Open letter to the community from the CEO of Bang Zoom Entertainment

[TheFluff]

Originally Posted by synaesthetic

The anime industry and the PC gaming industry are so similar in how they're fucking up it's unbelievable.

http://insomnia.ac/commentary/pc_game_piracy/

This is an amazing article about PC piracy and generally what's wrong with the PC gaming industry. The number of parallels to this issue and the issue of the anime industry vs. fansubs is remarkable.

this article contains a lot more words than this thread does, yet I still read the article but not the thread

good link, thanks

[Spectacular_Insanity]

I love the author's blatant use of misinformation. It's like he doesn't even know what he's talking about. Wait a second.... he doesn't. Nevermind.

I thought this post by a random commenter was pretty funny:

You sir, are an idiot.
Man up and think of solutions, or ask those that actually have possible solutions for all these problems you believe the anime industry has. You say that pirates are killing the anime industry? They’ve been around for years and will still be here when you crumble, people will always seek the cheapest deal on anything possible. They may not steal that cheese from the supermarket but they aren’t gonna buy your cheese when theres another one right next to it for a fraction of the cost.

If it weren't better suited for General Anime, I'd say this belongs in the Laugh a Day thread because I found this hilarious.

[Last Sinner]

Originally Posted by 0utf0xZer0

The number of people who buy a specific series may be between 1 in 20 and 1 in 100 of its download audience, but the number of people who buy anime is much higher than that. It's just that a large number of those buyers are say... first year college students scrounging together $100 a year to buy three 13 episode boxes. These people are not going to be buying every series they watched on fansub no matter what.

Which is the crux of my opinion/argument. Thank you for saying that.

Originally Posted by synaesthetic

The anime industry and the PC gaming industry are so similar in how they're fucking up it's unbelievable.

http://insomnia.ac/commentary/pc_game_piracy/

This is an amazing article about PC piracy and generally what's wrong with the PC gaming industry. The number of parallels to this issue and the issue of the anime industry vs. fansubs is remarkable.

Very scary stuff indeed. Thanks for sharing that.

Originally Posted by Vexx

Aye... when japanese viewers watch a broadcast of an anime, they're watching what is essentially a paid advertisement for the upcoming DVD, CDs, figures, swag. That's a very good article, Syn.

That's something the american licensors are only beginning to grasp (Funimation with its streams).

When I watch a fansub of a broadcast, its a check to see if I want to own the products it is selling. The attitude of "shut up and buy it without looking" is failing... there will always be a peanut gallery and there will be a patron class IF the artists/creators treat that patron class well. Screw with your patrons and you're toast.

Well said, sir. That was gold.


Been through most of this before in the 'anime industry doomed' thread from a few weeks ago but I'll reiterate my points from there:

1. $70US for 2 eps in Japan. *cough* And they wonder why there's a hikikomori problem?!

2. Being an anime fan in Japan is overal seen as a negative thing and one of the greatest turnoffs for women. Nothing can prosper with that on their shoulders.

3. Recession since the 90s.

4. 1/4 of Japanese adults over the age of 30 have never had sex and don't like their chances of being in a relationship.

5. Only 20% of Japanese women end up marrying someone who they think earns enough to supply a good enough quality of life. Yeah, an anime habit on top of that isn't going to make them like guys any more.

6. Studios that are generally successful are because they market properly to their target audience/genre. KyoAni is moe only and why wouldn't they be - they keep selling! Sunrise is virtually mecha only and has pulled this off for decades - Gundam + figures = $$$ J.C. Staff have managed the somewhat admirable balance of going half towards the more moe/otaku material but taking their other half to noitAmina and young adults/college students - and it worked. Bones is in a similar boat but has yielded success with going shounen instead of moe. Masoru Honda makes 2 movies that are both massive hits, because they're good and target a family audience. Makoto Shinkai targets the romantics with the anguish and beauty of young love. Satoshi Kon targets thriller/abstract people with his mind-bending gems. Mamoru Oshii aims at philosophy and the hard facts of modern life. Miyazaki lives the kid's dream. Shinichiro Wanatabe aims for the hip/cool. If you market properly to the right audience with a good product, you'll sell more often than not.

7. If you want online streaming/downloads to work, provide it in at least 720p and speeds that aren't snail-like. Again, it all goes to quality of product.

