Month: September 2007

I got Geek Backed, booyah!

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Well, well, well, color me shocked. I never expected to see a special Geek Nights episode about my little e-mail. Here it is:

While I applaud the idea of not buying bootlegs and not pirating after something is licensed, the real thing hurting anime DVD sales is people not buying DVDs. The quote/unquote rule of fan-subs is, if you enjoyed watching a show you should buy it. Not if you LOVED it, not if it CHANGED your life, but if you just liked it and were entertained. No matter what, the U.S. anime industry is not like the Japanese industry. The U.S. doesn’t get to rely on advertisers for their revenue. For the most part, they have to rely on us, the fans. So while renting anime is all well and good to see if you like the show, shouldn’t the same rules apply? Because otherwise while it might not make people feel as bad, it is just as hurtful to the industry. And since most DVDs are well priced, even cheap, it’s not too hard. I also here complaints about the price of U.S. anime DVDs. But if you really think about it, $30 is a good price for 4 or 5 episodes. I remember paying $30 for two episodes of Cowboy Bebop on VHS. Now, I’m not saying that is right, but anime is a niche market so it seems ludicrous to expect the same price on the DVDs as the latest Spiderman movie on DVD. Anyway, what I’m getting at is we all need to buy more anime. Period.

Before anyone starts complaining, Narutaki was wrong in one regard. When you rent anime it does in fact give a small amount of revenue to the anime industry. It’s not the same amount of revenue as buying the DVD in the store, but there is some profit going to the anime company. I know all about this because I used to work at a video store. I told this to Narutaki after she already sent out the e-mail.

So I sent this to Rym and Scott as an idea to see what they had to say. Apparently, they had a lot to say. Their forums also came alive with the usual internet hate but also worthy discussion.

Some of the people on the the forum really make it seem like you wrote some sort of vicious attack letter which I clearly think is not the case. It’s not like you opened your letter with, “Hey dirty pirate scum! Why has the righteous fist of Saber not smited your unsightly putrescence from this earth we love so? You horrible doll touchers.” See that’s a vicious attack letter. I really saw nothing in your letter what warranted people telling you to go die or that you were stupid.

I have found that most of the time when people react that violently to something you say, it’s because there is some underlying issue. I have two theories on the subject. I think Scott in particular had such anger because he must feel some degree of guilt over not supporting the industry more or because he frequently argues with some one over a similar issues (like indie comics) and can’t win with them so he decided to take it out on you.

I definitely want to clarify that I don’t think people should buy things they don’t like just to support something. I love Geneon, and am sorry to see what is currently going on with them, but I wouldn’t buy Rozen Maiden ever. EVER. But if I like a show, I like to buy the DVDs when I can.

No one should ever buy Rozen Maiden or anything by Peach-Pit.

But I really felt like that was a straw man argument they were using. You never said to buy anything they did not like, but they very much made it seem like you were an advocate of buying garbage to support the industry.

They made some really interesting points that I had not thought about. I especially like the ideas about pushing anime out of niche, as Nintendo has pushed itself back into #1 by marketing to more than their general geeky market. However unlikely it seems to have anime on one of the big three TV networks, it is a grand idea.

I always felt that the general business plan of the anime industry was to buy several broad appeal titles to support the more niche titles in America. You buy and make money off shows like Hellsing and Bleach so you can take a risk on shows like Fighting Spirit and Master Keaton. You try to get both markets and hopefully do better with a diversified portfolio of titles. How well that works is currently up for debate, but the idea is you try to get both markets. The casual fans and the hardcore Otaku.

If the industry only bought titles that were easily marketable then we can say good-bye to anything that isn’t shonen fighting shows. I don’t think anyone would want to see that happen. Therefore, it seems to make sense that buying DVDs of shows that are small and niche is the only way to support them, it is not like there is any merchandise to buy.

The other problem I had with Geek Nights’ forum rant is it’s really easy to say, “You should get your anime on prime time NBC/HBO because then you would rake in millions of dollars.” But it’s not easy to do. Slots on primetime TV are outrageously valuable. From what I gathered Geek Nights want the industry to gamble on making a huge push to get their stuff on network TV. I have seen them try this to a less risky extent and it has failed. I remember a while back, ADV was going to a lot of the big TV licensing conventions trying to push their stuff, and I don’t think it has done that much for them. Almost no one is going to take that big a chance on anything that has not proven itself a million times over.

It would certainly be a false assumption to think just because you could get something on a big network that it would succeed. Doing so would be insanely costly, so much so that if the show didn’t succeed a small anime company would go under due to lost revenue. Also, almost everything on primetime is made in-house from their own studios. They want the creative control and power. So that also adds to the difficultly of getting something squeezed in there.

