Anime no Chikara: The Soul of Pachinko?
1. Pachinko is big bucks for franchise owners. Ko is like a hound on this stuff. So I’ll share some of the stuff he shared, and other things–
- Rio anime (and also to some extent Umi Monogatari yeah?). We get pachinko anime because it’s a good crossover media marketing thing.
- Brad summarizes what Ko said. More pertinently, pachinko machines are an exploding market of sorts? Marketing is fierce and tie-ins are worth the big bucks. I mean sure, I will put in a few yen into a Nadesico machine. Or a My-Hime machine. Older franchises revive because they are big-time, well-known signifier.
- I wonder if Sailor Moon is going to take the plunge with its global revival soon… These revivals tend to lead to more SKU tie-ins (Mai-Hime BDs come to mind) and possibly one-shot animation or whatever like Fist.
2. Listen to this inadequate Ian Condry lecture about the interplay between merchandising and animation. Inadequate because it lacks video! But worth it if just for the Code Geass pitch session anecdote. Props to Alex L. for making it possible.
The Condry lecture painted a cloud-like picture. Online social networks, predictably, will continues to move to increasingly commercial in nature. I think it fits well with anime fandom in a sense that it is also very commercial (and not really all that revolutionary social/economically speaking) but yet very much a collective of individuals, as opposed to a “group.” Interaction from the commercial entities to the “cloud” is usually in two layers, one as an agent and the other as an insider. The difference is in the motivation–one shills, the other serves a personal self-interest implying an at-odds relationship with the commercial entity. Both are necessary; one for the purpose of recognition and the other is to disseminate actual information and add credentials. And both roles are increasingly not as much as what it seems to be. Kind of like you get the guy who blogs for Microsoft, and the guy who leaks MS info to the press.
The fact that most anime media companies ignore the whole fan scene on the face despite basically living off them (if this means anything) seems to suggest that likewise fans behave in a similar way–that we partake in a commercial relationship and in a way which identifies ourselves in relationship with these commercial entities. Like, for example, WAH loves Akiyuki Shinbo and would not mind having his child. That is an identity he shares with other fans and in context of the industry. WAH spent $4 (IIRC, correct me if I am wrong) on a copy of Tenamonya Voyagers is another kind of identity in which he relates to the industry, but it is an individual, personal fact. [Coincidentally WAH also asked a question in that recording.] Well that’s not the best example, but it’s like how some people pride on consuming only fansubs and not buy any actual licensed goods, or in reverse like how some people only watch anime on DVDs and never fansubs. (Or that they sometimes flaunt these personal decisions.) And subsequently, how that kind of thing is considered flaunting. On the other hand it’s much more acceptable to say “Senjougahara is mai waifu” or otherwise identify with something that constitutes actual fandom. Sort of. Even when both dimensions of the fan individual are crucial, if anything, as marketing data to commercial interests.
The difference is kind of like what I talk on my blog and what I do my social networking with on twitter and forums, versus the actual anime I consume, maybe?
Chasing Moonrunes
Pretend-ignorance can be bliss too.
Why do I follow Mako’s silly excuse of a blog? Because she posts pics like these.
It’s not exactly a secret, but I can’t read Japanese. So why do I subscribe to Japanese blogs? I’m subscribed to Makkun’s blog, out of some misguided sense of duty–the same reason why I buy almost every solo CD she puts out I guess. I hardly read even half of her non PR posts. I also follow ItoShiz’s blog, but because she usually posts some interesting pictures and she doesn’t post much anyways, so it isn’t as if it makes a difference.
I follow a few other Japanese blogs for non-informational purposes, but they usually have some actual utility even if I can’t read it.
Is this the same reason why I listen to Japanese music when I don’t understand it in the first person? Or play Love Plus (well anyone can say “pon” or whatever)? And by that I mean I don’t understand it until I look it up on Google or something. [Speaking of which.]
On a similar note, these blogging voice actors and anime personalities post things that they are commercially tied to. It makes logical sense–you’re blogging as a part of your professional persona as an entertainer, so what can you talk about besides what you did at work and other work-related things? To some extent that’s basically what makes following seiyuu blogs interesting. Someone like Mako gets into costumes (and her true idol roots show there) and do promotion events, so that’s always pretty neat to see. But the less-photogenic also have something else interesting to say to even the most-illiterate. Even if it’s just what they had when they went out to eat that night.
I guess pictures of chocolates incoming 3…2…1…
The Retailer Focus, BD and New Media
While my heart goes out to the panning of the rant of a retailer, speaking as a buying customer (though I never shopped at RACS) I have to say there is a very agreeable point to what Robert (Bob?) is saying.
Let me see if I can pin it in fewer words and less “quit ruining my business!” bias:
- DVD sales declined partly due to Blu-Ray Disc adaptation, across the whole industry (let alone Japan, who is really taking the lead in anime BD sales).
- BD sales is the next cycle in the home video industry, or at least a part of it. So without BD uptake, the home video sales will suffer.
