Lines are being redrawn for Japan's anime industry

[karice67]

Originally Posted by Reckoner

Once again, I'm going to ask you have you actually "lived" in Santa Barbara? Not visited. And the US is not a homogeneous country, it changes drastically depending on region, and in the case of the state of California it could change in a matter of a couple hour drive.

Note that I was talking about the States in general, not Santa Barbara in particular. And not just about food you get in restaurants/diners and what not. Furthermore, it's prices in electronics and entertainment (DVDs and CDs) that register the greatest price differences between the US and most other first world countries.

Originally Posted by Reckoner

Did I ever say that I know the prices of other countries?

I was saying that you SHOULD be thinking about standards of living outside of the US. As Vexx mentioned, costs are relative. You said that anime DVDs are "overpriced" and compared them to US DVD prices. What's more relevant? Costs (and the market) in Japan, or in the US?

Originally Posted by Reckoner

(And btw, don't make it seem like you're the only one who has lived in other countries. I've lived in Germany and Mexico just so you know).

Is 18 your real age? If it is, then in terms of actually feeling the cost of living, I don't think it matters how many countries you've lived in.

Originally Posted by Reckoner

Again, did I say that the industry's practices weren't profitable for them? I'm sure they are lining their pockets with cash, at the expense of the artists, animators, and of course the consumer .

It really isn't that simple. Once again, I suggest you actually go and read more about the industry in Japan. It might also help to think about how cost, supply and demand are linked, and about what demand in the Japanese market is like. If you don't want to bother, then I have nothing more to say.

Originally Posted by Reckoner

My point still stands, for me it is silly to purchase 2 episodes of anime that at times are even lower quality than fansubs, for a great sum of $50. End of story.

Subs? For Japanese DVDs? Er...right.
Or are you talking about HD broadcasts vs normal DVDs (e.g. Durarara!!)?

Originally Posted by Kaijo

While this handy picture is mainly for the music industry, the same thing applies to the anime industry. Greedy corporate fucks are greedy corporate fucks no matter what country they're in.

There is a fair amount of evidence to suggest that the margins are far slimmer in the anime industry than in the music industry. I suggest you read up on it too.

[Reckoner]

Originally Posted by karice67

Note that I was talking about the States in general, not Santa Barbara in particular. And not just about food you get in restaurants/diners and what not. Furthermore, it's prices in electronics and entertainment (DVDs and CDs) that register the greatest price differences between the US and most other first world countries.

So basically your statements are irrelevant since you have no idea of my own costs of living or how much I pay for things in general. OK.

Originally Posted by karice67

I was saying that you SHOULD be thinking about standards of living outside of the US. As Vexx mentioned, costs are relative. You said that anime DVDs are "overpriced" and compared them to US DVD prices. What's more relevant? Costs (and the market) in Japan, or in the US?

Is 18 your real age? If it is, then in terms of actually feeling the cost of living, I don't think it matters how many countries you've lived in.

I'm sure you know enough about me to make a statement like this. Get this, not every child is sheltered from the world and is totally unaware of the cost of everything. Sometimes parents make said child really experience the cost of living by making him get jobs early, sometimes they make their child save up to buy anything they want. And sometimes said child's parents are not the riches out there. But whatever, keep making statements like that.

Originally Posted by karice67

It really isn't that simple. Once again, I suggest you actually go and read more about the industry in Japan. It might also help to think about how cost, supply and demand are linked, and about what demand in the Japanese market is like. If you don't want to bother, then I have nothing more to say.

Hey if you want to keep ignoring what I am saying, and keep constructing arguments that I never made, I don't see much point in this discussion.

First of all, nothing I said contradicts your statement here. Second, where is your supposed demonstrated knowledge of the industry? You're preaching from your own little perch there, but I have yet to see why you are more knowledgeable about this.

Originally Posted by karice67

Subs? For Japanese DVDs? Er...right.
Or are you talking about HD broadcasts vs normal DVDs (e.g. Durarara!!)?