8. Anime fans aren't endless pockets of money for above reasons.


The potential death of anime is as much due to social issues and quality of prodcut as it is to piracy and the narrowing of genres. Fix them and make anime something that won't be a social stigma. Then you may see things improve.

On the Japan vs US thing - think it's been established many times that the US loves violence and action while Japan loves cute and sex.

Japan:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/vide...ria-Chronicles
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/vide...1420-Bayonetta

US:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/vide...dern-Warfare-2
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/vide...God-of-War-III
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/vide...Gears-of-War-2


And one that sums up the gaming industry in general in modern times and probably has some parallels to anime:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/vide...wards-for-2009


Peace.

[bayoab]

Originally Posted by 0utf0xZer0

The number of people who buy a specific series may be between 1 in 20 and 1 in 100 of its download audience, but the number of people who buy anime is much higher than that. It's just that a large number of those buyers are say... first year college students scrounging together $100 a year to buy three 13 episode boxes. These people are not going to be buying every series they watched on fansub no matter what.

Yes, it is likely true that there are probably many people who have bought 1 or 2 DVDs total. The distribution curve of buyers/number of DVDs is pretty clearly exponential based on observation. And then there is the data like this:

Originally Posted by dattebayo 2007 poll data

Original question: Do you buy, or plan to buy, the official DVDs of the shows we fansub?
Didn't fill in an answer 523 0.5%
Yes 17088 18.4%
No 25519 27.7%
Maybe 49682 53.5%

Originally Posted by Joe4evr

And CR also screwed over other fansubs.

How does CR screw over fansubbers? Fansubbers have no rights.

Originally Posted by chikorita157

What they need to do is stop complaining and start giving a product what the consumers want such as selling a digital format without any DRM of the series on the internet for half the price of the physical media.

And the people are really going to buy and not just find a new excuse like "The encoding sucks"?

Also, if there was no fansubs, most likely most people wouldn't even buy the series in the first place because they don't know what is it going to be like without reading the reviews. Most people who watch the fansubs and like the series are going to go out and buy the series in any form.

Take a look at the above poll and back up your statement using it.

[felix]

Originally Posted by TheFluff

http://goanimetv.com/?p=668

This may seem like a stupid question, but why should we care?
I've have heard all this before:

• "Radio is going to die." (when Tv came along)
• "Tv is going to die." (when Internet came along)

Oh look! they're still here.

Yes any media is eventually going to rot, until all thats left is the quality at the core.
I'm certainly not going to miss all the crappy shows out there...

[TinyRedLeaf]

Originally Posted by Vexx

Aye... when japanese viewers watch a broadcast of an anime, they're watching what is essentially a paid advertisement for the upcoming DVD, CDs, figures, swag.

Which is a point I should have come to earlier. Every anime episode we watch is, in effect, an advertisement for some physical product the consortium sells, be they manga, graphic collections, figurines, or DVDs.

Going along the lines that having some people watch your advertisement is better than none at all, illegal downloads do at least help to create a potential market for anime-related products.

Just as Microsoft has long since come to accept that software piracy in China and South-east Asia helps — ironically — to market its brand name, anime producers and distributors in Japan are going have to do the same: accept that illegal downloads are not going away. It's ultimately pointless, not to mention expensive, to fight the grey market to the death.

So, the key point here is not to see the Internet as an "alternative", but rather as a complementary marketing and distributing channel, in the hopes, eventually, of monetising the expanded market reach into revenue.

Ultimately, though, the consortiums would still prefer to sell physical products to their target markets. Because, as the industry stands today, that's where the greater chunk of its revenue is coming from (so it claims; admittedly, I've never found detailed breakdowns of its revenue streams online).

Which is why, like it or not, the legal and logistical problems to distribution that panzerfan is exploring are great concerns. The anime industry, just like the animation industry in say, the United States, isn't about to go 100 per cent virtual. In this sense alone, it's not entirely accurate to equate anime with video games. Video games enjoy a market size that anime can only dream of — download sales alone would not help to keep anime producers and distributors afloat, at least not the way it might work for makers of Triple A video games.

Originally Posted by panzerfan

This paper went on and discloses the disastrous sales figure worldwide. Basically Japanese manga get rave reviews but few buyers. It is felt that Japan lacks excellent marketing talent.