- BD uptake in anime licensing in America is currently throttled by licensing trepidation, lack of a better word, from Japan. Reverse importation may be the primary source of fear but who really knows? There is no data to support it, one way or the other.
- R1 companies should focus their efforts and resources in securing BD licenses and produce better products, because that’s where the money is in the near future. (I’d also add on my own that before BD prices drop across the board, now is the time to cash in on high margin SKUs.)
Also just for footnote, remember that the US anime industry (if one could be said that there is one, as commonly known) has its roots in the home video business. Pretty much everybody’s core business model is to sell actual, physical products (with one notable exception). It just happens what they sold had to be licensed from Japan. This business came from a tradition of pushing hardware, not software. So things like home video sales trend is key to their survival, including their downstream affiliates.
A proper rebuttal of Rob’s fears (perhaps better put as soothing and reassuring his worries, for the less confrontational) goes like this. In short:
- We don’t know for sure how the BD market is going to turn out in this space. Yet.
- Blu-Ray Disc market has yet to stabilize especially in America, considering the nature of the format still waffles between budding home-theater owners, trend-conscious consumers, and hardcore collectors.
- We don’t know how BD-buying anime fans fit between those categories.
- And there are a lot of other things that we don’t know (most importantly: pricing trends in specifics).
- And once we do know for sure, Japan will much more likely cooperate.
- (Old argument:) The internet piracy market doesn’t overlap with the BD-buying market anyways! All that online stuff is to add revenue stream through the people who won’t buy the physical media in the first place, and the data is good on cannibalization (as in, not enough to worry about).
- Most hardcore collectors either don’t give a flying damn about Funimation’s crap BDs, or lament about it (By the way, this is hawt.). [By the way #2, we also don’t care about some torrent of some 720p material upscaled (by manufacturer) to 1080 then downscaled (by encoder) to 720. WTH guys.]
The way I see it, when Viz, Funimation and others branch into online media stuff, they’re trying to secure as many revenue streams as their budget can allow. I mean, that’s what every media licensing company in America (and elsewhere!) is doing. Even if they don’t make money through it, it’s a great way to advertise. Take Viz for example, I think they suck when it comes to the internet in general, even compared to Funimation (maybe that is because they are now a Japanese company and invariably that sort of lack-of-business-savvy comes like a D&D racial penalty), but even then, they know they have to go there because the is money there, because the next generation of buyers are there. You have to be visible in that space.
If anything, Crunchyroll has shown Japan that there is money in the cloud. It’s a separate question as to if CR can stay afloat, but that’s a different inquiry. Ultimately there’s very little people like Robert can do, so his frustration with the whole shebang of ills throughout the system/process is sympathetic, if a tad misdirected.
I also have one more note from the blog comments–
Who has a BD strategy? I know Funimation does, as their 5-man dedicated in-house mastering folks…exist. They also have dedicated marketing folks that post blog posts and screw around on Twitter. I already mentioned before that these sorts of people are almost luxuries–how many anime licensing companies in the US can afford that? Viz comes to mind, and Crunchyroll? It isn’t like BD mastering is a simple and inexpensive process either. And even today, the only good anime on BD, in the US, come from Honneamise and Sony. That’s it folks! In reality Bandai Visual and Funimation are obviously two players with a BD strategy; one just gets hated on for no good reason (BDs being too expensive is no reason to hate IMO) and jumped ship, the other is in the process of making less-crappy BD releases and wrangling over licensing problems.
In short, BD is still too expensive for small fries, too corporate-paranoid for the big guys (except Bandai), and behind the curve for everyone else (see Funi’s backlog).
Personally, I would love to be able to buy BD of all the anime I want to buy. But a honest look at the landscape of the market would tell me that even if I have a lot of spending money and live in Japan, not all the title I want is even available in BD. Where is my Simoun? Where’s my Futakoi Alternative? Where’s my Kara no Kyoukai? If anything that is the “moral” of the True Tears box story. So, I think it is a little unreasonable to ask a foreign licensee that sort of thing, at this junction.
One thing I do agree with him: Funimation should quit pussy-footing around and make a strong statement in their BD releases; even if it is at the expense of spending more money there and spending less money elsewhere, BD ought to be/will be a core business product. Being the default anime industry leader in the US, they need to be able to put out a quality BD product. Absolutely have to. Why? If anything, so it quells my fear that they can’t even if they wanted to. As I see it, they’re really just trying to scrape by as cheaply as they can, and that just makes the HD-whore in me sad. Worse, it gives me an incentive to wait for something better, like a Japanese release.