There is a fair amount of evidence to suggest that the margins are far slimmer in the anime industry than in the music industry. I suggest you read up on it too.

Yes. Right. Also talking about visual quality of HD broadcasts vs. DVD's because the companies are holding back no releasing blue rays half the time.

[relentlessflame]

Okay guys... let's let other people give their two-cents for a little while. This back-and-forth bickering has gone on too long. So please give it a break and just let it go.

[synaesthetic]

Since it seems to be an issue for some, I actually don't take issue with the prices of R1 anime series. They're really quite reasonable!

What's so bad about 12-13 episodes for $35-40 ($50 for a new release in a brick-and-mortar store)?

It's a hell of a lot better than the "bad old days" of the late 90s and early 2000s, when I distinctly remember seeing the Fushigi Yuugi boxsets at Suncoast Video for two hundred dollars each! That's $100 per 13 episodes! And that's still cheaper than individual discs cost back then--$30-35 for three episodes was the norm back then!

And people are bitching about half-seasons costing $40? Guys, this is a 150% reduction in price over the last ten years. Christ. It's a niche product. It's going to be more expensive.

The only problem I have with buying anime commercially now is that BD availability is low and a lot of them tend to just be poorly-remastered DVD upsamples (this goes for older movies and domestic TV shows, too). This makes me annoyed because the fansubs using transport streams pulled from satellite TV are higher quality than the media I paid money for. (Not even going to go into the fact that the fansub groups typically produce higher-quality subtitles).

Of course, my current solution is to just buy the R1 DVDs of a show I like and keep watching my fansubs. It works well enough for me since I watch everything on my lappy, anyway, and just enjoy the look of the DVDs on my shelf.

[Solace]

(Not even going to go into the fact that the fansub groups typically produce higher-quality subtitles).

This is the one that really irks me, since it's so easy to fix. Many of the so called "professional" subs lack the touches that good fan subs hard to replace. Sometimes the grammar is wrong, or the OP/ED are untranslated, or even things like signs and other text is completely ignored even when it's directly relevant to the story. And we won't even mention text/font choices, ugh.

My old VHS box set of Vampire Princess Miyu came with a pamphlet from the studio that not only included explanations some of the more common translated terms (like oni/oba/oka), but also discussions about how to translate and the difficulties of localizing the names of the characters. For example the character Larva was something they had to contact the author about because the L/R and B/V sounds in Japanese are basically the same...so they didn't know how to correctly spell it in the subtitles.

That kind of dedication is admirable and made me enjoy the series more, unfortunately it's kind of hit or miss with a lot of newer licensed series.

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by synaesthetic

The only problem I have with buying anime commercially now is that BD availability is low and a lot of them tend to just be poorly-remastered DVD upsamples (this goes for older movies and domestic TV shows, too). This makes me annoyed because the fansubs using transport streams pulled from satellite TV are higher quality than the media I paid money for.

Yeah, this is a byproduct of the fact that the prices for late-night anime BDs and DVDs in Japan are so much more expensive than what the North American markets will bear. Japanese companies are very worried that Japanese customers will just skip out on the Japanese release and wait for the nearly-infinitely cheaper North American release and import it that way. In the DVD era NA licensors were able to use the Region Codes as a way to appease the "suits" concerned about this, but in the BD era North America and Japan are in the same region (and as a result, most Japanese BDs are region-free anyway; what's the point?). This sort of concern is the reason why many Japanese BD releases focus on packaging and extras; it's fostering the collector's mentality, rather than the "I just want to own this disc so I can watch it". Most people I know who collect Japanese anime BD releases (myself included) barely watch them; it's very similar to the "I just like having them on my shelf" thing you said. (Some people refuse to even take them out of their packaging; I'm not that extreme though... )

Anyway, that's sort of a side-issue to this thread except in the larger sense that the collapse of the anime bubble in the U.S. (which is why we have such cheaper DVD pricing in North America) has certainly been one of the factors contributing to the decline in the amount of anime produced over the last few years. But even if the market hadn't contracted so severely, I'm not sure it would have changed the situation of the animators all that much. It's hard to say.