And the above explains the key problem I'm still trying to figure out myself: No one yet knows how to monetise the reportedly huge amount of anime viewership out there. Legal downloads alone is not the solution because, at best, it's really no more than a means of broadcasting a paid advertisement in a given market.

The consortiums still have to figure out ways to profitably convert all the awareness garnered by successful anime into purchases of DVDs and merchandise.

[0utf0xZer0]

Originally Posted by Last Sinner

4. 1/4 of Japanese adults over the age of 30 have never had sex and don't like their chances of being in a relationship.

Wasn't this disproven after having been quoted in that NYT article?

Originally Posted by Last Sinner

1. $70US for 2 eps in Japan. *cough* And they wonder why there's a hikikomori problem?!

I don't follow this. Hikikomori can't afford anime DVDs and Blurays, if anything the high pricing is an incentive for them to get out of the house and earn money.

I'm also not sure that companies would necessarily profit from cutting DVD prices. I would consider the 2004 version of Battlestar Galactica to be about as mainstream as a modern "geek" TV franchise can get. The final box set for that series sold about 230 thousand copies in its first two weeks, at about $50 per set. Length wise, these sets are equivalent to about twenty episodes of anime, so you could say that the per "episode" haul from DVD sales is about $575K US.

For comparison, DVD sales for Clannad average around 24,800 units per volume at what, $60 for two to three episodes? Let's say 2.5 episodes per volume. That's $620K US per episode. Sure, Clannad is a big selling anime but BSG's profile in North American geek circles is enormous too.

Anyway, as insane as the Japanese market prices are, the point here is that they work because it isn't the primary way that Japanese fans get their anime. Even hardcore otaku who spend equivalent to a few thousand USD on their hobby per year are going to primarily get their anime via TV broadcasts and the like.

Which brings me to my next point:

Originally Posted by bayoab

Yes, it is likely true that there are probably many people who have bought 1 or 2 DVDs total. The distribution curve of buyers/number of DVDs is pretty clearly exponential based on observation. And then there is the data like this:

If you look at Battlestar Galactica's TV ratings, you'll find that the DVD sales were equivalent to about one-tenth the number of people who watched the show (2.3 million viewers for the first half of season four and 231,000 DVD sales in two weeks for the box set for the second half of said season... sorry, I couldn't get both sales and broadcast numbers for the same half). This is for a franchise known for having a very hardcore fanbase.

Given that fansubs are the functional equivalent to TV broadcasts for many western anime fans, I'd expect torrent numbers for shows to be far, far higher than sales numbers.

As for what portion of fans actually buy DVDs, pretty much all of my close anime buddies own at least a few. However, quite a few of those fans treat buying anime on DVD the same as buying American shows on DVD - meaning they have to be really impressed before they'll consider it.

[TinyRedLeaf]

Originally Posted by 0utf0xZer0

As for what portion of fans actually buy DVDs, pretty much all of my close anime buddies own at least a few. However, quite a few of those fans treat buying anime on DVD the same as buying American shows on DVD - meaning they have to be really impressed before they'll consider it.

Even if they are impressed enough, they can't buy the DVD if it isn't available (short of importing it directly from Japan).

So the question: Why aren't we seeing more anime DVDs being sold abroad? And that's when all the complaints about costs and, sigh, piracy, come in.

[Last Sinner]

I don't follow this. Hikikomori can't afford anime DVDs and Blurays, if anything the high pricing is an incentive for them to get out of the house and earn money.

The whole problem is that they don't...otherwise it wouldn't be such an issue. They don't work and they leech off their parents. It's not like leechers are unique to one country. In Australia, they're dole bludgers. In America, they're welfare leechers.

I'm also not sure that companies would necessarily profit from cutting DVD prices.

I've previously acknowledged that fact in other threads. But that still doesn't justify it. Why should loyal customers suffer? Every person I mention those prices to IRL, the same reaction comes - 'Who in their right mind would be stupid enough to pay that?!' Well, you'd have to be at those prices. If a series was 12 episodes, that would make 6 units to purchase. At $70US a unit, that's $420 for the series if you buy each DVD on release, maybe in the low 300s for a box set. If they bought 5 series, they'd be around 2 grand. 4 grand for 10 series. Yet in the US or online sites located in the US, some older series you can pick up in full for just $20US in full and newer ones around the price that the Japanese pay for 1 single unit. So they could pick up 10 series for a few hundred dollard while the Japanese are paying a few thousand.

