Fulfilment Speed, Or Something about Having the Right Stuff to Go around an Anime Corner
The Kannagi thing has RACS owner posting a butt-hurt rant. He is justified and it is something that he would, and maybe should, speak up against.
However the subsequent fan responses makes me think: Just what kind of people root for anime stores (or their favorite niche net retailer)? Just what makes up which kind of customers? Who is more loyal and who isn’t? What makes each store more attractive to which kind of people? What kind of personality types make up the loyal customers of either retailer? Does that influence how vocal these customers are?
I know one thing for sure, though, and that is my own buying habits and media consumption habits do factor greatly in terms of which retailer I choose. Of course, price is always a factor so let’s just ignore that point. Given two stores of similar aspects, the one that sells for cheaper overall will win, right? And to play in the free market competitors have to differentiate themselves to survive, so we move towards an apple-and-oranges comparison. Blah blah blah marketing blah blah blah.
As a fan, this silly protest is kind of, well, silly. I buy and sell stuff from where I like to buy and sell, and I wouldn’t think anything other than that for anyone else. I would like much more if everyone got around to watch or otherwise check out Kannagi at their leisure, on their own terms, in a way that’s fair and just. But what is just and fair vary from person to person. To Bob it’s obviously nothing “exclusive” and I think there’s nothing wrong with that opinion, or with charging more money for exclusivity especially when that comes with $ attached for the people making the exclusive deal. It isn’t like Right Stuf is a horrible vendor either, there’s no real problems here.
As of this writing RACS managed to get a bunch Kannagi volume 1 at Right Stuf prices and is selling it at cost. The inner lawyer inside of me snickers at this obvious marketing gimmick. Com’on Bob, Aniplex paid a bunch of money to get people to buy DVDs, presumably, by making Yamakan available at Otakon and running their Nagisamafanclub site and what have you. If I was AnimeNation I would probably mark it up by a small amount, and just do it without ranting on your blog, because it’s the classier thing to do? When competitors decide to take a bullet and softens the exclusivity bit by reselling those DVDs, in essence they’re marketing Kannagi for Aniplex and reaffirming that the exclusivity thing is good for the retailer in the exclusive equation. Hey, isn’t that a good thing? Or rather, isn’t Bob playing right into Right Stuf’s schemes? It’s like the sound of one-handed clapping? Bandai is squished in the middle of all this, given their relationship with RS, Aniplex and what have you…and they take the burn. Oh well.
Let me just repeat it once more if it wasn’t clear the first time: If Aniplex wants an exclusive deal with Kannagi via Bandai, Right Stuf is the natural choice. If Right Stuf wants an exclusive deal, they have a lot of leverage because they basically run distro for Bandai; you can’t reasonably expect to sleep with your mistress when your wife is on the other side of the same bed. I guess it’s back to the Animevillage days.
As an aside, the vendor selling it at Otakon also was dealing it as a convention exclusive, and they would sell it to you today at retail if you give them your secret handshake. If I were you I’d hunt them down at their next con and see if you can get lucky…
I guess it’s good to remind myself that exclusive sales contracts are hardly uncommon and they are not a recent development. This is a particularly interesting junction in fandom though because this brouhaha lets one industry guru reveal some interesting statistics, and I quote Chris B.–
You know, as an aside, having read more of Robert’s stuff over at his blog, I can’t help thinking that this is helping him all that much. Maybe with some of his loyal customers, but it’s like appeasing the base rather than gaining “mainstream” acceptance.
I had only a mild business relationship with him once when we did an affiliate thing. It didn’t pan out because most people here didn’t buy from him. They had the choice, we rotated banners, text links, etc. but people just didn’t go there. So that experience is not coloring it at all. He was pleasant to work with but there wasn’t anything I could really do to make people go there.
