Digital Distribution?
This may be tl;dr, but the short of it is simply put by two observations, and two predicted fan reactions.
- Fansubs don’t make the industry any real money. It may have a secondary effect but LOLs.
- Legitimate digital distribution in vein of near day-date release (eg. Strike Witches) seeks to replace fansubs and monetize that market segment, but it’s not going to make any real money either because it seeks to follow the same release format as fansub–cheap to produce, cheap to buy, easily obtained.
- If you want to see the latest and greatest anime legitimately distributed in your local region, you need to show them the money. In other words, don’t expect things to be any cheaper than buying it on DVDs.
- It becomes a catch-22 because collectors are the only ones who would pony up, and they’re already buying the stuff anyways. Worse case scenario in this situation would be the average fansub-viewing, DVD-buying fan and not your nothing-buying fans.
Saimoe 2008 = Sigh, More? In 2008.
[Update: Certifiably Insane has an updated tutorial if you want to check it out]
Despite my apathy, the fanboy in me cackles with glee at the chance to put down fans of inferiorcharacters I dislike (a.k.a. all of Negima’s cast), and scream into the open mic that is 2ch to champion those worthy underdogs.
Reason needs not apply. Unless you are a weeaboo like myself trying to navigate the excessively xenophobic (well, all-phobic really) voting system for Saimoe. Let us review the basics.
2. The table of brackets and contestants can be found here thanks to cheerful and helpful English-language fans that I wish I can credit correctly.
3. My old voting guide is here. It still applies mostly even if the pages have changed somewhat. I drew an arrow to the major link you need to hit:
And the rest should look familiar with its text-only things you can cut and paste, the 2ch search, and the anoying code generation page that gives you your code after 61 minutes or more.
I’m not much for half-assed commentary on elections, but this year I’m going to, again, cheer for Mika Inamori. It’s Mikan sandwich this year for round one against the not-so good girl of Zero no Tsukaima. Well, we’ll see. That one is on September 7th. As for hard matches, I will have to choose between Eriko Futami and Aiko Endo right off the bat, tomorrow. That’s not an easy choice for me…
I think the past year, Mao Mizusawa is probably my most “moe” character. Upon seeing her, just by looking, I got that moe feeling. Yeap, she’s got me by the balls. Her first match is September 19th.
It’s a good way to warm up to the US presidential election I guess.
Otakon 2008 Wrap-Up: Media Mania, LOL
Last year I did a youtube scan for a week or so, for interesting material that came out of Otakon 2007. This year video blogging has really taken off and I’m not going to sit through hours on end of youtube nonsense (most of it are just slide shows anyways) to bring the good stuff. Still I will try to highlight some.
That was the best in-character cosplay I didn’t see.
Crunchyroll had a panel at Otakon, and I had to miss that, but some interesting things were said there. You can read about it at your usual news sites.
Wildarmsheero has already posted this on niconico, which I thought was funny because it is a karaoke of nico nico kumikyouku. Too bad he basically sings over the girls doing it half the time in the nico version. It’s a bit you-had-to-be-there. Just to note, Otakon karaoke has a time limitation where they will stop a song if it runs on for over 6-7 minutes. That’s why the guy had to let them. Waaaaaah has other crap videos linked that you might want to check, ideally while drunk.
CalAggie a while ago asked me about Caramelldansen at cons and I think this answers the question. The music is courtesy of this Japanese synth dude called seobon who went on with his keyboard at the karaoke room per Otakon’s band night tradition. Yea, he had real speakers. Speaking of which, Cal’s “I wasn’t at the con” con report is worth a glance too.
Gorgeous, delicious, deculture! Link has a picture.
There are more “better” karaoke goodness on youtube from the Otakon idol show that I try not to attend every year.
Bayoab’s con reporting thigmabob is good if you want to read the line-by-line reports of what happens at various industry things. Including the fansubbing panel.
Kappei Yamaguchi is a popular man. As a result I didn’t want to swim against the current of rabid nerdraging fangirls to get to his programming. Have some videos instead. Like the hentai one.
And of course there was JAM Project. You can find some con pics as well with some of the more choice shots of the JAM Project show here.
I think I am just going to link to some random cosplays and call it a day. Like this Ranka with iSlug. Or Toe Hoe cross plays. And that vocaloid thing. I’ve been looking for more pictures of that Aika S. Granzchesta cosplayer flaunted on the Os con report, and I also spotted this very nice Triela cosplay (probably was walking around with this) that I wasn’t able to take a picture of. If you can hook a brother up please help me out.
Most others, you can find a lot of the others right here at these two links. Macross Frontier was well-represented by cosplayers this year, so I was happy. Only saw one Sheryl though.