You can't possibly say that is justified. I'm not disputing the fact that studios need to profit or the prices needed to. What I'm disputing is the ability of paying fans to maintain that. The average wage of a Japanese person is around $40k from. Most Japanese people living in major citires have to rent an apartment. (Home ownership tends to be a majority in the rural areas) Rent in Tokyo and Osaka is just daylight robbery from what I've gleaned so far today and is mainly in the 1-2k per month range. Hence why living in those two towns is hard. That's before factoring in the costs of utilities, food, clothing, transport (the last of which is partially subsidised by some employers) - it's not easy to make ends meet at all. From the articles I've read, the rental market makes things hard on a lot of people and you have be to pretty well off to afford your own home. Seems to make it even clearer why anime fans get a bad rap - to cut into living costs to that degree is not a smart thing.

I'd like to hear from Vexx on that aspect, though. He seems to be better placed to comment on that than anyone since he's living in Kyoto.

[Master_Yoma]

Well Fansubs are part of the problem but not all of it. The biggest problem is that stores stop carrying anime so you have to buy more online and with shipping it a little expansive if you buy it one at a time. But at less with funsubs I get to watch anime that will never seen in the US

[Vexx]

I'd like to hear from Vexx on that aspect, though. He seems to be better placed to comment on that than anyone since he's living in Kyoto.

No, no... my location says "On the whole, I'd RATHER be in Kyoto." Its a riff on an old W.C. Fields mythical quote. I'm not in Kyoto, but I'd rather be there.

But yeah, I agree... prices are untenable for the average fan in Japan so they choose their purchases carefully and certainly do not buy *every* series they watch on tv (that's what DVRs are for).

That's the silly part here... No series produced in the US expects tv watchers to buy every DVD collection of every series they watch, but that's a large part of the whine we hear from the R1 distributors. The viewers watch American tv for "free" and then many of them *buy* the series collection (MASH, Animaniacs, Northern Exposure, etc). Those collections are much cheaper in part because the advertisements on tv helped pay for the production. Not the case in Japan, where anime makers *pay* the station to broadcast their "season long advertisement".

[Raiga]

Originally Posted by Eisdrache

Which in the end would still hurt ("steal" profit) the store because it would have sold the cheese to you if you didn't have that cloning machine. Not trying to defend anyone here but your analogy isn't that well thought out either

I didn't say it wouldn't hurt the store's profits. I just said that calling it "stealing" is not accurate, the point being the original cheese is still there. You're not taking away products, you're taking away demand, so to speak.

But if people want to launch a campaign against pirating groceries, by all means...

[panzerfan]

@Saintlessheart:
K-on made me purchase 2 clarinets in total. I blame this show for making me blow $1500 in 1 year.

Originally Posted by Eisdrache

Which in the end would still hurt ("steal" profit) the store because it would have sold the cheese to you if you didn't have that cloning machine. Not trying to defend anyone here but your analogy isn't that well thought out either

Building on the point raised by Vexx, I think it would have been much more potent to simply regard Japanese animation on TV as advertisements in itself and start from there, and to be honest, this actually is a contributing cause in why the copyrights have been a little complicated in Japan.

Traditionally speaking, anime were made to promote toys. Super Robot shows made little attempt to disguise this. The tie-in merchandises are also advertised within the segment. If anything, manga and novels were something the anime's trying to sell!

Of course, anime have become merchandise in their own right, which is something that advertisements cannot claim. I have been thinking of whether or not one should consider first time broadcast of an anime over air as in effect, a launch of an advertisement campaign. If one were to accept the anime as advertisement, taping and 'unauthorized' re-airing of this advertisement becomes a matter that can actually fall under fair use of the said advertisement.

For all intent and purpose, most international media does not treat a piece of animation as an infomercial, as supposedly the animation is a product first and foremost. Despite the tug of war with product placements in video games and/or Television shows, most production studios still rather see their productions as products.

What happens when these two collide?

A piece of Japanese animation to media outlet such as FOX will not really have its original advertisement value. The intended target, being age 3-34 and the whole product placements within are not of worth to the American distributors. As a matter of fact, when a said piece of anime is re-aired, the advertisement package has to be re-calibrated to suit the new product offering even in Japan, let along foreign markets. Coupling this with the fact that the American does not really think of the animation as an advertisement makes the proposition of airing even one show questionable.