So the second part of this post asks: why is Right Stuf that much more popular over at the ex-AoDVD/Mania crowd? I guess the simple answers are:
- These people are bargain hawks. AoDVD does function as a deal site to some extent. Invariably a large portion of AoDVD’s function is consumer research, and it’s definitely a valuable resource for those of us who do business with preference for cheap as long as we get what we’re after–the DVDs. And it’s undeniably the case that RACS is rarely cheap compared to the usual Deepdiscount summer sale or Right Stuf’s 25 for $100.
- Do we not care about service? I’m sure we do, but bargain hawk types assign different value to things like service and ease of mind than those who don’t bargain. Well, it’s built into the concept. By shopping for cheap, bargain hawk types implicitly acknowledge a level of risk and is willing to bear it in exchange for a lower price [/corporate lawyerspeak]. It isn’t to say there’s no value to risk, but rather…
- Speed is not something we care that much about, at least not that kind of speed. Let’s break it down further. The average AoDVD mad collector does something people like Ed Chavez wants you to do with his books–pre-order. Right Stuf, like RACS, ships preorders as soon they’re in, which is often way before the street date. Remember, we are hardcore animu consumerzzz and I’m sure there are people who are regulars on that forum that own like, 50%+ of all anime released in the US or some such. You don’t do that without arming yourself with the data AoDVD provides, and you don’t do that without trying to preorder sometimes. (As an aside there are no sites out there that can rival AoDVD still.) So the risk of “speed” here is not exactly all that threatening. And pre-ordering is an act of large risk as well, given the replicator problems we’ve been seeing. Oh, we should also remember that Bandai and ADV use Right Stuf for fulfillment…so RS is fast when it comes to pre-orders due to that advantage.
- Speed is also not something we care that much about, and even “that” kind of speed. People always say if you order from RACS you get it in a couple days. That’s wonderful. But if I were to partake Right Stuf’s ongoing sale right now I don’t particularly mind if it took them 2 months to fulfill it, simply because I buy DVDs primarily for archival purposes. I’d say a good 1/3 of my DVD collection is still in shrinkwarps. Even if I want to watch it, my backlog is a mile high. I can afford to wait. This is another reason why “good service” is not so cracked up to be for the average AoDVD person. As long as a threshold of quality has been met, it’s all good.
- And it isn’t to say nobody from AoDVD orders from RACS. Speed and quality of service is always important. It’s just not very often when you really need that speed that you would be willing to pay for it. Bargain hawk types plan out their purchases ahead of time. They are not casual buyers who do it out of fancy, usually. So if they knew if they ordered this thing they need by date X earlier and can save some money, they would. Now of course this is not always possible and stuff happens, and that’s when we might go to RACS for DVDs. It’s just rarely the case.
- To be honest, RACS prices are not horrible at all; but if you have 400-500-600 anime DVDs, it adds up even if you can save half a dollar per disc. Price becomes even more important for serious collectors.
I wonder if this particular mentality as I described is even true. But here you go.
Otakon 2009: Yamakan Panel 1 Dump
This is a straight up transcript of Yamakan’s panel’s Q&A section. If you’ve poured through Bayoab’s, this is a secondary reference for you. Mirrored here for your lols. There are places where I wasn’t sure what was said, so I filled it in. Yeah, them’s the rub. Partly why you want as many different transcripts as you can (ideally a nice audio clip, anybody)?
The panel has some promo stuff in the front but nothing important. It was short too and the bulk of the time is Q&A. So let’s get started. It has minimal proof reading because I more or less just copy and pasted from my transcription!
Oh, also, some juicy questions can be found right here, if you want most of the key takeaways.
When Aniplex Attacks
Just trying to sum up thoughts about Japanese anime producers, marketing in the US market, via the lens of Anime Boston 2009…
Con-based marketing blitz is something of an enjoyable mystery to me. When people talk about bringing over Japanese guests at anime conventions, often times someone will mention that a company will sponsor or bring someone over on their own volition. I guess this is so when Aniplex decided to come to Anime Boston, bringing an exec, a producer, a cross-label recording act (Kalafina is Sony Music Japan, Aniplex is a Sony subsidiary), and screened one of their prized movie based on Kinoko Nasu’s Kara no Kyoukai novels. Now this is probably possibly only with the help of many others, and it shouldn’t be credited to Aniplex alone, but these guests and events are tagged by the said sponsors as such.