Have a kitty cat.
Otakon 2008 Wrap-Up: Industry x Fansubs
There are some anime fans who are all jittery about the state of the anime industry. I think that’s not an unwarranted approach to the reality of today. Otakon this year offered a chance to bring some industry folks along with fansubbers to talk about exactly this, in terms of how fansubbing affects sales and fan culture. Or maybe it is the other way around?
The round-table discussion is one that is historically a little taboo between the competing interests between the fans and what they want versus the rights and economic interests of the commercial side of things. The legitimacy clashes with the illegitimacy but reverence is paid to those who, at one point, affected the nature of fandom that is within most American anime fans. Appropriately the panel is focused on such issues regarding the impact of fansubbed anime on the actual and potential sales of different interests of the companies.
The format of the panel was mostly, heh, what I would’ve done at my aborted blogging panel. The bulk of the time was spent going through about 9 different questions addressed to the panelists. Q&A lasted for only a few questions before we ran out of time. As you can imagine, the nature of the panel depends greatly on the fansubbers and the industry people at the panel.
As opposed to just listing who’s on the panel, it’s more interesting to list where they are coming from.
1. The Media Blaster guys: old and weary veterans of the industry. Sells porn for much of their profit; fans since way back. Targets niches like porn and, heh, Simoun.
2. The Funimation guy: newer into the market, deals with the bigger vision. Does new fangled technological stuff with big/popular licenses. Got numbers.
3. Dattebayo: … people who fansub Naruto and the ultra-ultra-popular stuff.
4. Live-Evil : older school fansubbers, plays more by the book.
5. Shinsen subs: Your average digisubber but with a longer history.
Before I go deeper into the panel I think I should post a couple pictures to describe what I think highlights the key point that I’ve repeatedly tried to make on my own blog. Except now it’s coincidentally memorialized by a similar message that is totally non-sequitor-ish, yet also so fitting.
A. This is a picture of the “State of the industry” panel at Otakon. It was an industry panel Funimation threw together the morning after the Industry/Fansub panel. Funimation had a couple guys going off with their pro-fan PR. It’s not exactly a surprise that they need to reach out to the ‘fans’ with inheriting Geneon and ARM/Sojitz’s titles. It is a shift from their traditional “what sells well” strategy but they’re rising up to the challenge.
B. This is a picture of Tofu-sensei from Tofu-sensei’s party on Saturday night. Tofu-sensei is the guy who moderated and organized the Fansub/Industry panel.
I prefer B over A, IMO.
And by the way, the Fansub/Industry panel did manage to fill up the same room the “State of the Industry” panel was in. I tried to get a picture but, well, there was this technical difficulty which sucked big time. So drunken Tofu it is.
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Chronologically I can go through the Q&A’s, but I think it’s better to just address what I thought was note-worthy.
1. Companies like Media Blaster have very different interests than companies like Funimation if you get into the nitty gritty. In essence, a person who buys, oh, I don’t know, Gunparade March, is not likely the same person who buys Ouran Host Club (that said I would buy both…). However, both MB and Funi are probably printing money with titles like Dragon Ball Z and Bible Black. They do some things differently, but I can’t imagine either title to be not lucrative. And it’s that sort of thing that keeps these companies afloat today even when the economic cconditions are not exactly sunshines and rainbows.
2. Piracy or fansubbing or whatever of, say, Naruto, actually doesn’t affect companies like Media Blaster. This is one part of a running theme through out the panel–even if the R1 publishers are all affected by fansubbing, they are not on the same boat together in a way. In fact the crowd cracked up when one of the MB guys openly admittedjoked to watching fansubs of Funi shows and has no problems with any of us doing the same. This is nigh ironic in a way because it begins to highlight the nature of fansubbing and the effect it has on sales is not something that can be modeled one way. Or maybe even two ways.
3. At one point, John Sirabella went into “old man” mode and started to crack some Dattebayo whippersnappers. That’s as close to drama as it gets for the night I thought. But he does paint the basic picture coming from old school fans who actually are not stupid/ignorant about the state of the industry. I am definitely biased towards him as my own experience tend to mirror his, but to paraphrase, there are two kinds of markets. There’s the collectors, who are older and have the purchasing power; and then there’s the kids who go to cons in cosplay (why were there so many girls cosplaying as guys this year at Otakon?) with their bf/gf/bff/mom and have $15 in the pocket, and that’s going towards gas, not anime. Accordingly, collectors generally do not buy Naruto; in fact they generally do not buy any one title, but a wide variety of stuff. Just think of the special interest crowd that’s propping up the shoujo/yuri/yaoi releases. It’s coming out more in the US now because it sells well relative to how much it cost to produce/market it. It coasts on scanlations and fansubs, instead of competing with it.