And, incidentally, I think the pricing issue they were talking about in the first place was about the Japanese DVD/BD pricing, but I too found it a bit difficult to follow. Customers outside of Japan are really never expected to buy Japanese releases, although a few of us crazies do it anyway.

[synaesthetic]

For me it's a resolution issue.

I don't care about extras. I don't typically buy BDs now because even if there's a 1080p H264 video on there, what gets neglected?

The audio. At best, your BDs have FLAC or some other lossless or uncompressed derivative of PCM. That's CD quality, folks. Over twenty years old, and we're still using that as an audio quality standard? It's even worse when you consider the presence of 7.1 and 5.1 tracks, which are very likely lossy audio on those "these BDs are just upsampled DVDs and we just transcoded the AC3 to FLAC" sort of thing.

BD has more than enough space to not only put a 1080p stream but also use some higher resolution audio. Please, can we at least get DVD-Audio standard resolution of 24-bit, 192kHz audio instead of the ancient and aging Redbook standard of 16-bit, 44.1kHz?

Please?

With this insane obsession with high-resolution video and BD extras, add-ins and whatnot, the audio is getting forgotten. It's not enough for the picture to be pretty if the audio sounds like it's being played over a ten year old Nokia cell phone.

[Reckoner]

Originally Posted by relentlessflame

And, incidentally, I think the pricing issue they were talking about in the first place was about the Japanese DVD/BD pricing, but I too found it a bit difficult to follow. Customers outside of Japan are really never expected to buy Japanese releases, although a few of us crazies do it anyway.

Well I was actually kind of talking about both.

My comments about $50 for like two episodes were indeed more about the Japanese market than the US... However, the products that do come to the US are often so crappy, that even if they are much cheaper, are just not worth the money due to their lower quality nature.

And some of my comments are perhaps a little outdated as more and more boxed sets are coming out to the US that were much cheaper than i remember even 5 years ago. I recall as a naive youth going through the hassle of purchasing all of Cowboy Bebop for almost 150-200 dollars, and now you can get the better quality episodes, that are even cheaper, in just ONE boxed set for like 40-50 dollars I believe now... Well that kind of ticks me off to say the least.

I myself buy many anime purchases, but I'm very selective about it, and actually have recently stopped with the BD fiasco going on. When the fansubs as I and others have pointed out are better translated and better video quality than the blue rays themselves, then it's a complete joke.

[0utf0xZer0]

Originally Posted by synaesthetic

Of course, my current solution is to just buy the R1 DVDs of a show I like and keep watching my fansubs. It works well enough for me since I watch everything on my lappy, anyway, and just enjoy the look of the DVDs on my shelf.

This is essentially my solution too, particularly as a I have an HD fansub capable PC and don't have a Bluray player.

Considering I basically do it purely to support companies I like (and a little bit because of the collector factor, I'll admit), I've often thought about enschewing the R1 market completely and just importing a volume or two of shows I like from Japan ("cut the middleman"), but I like to reward licensors who pick up stuff I like too.

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by synaesthetic

I don't care about extras. I don't typically buy BDs now because even if there's a 1080p H264 video on there, what gets neglected?

The audio. At best, your BDs have FLAC or some other lossless or uncompressed derivative of PCM. That's CD quality, folks. Over twenty years old, and we're still using that as an audio quality standard? It's even worse when you consider the presence of 7.1 and 5.1 tracks, which are very likely lossy audio on those "these BDs are just upsampled DVDs and we just transcoded the AC3 to FLAC" sort of thing.