My analogy is become a rock star. You can try to be a rock star by playing it safe or by throwing caution to the wind. You can go to school and get a flexible job while still playing shows in the hopes that you get discovered. Or you can drop out of school and solely devote yourself to your music. You have a slightly better chance of making it big when you go all out this way but if you fail you have nothing to fall back on.

In my opinion, the anime industry is taking the safer route. They cater to a niche audience while very slowly trying to get their shows to have a broader fan base. They do this with the hopes that some of the bigger games in town will notice the growing popularity of anime and take a chance on them. It has taken several years, but anime is now on cable TV on a fairly regular basis and has gotten as far as the kiddy shows blocks on network TV. That is a pretty big accomplishment. It’s no where as big as being on after Heroes but that’s not going to happen any time so IMHO no matter how you try to market it.

They also mentioned that DVD sales numbers aren’t really what makes a company money. This is a pretty crucial point. While I don’t think that is 100% true, the fact that merchandising is a key element to making money cannot be overlooked. DVD sales numbers can affect what titles they pick up next or whether they pick up the next season of something. For example, buying the book of a new author doesn’t make the author more money on that one book. Authors have contracts and are paid a lump sum, so unless you are a big name you don’t get royalties for your books. So whether it sells 10,000 or 1,000,000 you get the same amount. But if your book happens to sell that 1,000,000…on your next contract you have more power about what is going on. You’ve proven people are interested so this time around maybe you can get royalties. So knowing book publishing rather better than the DVD market my thinking has been, if I buy the DVDs I am showing support for future titles I hope to see.

They also mention it does not matter when or how you buy a DVD, but it certainly does matter. If you notice, when ever a movie comes out they always care about its first few week earnings. The sales figures that matter most are almost always the initial sales figures. If you want to see titles succeed, your best bet is to buy them when they come out. Because if people don’t purchase niche titles then you will generally see a diminishing of what titles you see overall. So if you are a sienen or josei fan you can kiss your titles good-bye.

Does this mean your only a real fan if you buy something at full price when it comes out in the store? Hell no. Buy things when you want to buy them and for how much your willing to pay for them. But don’t lie to yourself, and don’t lie to me, saying that it is all the same.

Also, someone mentioned the anime industry wasn’t in trouble. It seems to be from my view. There are much fewer titles being licensed than 3 or 4 years ago, DVD sales are down, and Geneon has just about thrown in the towel. It isn’t the worst state but it is certainly not headed in a good direction. And I just can’t agree that consumers have zero to do with that. Yes, they aren’t completely at fault. There are problems on both sides of the fence. Ask John just addressed this a bit in his latest article, too.

I also have a nasty feeling that if things continue they way they are going, then it is going to push the anime industry into playing hardball with the fan-subbers. If people keep watching fan-subs but are unwilling to pay for the DVDs they like they are now, then I see a series of music industry style crackdowns coming up. It’s already happening overseas in places like Singapore. If you want to see them shutting down Anime Suki and sending out lawsuits to downloaders like they were candy on Halloween, then people just have to keep doing what they are doing. Will that stop fan-subs and bootlegs? No. Will it be very annoying and create bad blood on both sides of the issue? It sure will.

And I was kind of proud, not only did Scott call me an idiot, but people on the forums called me mentally challenged, and someone told me to die! I have never said anything to cause such a ruckus on the Internet before. Bully for me!

Narutaki Currently!
Watching Death Note movie 1
Reading Mushishi
Listening to FREENOTE

Brainwasher Detective (Hisui) Currently:
Watching Higurashi no Naku Koro ni
Reading MPD Psycho
Listening to Platinium

Lights, camera, live action!

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Will the dreams of hundreds of nerdy 15 year old boys finally come true? No, it’s not hundreds of hot, slutty, college-age girls to take their virginity. It’s their other dream. It seems a little more likely that there will be a live action Dragon Ball Z movie. 20th Century Fox has started production to make a live action DBZ movie in Montreal. It supposedly has a budget of at least 100 million dollars and is being filmed along with a sequel to Night and the Museum and a remake of Fantastic Voyage. What was once just the purview of internet hoaxes and fan boy speculation might actually become a reality. But is this actually going to be a movie you can watch in theaters or is this yet another doomed dream (or nightmare depending who you ask)?

This makes me laugh. A LOT! There is no way, none, zero, zip, that this movie could actually be GOOD. In my mind, it is 100% impossible. Inconceivable for my tiny brain! How could it be? Dudes running around in orange suits and silly armor with nutso hair, then add in the CG effects for all the moves and let’s not forget going super saiyan! Certain things that work fine in anime just aren’t going to cut it for live action. And I don’t see anything in Dragon Ball Z that would work in live action. It seems like some colossal joke.