Earlier I mentioned that it is ironic to laugh at fansubs when your market is the small, niche one that is more likely to be impacted by fansubbing’s displacement effect. But in reality when you are selling with higher margins to a very niche market that has that collector’s mentality, it is relatively protected from the effects of fansubs; at least the impact is predictable. A lot of us who argues the fansubber’s displacement effect is balanced from its marketing effect because we buy what we watch fansubbed probably falls into this category. In other words, we’re really outside of the equation when we’re arguing about a model of seeing the impact of fansubs that applies to shows like Naruto. (Which, I think, is different compared to shows like Code Geass to shows like FLCL to shows like Shuffle to shows like Simoun.)
Speaking of which, does any of you remember of going to cons with no girls at it? I thought that was a good line.
4. To me, and I don’t keep taps on the never-ending Dattebayo drama/self-culture so I don’t know for sure, a lot of what they said are quite suspicious, borderlining entirely bullcrap. Like, always comply with C&D? Really? The one guy was quoting some survey they did with visitors on their site, and we were like wwwww. Srsly?
5. The Funi guy, Lance Heiskell, definitely took the opportunity and gave a soft PR pitch. A while ago I wrote a post on RightStuf’s Dark Lord and I think Heiskell was doing something similar here. His efforts were admirable but when you throw buzz words like “creator’s rights” it just makes me chuckle.
6. Another small irony I found is the overall displeasure about streaming sites. I suppose it is a matter of control, but all the fansubbers on the panel did not like seeing their fansubs on youtube. Dattebayo actually issues takedown notices to youtube! That’s just amusing. The issue with control is one that fansubbers always had to struggle with since the beginning (and appropriately Sirabella mentioned S. Badric for good lulz, although on an unrelated topic) and the reality is that once the file is distributed, it’s out of people’s hands. It seems Heiskell didn’t realize this in term of IRC distribution and the Live-Evil/Shinsen guys cleared this up for him.
7. I think Lance Heiskell really thought about 0-day distribution, or as I say it, day-date distribution as you see with the like of Gonzo’s streaming efforts. He laundry listed what has to be done to get it to happen, but the various obstacles there are nothing we didn’t know before. I think Heiskell also listed some other things, like where to download anime. Not like we need any help with that amirite…
Sirabella chimed in also on the whole VOD thing, and obviously to him it’s not going to be the “solution” because far most of the money of the “industry” comes from home video sales, and this industry, as I see it from Sirabella’s perspective, the collectors who don’t really want disposable entertainment but want archival quality stuff.
8. Sirabella made a comment, perhaps to the benefit of Tofu-sensei, that this discussion is incomplete until we can get a retailer to the table. If a Best Buy guy (or someone like RightStuf/Animenation) was there to give us the real numbers and trends from the trenches, we can get a better picture. I hope we get something like this next year.
9. I think the crowd cheered (I sure did) when the guy from MB talked about “lol karaoke subs” and how he finds it retarded to see on fansubs. Srsly. This is a topic that gets repeated every year at Otakon’s fansub panel I think. So just stop doing it already.
10. Lance Heiskell did say one thing important–there’s no reason to be so hostile. Everywhere I go online when this topic comes up, some people are all up in arms one way or another. I think that is just stupid and they’re not helping. To people like Sirabella, fansubbing has been around since forever, and his business has to live with it since its conception. It’s not like he went into it blind either; he’s as into fansubbing as anyone way back when. But he deals with it; reap what rewards it gives you and minimize its impact to your bottom line. I guess to some that means watch fansubs of other companies’ anime so you can live with your low salary? :)
To put this TL;DR post to rest, I think the work is cut out for us. I just hope we’re not too late. I know a lot of fans online are still stuck on this “industry v. fansubs” mentality when it ought to be “industry x fansubs” if you truly want to save the industry. Maybe they’re just mistaken or ignorant, but that’s just no good. We are dirty otaku, right? Not some high rolling Wall St. werewolves trying to salvage our sinking portfolios, who can only manipulate the law to change human behavior. We use RISING HEARTS and BURNING SPIRIT?
If you want some detailed notes, hit up THAT Anime Blog and click on the “show” widget at the appropriate section. He doesn’t have everything but it’s got the meat of it, including the detail list of panelists.
Bullet-Point Hit and Run
In celebration of another episode of Xam’d downloaded, more pictures of Ishu Benikawa in various state of dress, undress, soberness, drunkenness, and more Houko-mom lines, here are a bunch of things that you might be interested. Yes, I’m just posting Xam’d screens and avoiding any plot descriptions–rest assured it is just another build-up episode.