We have seen attempts to redress this, but normally it's a compromise and not a win-win between the anime production itself and the advertisement package. 4Kids comes to mind as to prominent example in such follies.

It will take marketers some research to find out what you can do to not change the context and content of anime the advertisement and market it to the United States. Market such as Taiwan is of no concern because that market grew to adept and mimic Japanese domestic consumption model. This advertisement budget is the lifeblood of new anime, and that is why I think using this analogy is more fitting than cheese.

[Spectacular_Insanity]

Originally Posted by Last Sinner

1. $70US for 2 eps in Japan. *cough* And they wonder why there's a hikikomori problem?!

I hear ya. I went to Best Buy the other day. Listen, I WANTED to buy the official release of Full Metal Panic because I love the series and would like nothing better than to own the official copy. But then, I looked at the price tag. A single DVD, with about 4-5 episodes, for about $25 US. Each. Given that there's 24 episodes, that's *at least* $120 US I'm forking over for a SINGLE SEASON. There's just no goddamn way. Compare that to box sets I bought of Yu Yu Hakusho from Amazon.com. All 4 seasons (that's 112 episodes) in a package deal for about $112... give or take. I only buy box sets for this reason. Yes, I realize the difference in age is the primary reason for the price differential, but that's not the point I'm trrying to make. If the companies want to sell their merchandise, then they have to make it affordable. Even hardcore otaku like myself are only willing to pay so much per DVD. If stores want to blame us, the consumer, then they can go ahead. It won't make us pay outrageous prices just to buy a single season of anime.

[0utf0xZer0]

Originally Posted by Last Sinner

The whole problem is that they don't...otherwise it wouldn't be such an issue. They don't work and they leech off their parents. It's not like leechers are unique to one country. In Australia, they're dole bludgers. In America, they're welfare leechers.



I've previously acknowledged that fact in other threads. But that still doesn't justify it. Why should loyal customers suffer? Every person I mention those prices to IRL, the same reaction comes - 'Who in their right mind would be stupid enough to pay that?!' Well, you'd have to be at those prices. If a series was 12 episodes, that would make 6 units to purchase. At $70US a unit, that's $420 for the series if you buy each DVD on release, maybe in the low 300s for a box set. If they bought 5 series, they'd be around 2 grand. 4 grand for 10 series. Yet in the US or online sites located in the US, some older series you can pick up in full for just $20US in full and newer ones around the price that the Japanese pay for 1 single unit. So they could pick up 10 series for a few hundred dollard while the Japanese are paying a few thousand.

You can't possibly say that is justified. I'm not disputing the fact that studios need to profit or the prices needed to. What I'm disputing is the ability of paying fans to maintain that. The average wage of a Japanese person is around $40k from. Most Japanese people living in major citires have to rent an apartment. (Home ownership tends to be a majority in the rural areas) Rent in Tokyo and Osaka is just daylight robbery from what I've gleaned so far today and is mainly in the 1-2k per month range. Hence why living in those two towns is hard. That's before factoring in the costs of utilities, food, clothing, transport (the last of which is partially subsidised by some employers) - it's not easy to make ends meet at all. From the articles I've read, the rental market makes things hard on a lot of people and you have be to pretty well off to afford your own home. Seems to make it even clearer why anime fans get a bad rap - to cut into living costs to that degree is not a smart thing.

I'd like to hear from Vexx on that aspect, though. He seems to be better placed to comment on that than anyone since he's living in Kyoto.

Again, I think you need to remember that otaku do not pay those prices to watch the show - that's what DVRs are for. They pay those prices either because they want to support the creators or because they consider the sets to have value from a collector's perspective. I'd say there's a strong case to be made that both of those purposes are well served by keeping the price high. And as Vexx pointed out, Japanese fans do not buy every series they like. I remember one Japanese Spice and Wolf fan posting on here saying that he spent about $2000 a year on his hobby, about half of which was on DVD/Bluray. That's expensive, but I wouldn't call $2000 a year an outrageous amount to spend on a hobby.

I imagine that cheap American box sets are as relevant to otaku as the $1.50 DVDs Warner sells to compete with pirates in China are to westerners who buy collector's editions of their favourite movies.