And of course, “prized” here means that Kara no Kyoukai was #2 in Japan’s anime DVD sales chart last year–given that there are now 5 pairs of SKUs (LE/RE) for the Rakkyo movies as of this writing, I’m not sure how they measured it… In the down economy that we’re in, though, any news like that is good news.
Indeed, one of the small factoids flying around this summer convention season is that companies are on tighter budgets because nobody is all that well off…as far as I know. And we all know, for sure, that Sony’s not in the best of shape right now, so how does Aniplex find the fortitude to seize the day?
Coming from a fan’s perspective, I think Aniplex has done a bang up job at presenting itself at the con, being a purveyor of Very Cool intellectual properties; ultimately, they have stuff that I would buy. And who wouldn’t buy Rakkyo after being screened episode 5, in high definition? I might be sold out for high definition, but it doesn’t take an expert to tell the difference between what I saw then and a DVD-ripped fansub.
There’s something to be said when a Japanese producer points up at the screen, which is displaying the too-familiar Sony crossbar interface of a PS3, and the little video thumbnail is flipping through the book like how it is in the first minutes of the film. Take a look at these pictures, if you haven’t seen it–straight from the Rakkyo screening at Anime Boston. From it, we can say:
- There’s a date that dated a week before Anime Boston; they’ve been prepared since mid-May. Funnily enough, burning the movie on a Blu-Ray disc may very well be an option but I bet they wanted to reduce complexity and thus comes the PS3 in the whole. There’s a little side story about how the Aniplex entourage were surprised that they could get their PS3 past customs without even a wrinkled eyebrow, but it probably was something “you had to be there” for.
- It’s got subtitles. A subsidiary of Sony screening a foreign film is nothing out of ordinary at a glance. But if we were back in 2004, you would presume Aniplex is simply trying to shop for a buyer and using this exhibition to drum up interests. And honestly a title like Rakkyo probably has enough on its resume to solicit genuine interests without much help. It makes you wonder why there’s this display? Rakkyo sold well in the theaters and it sold well on DVDs in Japan, relatively. It’s Type-Moon. And being Sony, are they really afraid of reverse importation? (I’m guessing no, given The Sky Crawlers release here).
- It’s got subtitles–and it’s 2009. As with every Anime Boston, industry guru Chris Beveridge runs a panel talking about anime industry stuff. The questioning did come down to looking at the way how the market segments into streaming, mainstream and various types of VOD, versus the expensive, super high quality niche releases that serious collectors want. To Chris, the mid-to-long term forecast is something in the tune of convergence in outlet but divergence in market as middlemen gain sophistication for better ways and additional ways to monetize with larger margin. At least, that’s as I paraphrase it. This means that the “Bandai Visual” way will work but it would be an universal import/export situation. It side steps the reverse importation problem if everything is priced the same, and the high margin justifies the low print run and high production quality, for niche titles. The more mainstream items are sold similarly to what is currently the standard practice, but with a stronger digital delivery component which allows for different forms of monetizing–subscription and early access, exclusivity, and DTO. To think that we run and jump all these hoops just to get a localization…
What’s more, just as much is said through what it wasn’t there at Aniplex’s spree.
- It isn’t a Blu-Ray disc. I think this speaks for itself. Let’s QQ collectively for some more.
- There’s no license announcement. I think we were all waiting on this one–Kara no Kyoukai should be a sure sell, right?
The further evidence of a potential “convergence” strategy would be Kannagi’s English-language website. At the con, the rep mouthed off nagisamafanclub.com. As of yesterday, the anime site portion of the website is now live. Again, why the English language translation? Did the price of translation drop enough over the past couple years that Aniplex can do something like this? Cross-language marketing on their own behalf, because…?
