mentar

I doubt that I'd ever be willing to pay more than 20$ per DVD, even for my favorite shows. And I consider myself one of the more eager customers. They'd simply be cannibalizing their customer base with that. Because - brutally said - the higher the prices, the more attractive fansubs and DVDrips get. And those will always exist. Fact.

Obviously you're not that big of a fan then. And there's nothing wrong with that, but it shows the weakness of the industry. Let's not ignore that if anime were more expensive, licensors might choose their shows a bit more carefully, and we wouldn't have to waste shelf-space on tripe like Key shows and Gravion.

Originally Posted by Mentar

It's the other way round: As long as it doesn't sell for significantly less, it will never become the Simpsons. Not even half of them.

Dammit, Toua and his awesome avatar already said more or less what I meant to, but lemme say this - you seem to be under the mistaken impression that people who wouldn't normally buy animu would buy it if it was cheap. Mainstream anime is increasingly more and more niche and jpnz in nature, this is going to be a turnoff to alot of people. Not to mention that the nostalgia of Starvengers and Voltron is wearing off on many people. More people will buy anime if it interests them than if it's cheap.

Again, animu will never be The Simpsons, Looney Tunes, GI JOE or even Gargoyles. It CANNOT be treated as such if it wants to succeed. Remember, mass-market acceptance isn't the only measure of success.

[ZeusIrae]

Originally Posted by Xanas

. Since fansubs existed before and after the downturn, it doesn't make sense to me to place absolute blame on them.

Amen, this is common sense.That's the question that nobody answered, if fansubs were so dangerous for the industry then why did the market grow?

[Lycestra]

Originally Posted by ZeusIrae

Amen, this is common sense.That's the question that nobody answered, if fansubs were so dangerous for the industry then why did the market grow?

How can it be common sense that fansubs don't affect the industry? Fansubs have changed thru the years, and quite dramatically I should say. Saying the equation is the same by assuming the players are constant isn't realistic. It's no longer poor copies on tapes that degrade, but flawless copies of the original that are distributed with ease, and by anyone. Other industries face this same thing of the Internet. Some ignore it, some respond well and use it, others respond poorly and sue it. The anime industry seems to have mostly ignored it. And with the popularity of fansubs, the industry really should take notice and use it to their advantage. (some have)

Everyone knows the publishing industry needs to wake up to this. They're very late to the game. Consider that there was a time that the printed page was the real news, and TV was considered a joke or just rumor. It took breaking live news that papers couldn't keep up with to expose the utility of TV in delivering content. In the days of the Kennedy tragedy, people bought a special edition and got right back in line to buy the next one, meanwhile Lee Harvey Oswald was shot on live TV. (no kidding) The internet is the next step, and one where you don't need a massive company behind it, just a computer.

Computers used to be monoliths, and PC's were mocked as an irrelevant trend. Now, PCs are everywhere, and are really easy to get with much the same feature set as any behemoth. I see the same parallel in publishing, in that effectively anyone can do it (legal or not). The industry still produces content like yesteryear, but the industry could branch into their own broadcast. Screw making contract deals with cable companies to spread your own slow, large, and expensive cable network. Make a .com and get into a market that modern fansubs have carved out. Deliver what the people want. DVD is the new CD. Nay, worse than.

[luckyfoshizzle]

I understand why Japan would want to make the distribution of anime online illegal. I think they shouldn't in the sense that no one outside of Japan will be able to enjoy all of the great anime tht will never be released anywhere else or the anime that'll take years to distribute.

I think that if you've already watched a series online and thoroughly enjoyed it and it's licensed, you should go buy it as a way to contribute. But there's people out there that don't buy it just because they don't enjoy dubbed. That's pretty dumb since you can choice from dubbed or subbed. If you know for certain you won't enjoy the dubbed then just ignore it and go straight to subbed.

They should, for example put up a website online so that when a series is being aired in Japan, the creators can stream a subbed one that would list the amounts of people that watch and what not so it'll also be easier to decided which ones would be licensed. They can make a profit from that, too. They do it in America. Well, not the subbing part, but they should.

Sorry, if any of that doesn't make any sense I'm kind of new at discussing topics such as these.

[grgspunk]

Originally Posted by luckyfoshizzle

I understand why Japan would want to make the distribution of anime online illegal. I think they shouldn't in the sense that no one outside of Japan will be able to enjoy all of the great anime tht will never be released anywhere else or the anime that'll take years to distribute.

I think that if you've already watched a series online and thoroughly enjoyed it and it's licensed, you should go buy it as a way to contribute. But there's people out there that don't buy it just because they don't enjoy dubbed. That's pretty dumb since you can choice from dubbed or subbed. If you know for certain you won't enjoy the dubbed then just ignore it and go straight to subbed.

They should, for example put up a website online so that when a series is being aired in Japan, the creators can stream a subbed one that would list the amounts of people that watch and what not so it'll also be easier to decided which ones would be licensed. They can make a profit from that, too. They do it in America. Well, not the subbing part, but they should.

Sorry, if any of that doesn't make any sense I'm kind of new at discussing topics such as these.

No you made perfect sense. If the Japanese companies are THAT worried about fansubs, they will eventually have to acknowledge the fact that there are foreign fans out there who want to watch their shows and bring them to us themselves in a timely, easy-to-access, relatively inexpensive form. Otherwise they won't be able to do much about the use/distribution of fansubs. I mean, how many of you guys download a fansub because you don't ever expect that particular title to be released outside of Japan?

Even if it's their choice to say what gets distributed or not in foreign countries, that won't stop fansubbers, and the foreigners are going gain access to their titles one way or another, so they might as well bring their titles to us themselves instead of having fansubbers act as the middleman.

I would love to see Bandai or Geneon Japan open up a subbed anime streaming/downloading site for their titles.