You know the silly things is there are people out there who still want this. Despite the fact that it’s almost surely huge bundle of failure and pain. If you go around to enough anime forums the topic of who would you cast in the live action version of X anime invariably comes up. I’m sure if I were the type of person to read Dragon Ball Z forums I would have seen hundreds of threads like this by now.

Okay, now that I’m thinking about it. It could be kinda good. IF they did it like a Stephen Chow movie! Because Shaolin Soccer, among others, is great and funny and over the top. So if they did it like that, like they know it’s ridiculous, then it could be good. But they would still need Stephen Chow.

For the longest time, James Cameron has the rights to produce the live action version of Battle Angel Alita. He has kicked the project around for years but constantly put it off for one reason or another. Recently he announced that he would use the CG technology from his latest work, Avatar, to work on Battle Angel. It’s supposedly in pre-production and will be released in June of 2009, but that is so far off that it just seems like nothing more than a place holder date.

ADV used to talk about making a live action Evangelion movie for whenever they had the chance to do so. ADV seemed to have these huge plans to team up with Gainax. Evangelion has always been one of ADV’s and Gainax’s best selling series, so it seemed that if they could ever get the project made it would rake in money like gangbusters. They even got Weta Workshop involved in the project. ADV kept talking about scripts being written, directors and producers being interested and courted, and people making deals. There were articles being written in trade magazines and financial magazines. Then all the talk seemed to stop, and ADV mostly just says that they are waiting and so should everyone else.

I remember all the hype about that years ago. There were character designs and name changes and rumor after rumor! And you still can’t go to a con without someone asking ADV about it in their panel. Someone did make this totally awesome fake trailer for the movie, too. It Eva would look like this trailer, I’d be in.

I wonder how much the end of the talking had to do with Gainax doing their own independent remakes of the Evangelion movies. An optimist might say that ADV and Gainax are waiting to see how the remake movies will do and they work on the live action after that. A pessimist would assume Gainax just gave up on ADV and decided to just do what they could on their own. I assume the truth lies somewhere in between but maybe one has absolutely nothing to do with the other.

I guess that begs the question of, how long has Gainax planned on doing a remake of Evangelion? Because the live action rumors have been flying for at least 5 years I’d say.

I have heard rumors of a live action Voltron and a live action Gatchaman movie. Supposedly people are interested in mining some nostalgia of our childhood and making movies based on anime that were popular on American TV back in the day. The live action Voltron seems to be based on the American version of the cartoon and not of Go Lion as expected but the Gatachaman movie seems to be based on Gatachaman and not on G-Force or Battle of the Planets. If either of these movies actually gets made has yet to be seen.

I also heard that New Line Cinema optioned Monster to make it into a live action movie in the US but I have not heard anything about it since. Of all the movie possibilities mention I think this one has the best chance of working out well if a good script and cast was but together. The story is realistic enough that it could easily make the transition to live action. The story is smart enough and good enough that if you got together a good cast and a well adapted script it could do really well.

This seems like a good fit. Although based on a rather lenghty story, it seems to have the right elements to attract non-anime fans, too. Althoug , I could never really figure out if people actually liked this series or that is just happened jt to be hot on the heals of Death Note manga popularity. Either way I have it on good authority that is deserves all the attention it gets.

The problem is, big movie studios option movie ideas all the time, and sometimes with only a slight idea that they will ever make such a movie. So despite all this talk, it might all amount to nothing. Unless actual filming begins, most people tend not to believe anything because even if it’s not just a rumor, it does not mean such a project will ever get off the ground.

The one live action anime that is actually being made into a movie is Speed Racer. The Wachowski brothers are making a Speed Racer movie that has a cast and seems to actually be filming. There are some big time stars working on this including: Christina Ricci, Susan Sarandon, and John Goodman. With the Wachowski brothers attached, it would take a master disaster to stop this movie from making it to theaters. I never really cared about Speed Racer one way or another, but I hope this movie does well. Why? Because if it does well, it might open the door to other anime being made into American live action movies. (Plus something will have to get the bad taste out of people mouths after the live action DBZ.)

I’m not really that keen on the idea of live action anime being made here. I dunno, I guess I’m a snob but if it isn’t something nostalgic, I figure they will change it so much it will be unrecognizable. Of course, at this point it is completely baseless because nothing has been done to compare it to. Well, I guess there is Transformers. Meh. So, for once I’m being pessimistic. Besides the Japanese do a good many live action adaptions that are pretty good, so I’ll stick with that!