BD has more than enough space to not only put a 1080p stream but also use some higher resolution audio. Please, can we at least get DVD-Audio standard resolution of 24-bit, 192kHz audio instead of the ancient and aging Redbook standard of 16-bit, 44.1kHz?

Please?

Well, this implies that the audio was actually mastered at anything higher than (roughly) CD quality to start with, and I'm not convinced that's necessarily the case -- especially on the Japanese side. I've just popped in sample of recent Japanese BD releases, and they're all 2 Ch. 48 kHz Linear PCM (either 16-bit or 24-bit in some cases). I popped in Kanon and Clannad (which were remastered in surround explicitly for the BD Boxsets) and they're also 48 kHz Linear PCM 5.1 (along with DTS-HD MA, still at 48 kHz). When the product was deliberately remastered for the Blu-Rays, I don't think they then turned around to downgrade it just because they felt like it. But what's the point in outputting at too much of a higher bit-depth/sample rate than your actual source material if you're using an uncompressed format anyway (like Linear PCM)? You could upscale the mixdown to 96/192 kHz just to have impressive-looking specs, but that won't do much good. We'd have to get the people involved to actually start recording, mixing, and mastering this stuff at that level of fidelity to start with. And if they did that, I don't see any reason why they wouldn't put that on the Blu-Rays. But if they've barely ever cared about surround sound to this point (and are still producing some new series in SD and upscaling it at the source), I'm not sure they're suddenly going to jump all the way to this sort of audio quality anytime soon. Anime has always been produced on the cheap.

Originally Posted by Reckoner

When the fansubs as I and others have pointed out are better translated and better video quality than the blue rays themselves, then it's a complete joke.

I can't speak of U.S. anime Blu-Rays (as I haven't bought any), but all of the Japanese anime Blu-Rays I've purchased have video quality that unquestionably exceeds the original TV broadcast. Those that have English subtitles (which, granted, aren't very many) have been of good quality in terms of translation. I've never found myself saying "Oh, the fansubs were better". So I have to say that my own experiences have been quite positive, and very unlike your own. I guess the Blu-Rays in the U.S. market are unquestionably worse? (I was under the impression that there weren't that many, except for upscales.)


Anyway... this is taking a left turn, and we should probably go back to the main topic at hand, which is the state of the Japanese industry and the plight of animators in the face of stiff competition and pressure to reduce costs.

[Kaijo]

The answer is simple, which is why it won't be done: reduce the overhead, and the corporate execs who insist on making millions. If they spread the profit around more, and made normal salaries, they could drop the price on these things by several fold and easily make a living.

They don't *want* to.

This is the problem the anime industry is facing, that the music industry is facing, and that the movie industry is starting to slide into. Dinosaurs are thrashing about, crying "piracy" and doom and gloom, when it's their own outdated business model that is at fault. It needs to die, so a new model can be born; one where people self-publish and become popular based on the quality of their work, not how much marketing money is spent on it and what a CEO says you should buy. There are musicians doing this today, giving away their songs for free, and yet still making money.

And region-coding should die. If corps can outsource their production, we can outsource our buying.

[Reckoner]

Originally Posted by Kaijo

The answer is simple, which is why it won't be done: reduce the overhead, and the corporate execs who insist on making millions. If they spread the profit around more, and made normal salaries, they could drop the price on these things by several fold and easily make a living.

They don't *want* to.

This is the problem the anime industry is facing, that the music industry is facing, and that the movie industry is starting to slide into. Dinosaurs are thrashing about, crying "piracy" and doom and gloom, when it's their own outdated business model that is at fault. It needs to die, so a new model can be born; one where people self-publish and become popular based on the quality of their work, not how much marketing money is spent on it and what a CEO says you should buy. There are musicians doing this today, giving away their songs for free, and yet still making money.

And region-coding should die. If corps can outsource their production, we can outsource our buying.

Thank you for this post Kaijo, this was all I was trying to point to this whole time in the thread before getting pulled into a multitude of tangents.