Originally Posted by Spectacular_Insanity

I hear ya. I went to Best Buy the other day. Listen, I WANTED to buy the official release of Full Metal Panic because I love the series and would like nothing better than to own the official copy. But then, I looked at the price tag. A single DVD, with about 4-5 episodes, for about $25 US. Each. Given that there's 24 episodes, that's *at least* $120 US I'm forking over for a SINGLE SEASON.

Right Stuf carries an FMP box set for $67.50.

The real question is why Best Buy is still trying to stock $25 volumes for the series, when the series has been available in box set form since what, 2006? I think that's when my brother got his. (the 2008 box set is a rerelease.)

[bayoab]

Originally Posted by Spectacular_Insanity

I hear ya. I went to Best Buy the other day. Listen, I WANTED to buy the official release of Full Metal Panic because I love the series and would like nothing better than to own the official copy. But then, I looked at the price tag. A single DVD, with about 4-5 episodes, for about $25 US. Each. Given that there's 24 episodes, that's *at least* $120 US I'm forking over for a SINGLE SEASON.

You can still find singles of a DVD that has been out of print for at least 3 years? The boxset has been out for ~5 years and the first priced down box set has been available for ~2.

If the companies want to sell their merchandise, then they have to make it affordable. Even hardcore otaku like myself are only willing to pay so much per DVD. If stores want to blame us, the consumer, then they can go ahead. It won't make us pay outrageous prices just to buy a single season of anime.

What do you consider affordable?

[DragoonKain3]

I think your Best Buy is antiquated. Those are the prices when the industry was still thriving. I know in my area, several stores still sell at those, but only for the individual old DVDs and only mainly for the collector's sake who are willing to pay those prices. (And me being the osananajimi sucker that I am, bought those shows at those prices before lol) The newer box versions are actually not that bad.

As an anime DVD buyer, I must say, prices are starting to get REALLY affordable the past year or two. Well, at least in comparison to what I paid before.

For example, you can find FMP season 1 for $60 CAN (assuming 1:1 ratio, which it should be close, it should cost about the same for US). For 15 dollars more, you can find a box set that also includes Fumoffu. FMP: TSR costs around 90, and that's the blu-ray version, or 50 for regular.

As a comparison, I think I bought my collection of FMP (the first print thinpack) at around 110 dollars, and Fumoffu at what, 70? FMP:TSR, I had to buy separate DVDs, so that cost me around 120 if I'm not mistaken.

Granted, its several years by then, but note that newer releases are done in huge chunks of a cour now and sold at FAR lower prices than when I started. In fact, as another poster has pointed out, anime now is actually COMPETING in prices against 'normal' TV shows, $/minute wise.

So no, price isn't the problem for anime at the west. At least, not anymore, as even high profile shows like Gundam 00 are selling for like $3 per episode when before it was like at least twice that for Gundam SEED, MSRP-wise.

But this change has only been relatively recent. If its going to be enough to save the anime DVD industry in the west, we'll just have to wait and see.

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by TinyRedLeaf

And the above explains the key problem I'm still trying to figure out myself: No one yet knows how to monetise the reportedly huge amount of anime viewership out there. Legal downloads alone is not the solution because, at best, it's really no more than a means of broadcasting a paid advertisement in a given market.

The consortiums still have to figure out ways to profitably convert all the awareness garnered by successful anime into purchases of DVDs and merchandise.

I think you probably got something close to your answer. If you took a look at K-ON!, its merchandise are pretty wide ranged, from just figurines to RL instruments. I am sure Les Paul and Korg will certainly thank them for driving up their sales.

There is this form of marketing known as "branding onto a necessity", which means that it sells itself as an item that is part of our life, for example, Haruhi tissue boxes, Mugi Takuan packs, and even that odd Azusa guitar. The parent companies probably have to liaise itself out to suppliers and work in tandem to generate profits and products for the consumers.

Hello Kitty did the same thing for years and many of us know it not only as a anime character, but nearly a household brand too. Rather than blaming the market forces, illegal or legal, why not think of a way to work around it?

P.S My birthday gift last year was a guitar of my choice. I chose an Ibanez GTX-180 with a cherry red theme so it looks exactly like Azusa's Fender. So......am I a victim of passive but subliminal marketing?