And lastly, two more notes:
Japan is paranoid about reverse importation of BDs and they make people jump hoops about their Region A releases. Still, I think there is good sense to change your release methods to avoid making the “ultimate” SKU that will end up siphoning all the richest/most desperate buyers. It is the opposite approach of the Honneamise/BV strategy. For example, we have Disney’s Ponyo, which is tailored to the American audience for their US release, and tailored to the Asian audience in their Japanese release. I think it’s quite clever that the Japanese release carries just a 2.0 English track where as the US release carries a 5.1 Japanese (but lower bitrate than the Japanese one) track. I think that’s really tailoring it to the right audience. Of course, this strategy doesn’t apply so well on titles where volume of sales that don’t tier, or are just really low. And yeah, it rubs those perfectionist collectors the wrong way, but they could always just buy both copies :3
(Oh wait, that makes THREE studios with concerted BD strategy. Let’s remember the margin Disney makes on these babies in their Japanese release. Ahem.)
The other note being–do people care? I mean it sort of goes under my bullet up there about “overlapping.” Poor suckers like me probably would double- and triple-dip on BD/DVD/VHS/LD or whatever as long as you give us a compelling reason we will buy SKU from our favorite shows. I think that’s the basic operational mentality from the consumer side of things in the anime industry. In that sense, when Funimation releases Samurai Champloo BD, I bought it, mainly because it would be my only archival copy–that is the same as buying the DVDs of the thing, since the quality is about on par (if not worse). Still, I bought the damned thing. I can see why people might not buy it as an upgrade to their library, but it’s one example where the BD SKU can fit a role that a budget re-release DVD does for a title that already has a first or second pressing. I think Funimation understands this and knows that’s possibly where the money is!
TL;DR: It is a game of incentives. Funimation (and everyone) stands to gain from playing ball in the various markets, both because there is something to gain and because it is relatively cheap. Before we cry about bulking up core businesses we have to rationally examine the potential gain versus the cost, even if it contradicts with what I said up there…
How Has Anime Changed Over the Past 15 Years?
Ask John the same question, and you can read his answer.
It is a tough question to tackle, so I felt it was unfair to criticize him behind his back. Rather, I want to supplement his survey of the last 15 years of anime by pointing out some key changes that JP and I (mostly I) felt that was too important to be left out of John’s answer. There are also some erroneous bits, but I’m going to ignore them for now (ie., LOL moe and tsundere in anime predates 1995 kkthx).
Japan, now online: Between 1995 and 2010, cellular phone penetration has skyrocketed in Japan. If you recall Makoto Shinkai’s 5 cm/s, that was a key plot device in the first segment, especially coming into the film as a generation who find their cell phones second-nature. I presume this is how most modern Japanese teens and young adults feel about cell phones. Of course, Japan is this weird place where more people go online and do their internet stuff via cell phones than with their personal computers, so that also means places like 2ch is really a socially important thing today. Let’s not even go into how important 2ch is for anime fans of Japan. And 2ch didn’t officially exist until 1999.
The impact of 2ch on anime is hard to point and cite authoritatively, even if I’m sure we could cite to a bunch of stuff. It is, however, notable as a way for industry folks to gauge and interact with fans. Leaks to 2ch is almost like a marketing tool nowadays. (Kanatagatari’s leak is widely thought of as on purpose, for example.) We have anime and manga made about the Train Man story, which is essentially a national-cultural nod to 2ch. Obviously 2ch gets referenced in anime and manga, too. Still the real impact of 2ch has on anime is on the fans, on the fan industries (read: doujin market), and as a social hub that can make or break a work. Gurren Lagann episode 4 anyone?
And that’s just 2ch. Blogging; Mixi; online stream sites like Nico and Youtube, DTO sites, paid-streams, even the likes of Crunchyroll and foreign-operated licensees all play a notable role in the evolution of anime especially in the latter part of this decade. Pixiv and similar communities fostered growth of talents, even if only in part. It also presented a fan-facing revenue stream, complemented that whole “Comic Market” mentality that, well, we’ll get right to it.
Gundam and Retail Potato
I mouthed out some nonsense about True Tears, but in reality I was just cheering for joy. I don’t understand why people don’t grasp that the typical anime otaku who would buy True Tears in the first place won’t stand for a DVD unless it’s dirt cheap (ie., a throwaway purchase). That is, once they’ve tasted what that show looks like in HD! And of course, I’d suspect most anime otaku who could afford buying anime (in Japan) in the first place have a PS3 by now.
That said, it wouldn’t be fair to say that every high-def title out there is worth it. We have things like Bakemonogatari, which is more like an OAV since the TV airing was significantly different; it’s a worthy buy but it’s not because of production values per se. We have shows that probably don’t look any different on 1080p than 480p because the production value is too low. And then we have shows that actually look good enough on DVD that a Blu-Ray doesn’t make a whole lot of difference. We also have some upscales. Once you remove all of that you’re left with the shows that truly make a difference on a big screen.
Did I ever mention that Simoun had a high-def broadcast?
Well, no matter. I hope that Gundam Unicorn thing is at least a step in the right direction. Yeah, the price point is no good, but that puts Xam’d’s costs in perspective I say!
Lastly, some Dance in the Vampire Bund music (aff. link) for Momotato. I neglected this title from the last post because the first episode was clearly not enough to make an opinion on the show. I can’t even say if I could make up my mind at all after the second episode, but that is probably not a good sign.