[karice67]

Originally Posted by Kaijo

The answer is simple, which is why it won't be done: reduce the overhead, and the corporate execs who insist on making millions. If they spread the profit around more, and made normal salaries, they could drop the price on these things by several fold and easily make a living.

Narrowing it down to the anime industry in Japan (since that's what this thread is about in the first place), do you have figures for what these execs are earning? How about figures on the profit (or losses) that sponsors make? If you're going to make a general statement based on the general idea you have of the market, please back it up.

Originally Posted by Kaijo

This is the problem the anime industry is facing, that the music industry is facing, and that the movie industry is starting to slide into. Dinosaurs are thrashing about, crying "piracy" and doom and gloom, when it's their own outdated business model that is at fault. It needs to die, so a new model can be born; one where people self-publish and become popular based on the quality of their work, not how much marketing money is spent on it and what a CEO says you should buy. There are musicians doing this today, giving away their songs for free, and yet still making money.

Whilst the internet has created a lot of distribution options, it hasn't done anything for the cost of actually producing the work (other than allowing them to outsource to cheaper grunt workers). Nor does it account for differences in cost between producing music and anime. Yes, we need a new model...but do you have a viable suggestion? One that takes into account the sad but true fact that people are starting to expect things for free or pittance? Several creators have recently written about this topic, and what I found most interesting was how some Kuroshitsuji fans actually wrote to the author that they peruse the manga and anime via illegal means (thread). There's been a lot of negative feedback for the author since she wrote about it on her blog, some of which I think is justified, but she also wrote the following (my emphasis):

Originally Posted by kenrou

I know it is regrettable if you failed to watch the episodes or forgot to record them. I have done it before. Hey, students, especially students in elementary-schools and junior high-schools who are not allowed to work, it is very hard for you to buy DVD or BD. I know how you feel., but it can't be excuse. If you missed watching, watch it on pay websites or video rental shops. You can watch at cheap price. You can get such a pin money from you parents when you do assistance. If you are adults, of course, pay. So, if you haven't got small money, are you allowed to watch it for free? The answer is "NO".

Before you try to download, try to check TV to prevent from missing because they are free when they were broadcast. And, if you feel it funny or you want to watch next episodes, please buy any products including DVD, rentals, official products or CD. One is enough. Please buy the official products of anime you like. It will save the future of the work and also save the future of anime and manga industry. Please. We will do as much as possible to produce good works to entertain you.

Note that she says "one is enough". She, at least, isn't expecting fans to buy EVERYTHING. I certainly don't. But if you like someting, support it, at least in some way. If you already do, then I sincerely applaud you. But please don't expect to get everything on terms that suit you. The market is a lot more complex than you seem to think.

I also think the industry needs to change. And change is coming (pay-per-view sites etc), probably more slowly than we'd like. But does that mean that we shouldn't spend a cent until it changes to a model we like?

[0utf0xZer0]

Originally Posted by Kaijo

The answer is simple, which is why it won't be done: reduce the overhead, and the corporate execs who insist on making millions. If they spread the profit around more, and made normal salaries, they could drop the price on these things by several fold and easily make a living.

They don't *want* to.

This is the problem the anime industry is facing, that the music industry is facing, and that the movie industry is starting to slide into. Dinosaurs are thrashing about, crying "piracy" and doom and gloom, when it's their own outdated business model that is at fault. It needs to die, so a new model can be born; one where people self-publish and become popular based on the quality of their work, not how much marketing money is spent on it and what a CEO says you should buy. There are musicians doing this today, giving away their songs for free, and yet still making money.

Self publishing tends to work better with small production staffs. It is much easier to produce music with a small staff than anime.

[bayoab]

Originally Posted by Kaijo

While this handy picture is mainly for the music industry, the same thing applies to the anime industry. Greedy corporate fucks are greedy corporate fucks no matter what country they're in.