[cyth]

Originally Posted by Spectacular_Insanity

If the companies want to sell their merchandise, then they have to make it affordable. Even hardcore otaku like myself are only willing to pay so much per DVD. If stores want to blame us, the consumer, then they can go ahead. It won't make us pay outrageous prices just to buy a single season of anime.

The simple answer is that you're not hardcore enough. Obviously there are people out there who buy at those price points.

[karice67]

Originally Posted by SaintessHeart

Karice is actually right about this. The demand is no longer in DVDs due to the availability of DDLs. The gaming industry, with companies like Steam, adjusted by introducing a pay-to-download-and-play off the net, to draw buyers, leveraging on one simple thing : the advent of high speed internet access in the communications industry.

Originally Posted by TinyRedLeaf

If it is indeed the case that DVDs are no longer the way to go, then the situation is more than dire for anime production — it would probably be as much of an extinction threat as the doomsayers say it is.

This isn't quite what I meant, though SaintessHeart's previous statement is:

Originally Posted by SaintessHeart

These animation companies really need to hire good marketing consultants. or go back to high school economic classes to learn something called "Supply and Demand".

The market here in Japan is quite frankly saturated. I could do with far less titles to choose from each season...especially now that they're coming up with fantastic extras that have made me start collecting three different series in the past year.

Originally Posted by SaintessHeart

Right now, from my amateur economic perspective, the trend is shifting towards downloadable media. If we have ebooks selling for 30-40 dollars each and people willing to key in their credit card numbers to buy them, why can't we have e-manga in PDF format?

As someone else has already said, the Japanese e-book market (which apparently includes manga, though not the most popular titles atm) is sizeable and growing. Unfortunately for overseas fans, most publishers probably don't accept foreign credit cards, but that's another matter. However, the e-book market still has a long way to go, starting with customers realising that e-books only remove printing and storage costs - overhead, marketing and royalties remain (source).

Originally Posted by GDB

At less than $0.25 per case, and less than $0.14 per DVD... the costs sure can't be coming from that.

Again, how about overhead, marketing and royalties? As was noted by TinyRedLeaf.

Originally Posted by TinyRedLeaf

a few industry sources have already publicly stated that an anime episode costs an average of US$200,000 to produce. That means even a simple 12-episode series costs upwards of US$2.4 million, just to produce. That's even before we consider licensing, distribution and promotional costs.

Because of those overhead costs, I don't think a download system will work in Japan. But as I mentioned before, studios are finding new ways to make their DVD packages appeal to fans. Whether this will work well enough in the West, where everyone is looking for the cheapest deal possible, is another question.

Originally Posted by Last Sinner

1. $70US for 2 eps in Japan. *cough*

Originally Posted by Last Sinner

'Who in their right mind would be stupid enough to pay that?!' ...So they could pick up 10 series for a few hundred dollard while the Japanese are paying a few thousand.

Sure...but from the way you all talk about what anime you buy, there are a couple of major difference between the Western and the Japanese market. Think about it: even in Japan, what's the difference between the series that sell and those that don't? The extras. I haven't bought Bakemonogatari, Durarara!! and Working (amongst other things) just to watch those series again. I'm far more interested in the singles, side stories and character commentaries, and they just about make the Amazon price worthwhile. (Stores that sell them full price typically provide some other exclusive extra, and different stores will provide different extras.) Secondly, people who just want to watch a series would just go to a video shop to rent the DVDs - anime, Japanese movies, American movies and tv shows are all available. Third and more: there seems to be a bigger market for Japanese dubs here then for English dubs in the West...(for reasons which may include (1) Japanese seiyuu are far better at their job, since it's more recognised here than in the US; and (2) lots of Japanese people don't like reading subtitles...in fact, a sizeable number of them probably can't because they don't recognise enough kanji)

As people have said before, the industry in the West needs to change. As a start, licensing companies probably need to become more selective about the series they choose to bring across, but where they (and you, the consumers) go from there in terms of DVDs and other merchandise is still up in the air.

And yes, I'm not including myself. Licensing companies aren't providing me with what I want, so I'll be importing directly from Japan even after I leave.

Originally Posted by Last Sinner

2. Being an anime fan in Japan is overal seen as a negative thing and one of the greatest turnoffs for women. Nothing can prosper with that on their shoulders.

You should probably put this in context.

I agree with panzerfan's proposition that anime is probably best seen as an advertisement for a franchise. And thanks for the excellent article, synaesthetic!