While they have not been that many attempts at making a live action anime movie in the west, they are very common in Japan. Next time we will be talk about live action anime in their homeland.

Narutaki Currently!
Watching Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei
Reading Death Note
Listening to L’arc-en-Ciel

Brainwasher Detective (Hisui) Currently:
Watching The Story of Saiunkoku
Reading Akira
Listening to A Cruel Angel’s Thesis by Yoko Takahashi

Get ’em while they’re hot!

4 Comments

My general feeling on fan-subs is they are fine and should exist, if people are responsible. People aren’t responsible, but they still exist and I still use them. I like to see the latest in Japan and nothing else will ever be able to achieve that.

I have very mixed feelings on fan-subs. I will admit right off the bat that I watch fan-subs and will probably continue to do so despite my mixed feelings.

I think great thing about them is, if the fan-subbers are quick and the show is popular you are basically watching it as soon as the episode hits TV in Japan. THAT’S SO COOL. Essentially, no one can spoil it for you. Because no one knows what is going to happen in the next episode.

Well I wish a lot of fan-subbers were less worried about their e-penises and worked a little harder. A lot of times there are just a bunch a speed subbers trying to out do each other. Gust giving in to a half-assed fast translation with a horrible interpretation, grammar, and spelling.

This is the reason I will sometimes wait for a certain groups translation. Sure you got it out 2 hours earlier but I can’t stand the obvious spelling errors like frend (friend) a hundred times over.

Also, I tend to care less about spoilers but I know that some people hate anything spoiled for them. The ability to beat 4chan and assorted internet meanies from ruining things for you is a good thing. People seem to run around with no other greater joy than making sure you enjoy things less as you could. The quicker you can see something means the less chance they have to ruin your day.

The only other problem is, if an anime is based on a manga you can still get spoiled by people who have read the manga and assume everyone else has as well, even if you only watch the anime. But I guess that is just a danger of using the internet. The internet is full of hate, porn, and spoilers.

This is also a reason that I l don’t mind when the anime deviates from the manga, but that is a whole other conversation. If it doesn’t follow exactly it can take you out of the danger zone. And obviously there is zero chance of it happening when an anime is an original script, like most live action television isn’t based on a previous work.

This is actually why I think television in general is such an amazing medium. You sit down to watch a show and so do 10,000 other people. None of you know what is going to happen and you experience all the moments of the show with total strangers. This connects everyone. You are having the same revelations or laughing at the same time as you watch a story unfold. I don’t watch a lot of television but this is the feeling I get when I sit down to watch Heroes. And therefore, it is a feeling I get when watching the latest episode of something on fan-sub.

I have never really experienced this but that’s because I’m a miserable bitter old hermit that hates the rest of humanity with a few exceptions. I will admit that watching certain shows is helped by watching with a group but watching with a group in the same room. Comedies and action movies can be greatly enhanced by watching them with other people. It’s the reason movie theaters are still in business despite the growing sophistication of home theater. When you’re laughing with a room full of people the laughter can often times come more easily. When the audience is pumped while watching something it amps you up even more as well. I personally can’t feel that same energy with people who are not in the same room.

Actually all of this make me sad about two things. The dying of the anime club and the very limited number of anime movies playing in movie theaters. Both are great venues to watch anime in a large group. But that is neither here nor there.

This is the feeling that can be missed when watching a DVD of anime (or anything really). But fan-subs can sort of give it back to you! You know that 1,000 people are downloading the new episode of Claymore and basically watching it with you.

I will admit, there is a certain joy in being able to participate in the water-cooler talk of watching the latest things. I like being able to pop onto a forum or talk to a person at a con and be up to date on a show. I also really like to be able to keep up with conversions online or in real life and not be the odd man out having no idea what everyone is talking about. It’s not as much being spoiled to shows you have not watched as much as being able to participate in conversions. People tend to discuss what is fresh in their minds so they are more likely to discuss what they just watched on fan-subs over what they watched half a year ago.

I also enjoy being able to recommend shows off the cuff. Nothing makes you feel like the anime expert as much as being able to rattle off a short list of shows when someone asks for a recommendation. Since people tend to favor newer shows over older shows, the more new shows you have in your arsenal the better equipped you are to recommend a show.

I admit knowing a little more does make you feel more comfortable, too. But that could just be because the internet likes to make you feel like a fool if you don’t know everything about every little detail about every anime you have ever seen ever, ever.

Narutaki Currently!
Watching Heat Guy J
Reading Death Note
Listening to Beat Crusaders

Brainwasher Detective (Hisui) Currently:
Watching Tsukihime, Lunar Legend
Reading Excel Saga
Listening to Sakura by Nirgilis