The industries are similar and completely different at the same time. However, nobody is rolling over in profits in the Japanese production model. This is not like the RIAA and their bogus accounting practices. There are no evil greedy corporations here. If they were constantly banking, why would the number of projects be steadily declining? This is about contracting, wages, supply and demand. This is not the same as a band which is about recoup.

Originally Posted by synaesthetic

The only problem I have with buying anime commercially now is that BD availability is low and a lot of them tend to just be poorly-remastered DVD upsamples (this goes for older movies and domestic TV shows, too). This makes me annoyed because the fansubs using transport streams pulled from satellite TV are higher quality than the media I paid money for. (Not even going to go into the fact that the fansub groups typically produce higher-quality subtitles).

You are making the flawed assumption that just because it "aired" in "HD" that it actually exists in HD. As of ~April 09, just around half of the shows were actually airing in HD. And then there are still examples like FMA:B which was animated in "larger than SD" to save costs because true HD animation was too expensive.

Originally Posted by Kaijo

The answer is simple, which is why it won't be done: reduce the overhead, and the corporate execs who insist on making millions. If they spread the profit around more, and made normal salaries, they could drop the price on these things by several fold and easily make a living.

This money doesn't exist. Most anime projects lose money or barely break even. (Or are done to stimulate some other form of buying [figures, manga] to make up for the loss.)

It needs to die, so a new model can be born; one where people self-publish and become popular based on the quality of their work, not how much marketing money is spent on it and what a CEO says you should buy. There are musicians doing this today, giving away their songs for free, and yet still making money.

Count how many self-published anime there are. The only thing you will find is things like Makoto Shinkai. Even doujin groups barely make a single episode or are multiple 5 minute episodes. It's just not possible with anime.

To note, there is a whole area at Tokyo Anime Fair dedicated to independent creators. They are mostly self-publishing through things like the iTunes store. Guess what, none of these are popular.

[Reckoner]

You make it seem like the money goes down a whirlpool and disappears. Maybe the person profiting isn't within the anime company itself, but SOMEONE is profiting from it. They aren't simply burning stacks of money here, and there is SOMEONE to blame for the losses and thinly spread profits or in some cases loses.

Who is getting the money?

[TinyRedLeaf]

Originally Posted by Reckoner

You make it seem like the money goes down a whirlpool and disappears. Maybe the person profiting isn't within the anime company itself, but SOMEONE is profiting from it. They aren't simply burning stacks of money here, and there is SOMEONE to blame for the losses and thinly spread profits or in some cases loses.

Who is getting the money?

bayoab, in my opinion, is closer to the truth than many of us realise. Margins, I highly suspect, are very thin at all levels of the production chain.

There is a one key structural problem when it comes to anime creators: The sector is highly fragmented. From what I understand (unfortunately, I've lost the links), anime studios make up a highly saturated cottage industry. Many of them are quite likely started almost as hobby, or maybe with naive ambitions of wanting to create the next big hit.

This has two implications: 1) Very fierce competition for limited broadcasting and distribution channels; 2) We end up with a buyers' market rather than a sellers' market. Meaning to say, the broadcasters, merchandisers and distributers possess far greater negotiating power, because for every time/merchandising slot, there are possibly hundreds of anime/manga concepts competing for them.

So long as the anime industry remains highly fragmented, anime creators lack the bargaining power to demand better deals that would, in turn, lead to better wages and better working conditions.

In short, like what Sackett had postulated earlier, consolidation needs to happen.

[Triple_R]

I agree that the modern anime industry is too highly fragmented.

There's too many middlemen and there's perhaps too many little animation studios.

It would probably be better if:

1. There were only a handful of animation studios, maybe six or seven in total, and they all specialized in particular areas. I could envision this working with the following:

Sunrise (after buying up Gainax and Bones) - The mecha studio. Occasionally dabble in animes involving action girls that get in mecha-esque action (Mai HiME).