The other answer, and perhaps the more prudent guess, is that Aniplex is marketing these anime to us in the hopes to increase its value as a license to American companies. It’s a tough pitch, but maybe it does work. I don’t know. But besides the subtitled movie and the English-language website, there is this pretty neat English-language flier (pardon the crappy scan, and watch for the Rakkyo 5 spoilers) Aniplex handed out at the con, as well as a questionnaire. It’s one not unlike the Famitsu/Otaku USA survey, but this one is straightforward and doesn’t have much in terms of open-ended questions. Basically, it asks questions like:
- What is your favorite anime?
- What is your favorite manga?
- Who is your favorite character?
Very SOP, but it also asks:
- Who is your favorite anime/manga creator?
- What is your favorite animation studio?
Woah. Getting ahead of ourselves here? The studio question is a cute one but also one that I want to know the results! I would type up the whole survey if I have it in front of me, but my memory is too leaky, so those questions are there to give you a feel.
One thing anime companies that directly interact with fans should know this–fans love to give you a piece of their minds. That’s nature of fandom. Surveys like this is good when they give the fans a feeling that they’re not only making a difference in your business, but also engaged in a way that let them express their fandom. I think especially for a middleman type group such as Aniplex, where they don’t necessarily have to mess with fans and can interact with them at its leisure, patronizing your eventual sources of income is a very shrewd move. Beats mailing out C&Ds, at any rate.
Of course, this is a different story in Japan. But given the large share of blame Japanese producers shoulder in today’s market condition, I’ll take any positive signs that I can get–maybe someone over there has a clue on how to pander to a convention audience? Maybe they want to start pushing their brands and recognition of said brands overseas? Educating their consumers overseas may overall streamline their marketing efforts in the long run? I don’t know.
Too-Shy Shy-Girl from a Too-Shy Shy-Era
Do you still remember Kannagi? Takako Kimura? For some of you, there has been a lifetime worth of stuff since, but to me it is a whole heartbeat ago.
Takako: a catch-all catch-you fangirl?
Kannagi’s filler episodes are the true spiritual successor of Lucky Star IMO.
If the general concept behind Lucky Star is when you stick an otaku-type into a group of normal folks, then Kannagi is when you stick a few normal people into a group of otaku types. It strikes me oddly funny that the bulk of people talking about K-ON skipped out on this little not-KyoAni show. Maybe because it isn’t?
Anyways, for the reference of this post, let’s recall another show where you have fanboys and fangirls: Genshiken. It is like, a bunch of otaku types interacting with each other, and sometimes with the greater society. If you have not watched or read Genshiken, you ought to fix that pretty quick-like; not because it’s good entertainment, but it’s a honest-to-goodness otaku fantasy, with the realism dial set to the realistic half of fantasy rather than the more fantastic half. For us proto-otaku types, the enjoyment comes in with identifying the nuances in Shimoku Kio’s world with ours. A Dilbert or The Office, if you will, for you and me. Naturally the focus on the show will come down to some degree, on said nuances.
Back to Kannagi. There’s this succulent contrast between the backwards and low-tech of it all, if we take a look at one nuance, compared to the almost-foreign, advance tech representations that gets hoisted on Jin, Nagi and Tsugumi.
It’s not just a Sony. It made a comment, perhaps fairly categorized as a jab, about Sony’s sometime-solitary insistence on its own technological platform for media storage. Akiba made that comment to a poor kid living in a run-down apartment, watching TV on … what, a 24″ CRT feeding NTSC from rabbit ears. It’s a scene out of Kamichu minus the rolled-up newspaper and wintry laziness.
And if electronics tech is not enough, the assault continues with cultural changes. What does that say about Zange and Takako’s performance? Or Nagi’s in contrast? Of ad jingle, image songs from 80s OAVs, present day pop songs…and songs that’s not on any CD… It’s a diverse cross-section.
Is it at all coincidence that the Akiba-kei types stand on the cutting edge of consumer tech? I hardly think not. But the mentality of an otaku is not defined by what is loved or hated, rather, it’s, well, a mentality. One observed through looking at the little details.
