Or are we in for another roller coaster ride down into a media famine? Well, I love this video. Aside from the obvious cuteness factor and art imitating life intelligence of this video, there’s a specific point which the video almost perfectly (and completely unintentionally) illustrates a point that I’ve made quite often and hopefully does it in a way that even the most hard core anti-business anime otaku out there. The case of the hard work that went into getting the little ball, became a wasted investment when the big ball was brought to the scene first. In the case of anime, the actual commercial licensed product is the little ball, made totally worthless by the larger more proliferated digital fansubs which are always first to the party. The license has to have value in order for anime to be a commercial success, and anime has to be a commercial success if more is going to be made. And I shall say once again, sans massive explanation why, that watching fansubs is NOT the same as being a TV audience, and fansubs are NOT simply stepping in to fill a gap left by an absence of anime on American television networks.
The reaction by the industry was at first the same as our little pigtailed preschooler with the political ambitions... to kill it. Kill the big blue ball and then your problems will go away. Well if killing it were at all possible then that might seem like the correct course, at least in some sort of blunt mathematical sense. But as surely as Anonymous has taught Scientology that which is born of the internet can not be killed by anything (other than its own inward desire to die), the big blue ball of digital fansubs delivered on the internet can not be stopped through confrontation but only by changing the environment to make them useless. Personally, I like having high quality video, with correct translations and not losing an entire collection should I have a hard drive failure. Sadly, your average 13 year old weebo not only doesn’t have the money that I have, but they also have no ability to comprehend how their sense of free entitlement and consumption habits are hurting an industry who’s product is very expensive to produce. Oranges grow on trees and you don’t get them for free most of the time, so anime is definitely going to have to fall under that same law of economics.
So this big blue ball won’t die, and the obvious way to keep the business alive, was for simultaneous delivery in both markets, which would make licenses commercially viable again and make broadcast of those anime programs truly profitable since there’d be no fansub out 6 months out before airing. Obvious tho’ this solution was, it was and remains not well loved. In addition what was no so obvious but essential, was how to figure out how to do any of that in a cost effective and sustainable way. Well VIZ has decided to take the first baby step, and considering who’s left in the schoolyard, if they had not started doing this, no one was going to.
The short of it is that VIZ is going to begin publishing manga in 2 languages at once in two markets (although I'd reccomed prepairing to ship gobs of the new English mag over to the E.U. and U.K. as well, with such a strong GBP and Euro that could really help keep the ship up). Should this work, we may see some interest in VIZ’s Japanese parent co. in delivering animation to both markets the same way and reaping the benefits directly by collecting the advertising revenue and not just selling a broadcast license (better to own the goose than a single golden egg). By the way if anyone from VIZ is reading this, I have over 12 years experience as an executive in consumer media, distribution, and licensing, I speak Japanese and I love to travel.
As someone who currently has the task of representing several series here in the U.S. (one of them is even from Production IG), I can tell you that it’s not an easy sell anymore. There is an immense cost and large amount of time needed to get something out there that will please American media distribution (notice I didn’t say the fans. You have to make a distributor be it home media or a TV company, want it first before you get a chance to make the fans want it). Time and money are things media companies that try to make a sustainable business out of Japanese animation simply do not have when it comes to competing with free fansubs. Manga being print media seems to have avoided the kind of fatal blow that scanlations could have been and may be a very good place to start this new world order of anime business. Because if anime stops being a business, then pretty soon all titles will be thought of as “old school.”
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5 comments:
As widely discussed at icv2, manga is immune to an extent because reading a physical book is a different experience than reading a digital book. People love to own physical books. But once you've seen a TV show, you've consumed it as-is.
Anyway, I'm going to save anime, here's how:
Encourage fansubbers to leave the Japanese commercials in their work, and sub the commercials! That way, the commercial slots are more valuable, since you know your commercial will be seen by people worldwide!
I am not sure if you're being serious....
I'm going to say semi-serious. I really like Japanese commercials, and I really think this would be a step in the right direction.
Sorry, lack of correct spelling.
That's an interesting way to look at it, but I don't see how it's of any possible help really. Most advertisers would not see a benefit. Companies like NTT, Matsumoto Hikoshi Center, or Seizeria can't exactly count on their commercials on anime fansubs making an impact on foreign audiences since you have to be IN Japan to procure those products and services, and even global corps like Toyota, Matsushita, and SONY don't have the same products in both markets at once, so advertising a car with the driver's seat on the right hand side doesn't make much sense either. The only company that has a lot to gain oddly enough, would be Glico, but since fansub watchers already munch pockyy, they'd be preaching to the quire.
Then there's a question of where does the money come from if that did appeal to an advertiser and . Who do they pay? The TV company, the fansubbers, or the anime studio? How much would they pay? They'd have to have a good idea how many people will see it before it goes out there. Measuring the effects would be near impossible, and in the end it makes no sense.
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