Kyoto Animation (after buying up PA Works) - The comedy/slice-of-life/moe studio. They would specialize in animes that fall neatly into one or more of those three categories.

JC Staff/Studio Deen fusion - Action Girl studio. They would specialize in animes that are similar to those handled by Kyoto Animation, but a bit more action-packed (i.e. like Shakugan no Shana).

SHAFT (after buying up Brains Base) - Avant Garde studio. They would specialize in animes that are best represented by SHAFT's distinctive style (such as Bakemonogatari).

And some combination of the remaining studios can handle the remaining anime genres, including shounen.


The benefit of fewer total studios is that it makes animes that bomb in sales easier to withstand. Sunrise, for example, has made plenty of commercial stinkers, but their flagship titles make more than enough profit to make up for it. Some of the more obscure studios, however, don't have big sellers to offset the losses brought on by their bombs.


2. Instead of going through a licensing process at all, perhaps it would be best to simply have branches of the core animation studio all over the world. For example, you'd have Sunrise Japan, Sunrise America, Sunrise Europe, Sunrise Australia, etc... So the core Sunrise studio would simply pass on its work to its foreign branches, and get them to distribute it on a worldwide level. Cut out the middle man.

[Marcus H.]

This is what I've pointed out in the Anime News Network forums a few days ago. (However, opinions there always sway in the favor of the users who donate to the site, and most are just biased against users from "pro-fansubs" sites.) The middlemen are taking what is supposed to be the income of the mangaka or the original creator, stealing away portion upon portion of the entire sales to things which are sometimes too complicated for the creator to think about.

Also, is this true?
"Kubo doesn't own Bleach, Shueisha (the parent company of Shonen Jump) owns it."

If that is the case, then is this yet another main concern in the anime industry?

[karice67]

Originally Posted by Triple_R

The benefit of fewer total studios is that it makes animes that bomb in sales easier to withstand. Sunrise, for example, has made plenty of commercial stinkers, but their flagship titles make more than enough profit to make up for it. Some of the more obscure studios, however, don't have big sellers to offset the losses brought on by their bombs.

If I'm not mistaken (at the very least, most of the anime I'm watching now are examples) most animation studios currently aren't on the production committee's of the shows they animate. I.e. Any losses aren't borne by them. Needless to say, they won't get any profits either, just the budget they get for the show in the first place.

Some studios (SHAFT being a good example) are usually on the production committees...but several such studios have closed their doors or downsized in recent years because they couldn't take the losses. A famous one a few years ago was Gonzo. Recently, there's been talk of IG Port, parent company of Production IG, being in a sport of bother. (They suffered a loss equivalent to about $5-6million, which I figure is about the amount you need to produce a decent one-cour series.)

Yes, the anime industry is changing. But as most capitalist economies go, it's moving the power towards a few bigger companies, including Aniplex, Sony Music, Lantis and the various publishing houses (Square-Enix, Kodansha etc), i.e. the the broadcasters, merchandisers and distributers that TinyRedLeaf mentioned.

And taking the "buyer's market" one step further...there are thousands of people who want to become animators - i.e. if someone won't or can't accept the ridiculously low pay, someone else will. (This isn't just a problem in the anime industry though...there are a lot of other popular jobs that have way too many people competing for them.)

Possible solutions? I really don't know...but the first thing that probably has to go is, unfortunately, a good portion of the people with, in TinyRedLeaf's words, naive ambitions.

@bayoab
Just wondering, how can one check whether a series is made in SD, "larger than SD", and true HD? I've tried looking, but haven't been able to figure it out.

Originally Posted by Marcus H.

Also, is this true?
"Kubo doesn't own Bleach, Shueisha (the parent company of Shonen Jump) owns it."

Could very well be. Ever heard of the problems that CLAMP has with finishing X? Asuka simply refuses to publish the next chapter/ending, which CLAMP refuses to change, and they can't take it anywhere else.