In a way there’s a slope of increasing insularity. Characters like Konata and Takako are detached from reality to a degree (beyond the obvious fact that they are anime characters). They may be unreal representations (well, Konata is suppose to be real…) but ultimately they are not crushed souls like the various college kids graduating from Genshiken (which, well, are also unreal in their own ways). Ok, maybe high schoolers have more fun, but whatever. And it’s fun that brings all the fans to the yard.
They’re not shy!
One Piece versus Naruto, Bleach, and the Shame of Fillers
I don’t watch One Piece, Naruto or Bleach, so when I talk to people who do talk about it (and there are quite a few of them) they engage me similarly to those who do not know anything about anime at all. Except, I do know something about anime. At least, I can speak the language of fillers, of character-driven serials, of 24-minute doses of amusements, and adaptations of manga.
The question came up when I was talking to a couple RL friends about fillers in those shows. And somehow there’s a consensus that fillers in One Piece are actually a good thing. The Straw Hat Pirates go have an adventure, and that’s that. And that’s what people seek when they think, “Mmmm, pirates!” Maybe it’s not the best thing in the show to them, but it is enjoyable at least.
But the consensus flips for Naruto and Bleach fillers–they are just terrible. Why is that? Putting aside the fact that fillers in anime adaptation of manga often are a necessary vice to deal with the reality of TV scheduling, there is something inherently wrong with it. What is?
What made the discussion about Naruto and Bleach memorable in my mind is how it’s tied to the narrative style, and it’s not an obvious connection (to someone who only knows the shows by mostly hearsay). All three of these shows, in simple terms, are character-driven stories that take place over many smaller narrative arcs. Despite that they are character-driven narratives, they do things in two different ways. For One Piece, people commonly refers to the concept of the show as a gathering of a large crew. Much of the story is devoted to the characterization of the crew during their adventures as the crew increases in number. The serial nature of the overall story accrues like experience for the readers and viewers, and snowballs in the plot as a larger-than-life gang. It’s like you’ve been with them all these years (literally), and you know who they are.
The approach for character development in Naruto and Bleach are more expositional. Gradually the characters reveal themselves to the readers and viewers. We understand the motivation behind them through juicy flashbacks, narrations, whatever. It’s like a good episode of Toradora split into several episodes.
But what makes fillers? To define it quickly and only to the degree that it’s functional in this post’s context, I describe it as episodes that don’t further some preconceived notion of progression of the narrative. It isn’t to say fillers don’t further the overall narrative, as often times fillers do reveal something about characters and are often a critical tool to character development in anime TV series.
Well, just not always.
And I think it would only be fair if we focus on the type of fillers that doesn’t further anything in terms of character development. But what makes One Piece’s fillers another encounter, another experience to put into the audience’s memory banks as a positive? How do you avoid being compared to the notorious Naruto fillers?
Am I even barking up the right tree? I mean, yeah, on a certain level, no fillers are desirable. But yet at the same time fillers are sometimes very edifying and very entertaining. Sometimes it’s the main course of a meal. But I think the gigantic red arrow is pointing towards the way character development and deconstruction is handled within the narrative. I don’t even think I can say that One Piece characters are “less developed” but they might be more flatly amusing than humanly sympathetic. They’re more why some of us are watching the show per se, rather anything that is happening to them. Then again, that might just be me and how I very infrequently find an anime character that reminds me of a true-to-life personality. Maybe a lot of people can see themselves or someone they know in some Naruto character, and it becomes a real draw rather than seeing the development of those folks. Or what happens to your Bleach folks rather than “oh I really like Ichigo because I know someone just like him in 8th grade” or whatever.
I wonder how much of this applies to Kannagi.
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Speaking of shame and fillers, people who want to vote and support the characters running in this contest, now is the time to vote with your…vote. Or hate spiel. Or image spam. I do this every year, or almost, for the past half dozen or so. It’s a riot and a lot of fun if you know what you’re doing. It’s shameful business, and there are even actual, free prizes for some lucky people if they stick around.
