Thinking of Buying You
I’m thinking about the new Nozomi Entertainment licenses–Aria, Marimite, Emma.
How many people will buy these titles from them? They are priced attractively, albeit available only through Rightstuf’s own site, some select specialty stores and online stores. If you are reading this blog, odds are the retail availability hurdle is not a major problem (save, of course, international readers). In fact given Rightstuf’s track record we might be seeing some big sales on their titles as they have done with The THIRD and Piano. It’s not expensive. Waiting is not a bad option.
But is it a good option? The attractive bundles are 12, 13 episodes a pop, and you can get them below $40 USD as a pre-order already. It doesn’t beat out the prices of some really, really cheap, low profile ADV bundles, but considering that these are new licenses, it definitely means Rightstuf is skipping straight to just one kind of buyer–those of you who are looking for a reasonably priced DVD set (much like how a lot of American TV shows are bundled), and can live without a translated dub.
The lack of a dub is done as a business decision, it seems–dubbing costs a truck load of money and when you aim so precisely as Nozomi’s licenses are, you just can’t afford to hike up your production costs. Likewise, dubbing also take a truck load of time, and I think while some people are willing to wait for a nice release, just the way they want, no one would rather want something later if they can have the same thing now. Especially if you are investing into this product (aka. Nozomi themselves). A long production cycle means you could lose out on the hype and promotion that fansubs generate. It can mean the delay will eat into the shelf life of your release. More importantly however, you just won’t see any return on your investment until later. And that really bites.
To elaborate a bit on what I mean by aiming precisely, it seems that they are pushing for a very simple paradigm, that a relatively low-priced, reasonably speedy release of the entire series aimed at a select group of people who are already fans of the show. Hey, I dig that.
Having the right price is rather important. A millionaire can be a casual manga reader just like a struggling salaryman. In the same way, as anime aim mostly at people in their late teens and 20-something, you have some people who are already making steady money and also a lot of people who are living on low-end retail income while struggling in college. And everyone in between. The low price casts a wide web, and obviously that affects Nozomi’s bottom line in a very direct way as we all know.
Wait, I did say precise, right–so who the hell would buy Aria or Marimite if they don’t already know what it is? Recall Mamiko Noto’s visit to America last summer. The three Marimite cosplayers are fans of the show. And I think it’s exactly these people Nozomi is aiming for. Is it worthy to note that on that Otakon, I made a few rounds in the dealers room, only finding very few Marimite merchandise, period?
These anecdotes are there to let you know how I feel about this issue. Aria, Emma and Marimite are very much definitive niche titles. Especially Marimite. There is not a terribly lot of fanfare surrounding these titles (although Aria has a lot of fans overseas, I suppose), and especially in the US. It shows, with Nozomi’s fairly cheap but targeted approach in marketing.
Because “niche” is really another term for “it’s not going to sell many units.”
I would imagine as much as having a translated dub of Marimite would be lulz, or a properly-acted dub of Emma would be epic, but Rightstuf is selling these DVDs to people that largely have seen some of the fansubs. And if you can tolerate fansubs, you probably can live without dubs.
It might be worth noting that both Emma and Aria have a presence in the US as manga. In fact you can pick these up at your local big-box bookstores. I wonder how that change things… considering that buying 7 (or 9, I guess) volumes of Emma manga would cost nearly as much as buying the 2 DVD box sets…
WTB Marimite novels!
Or I guess, what I’m trying to say is, please buy Marimite when it comes out. It actually needs your support. Rightstuf could have charged a higher price on these babies as the market can support it, and then lower the price over time as per custom, but somehow they aren’t. Coupled with their “lol get your name in the credits” nonsense, maybe they’re trying to do something. I’m just slightly worried that they won’t get the numbers they are looking for.
How to Be Makoto Shinkai
Takanori Makes the Squeeze
So some of you know that TM Revolution is coming to New York ComiCon. For those who are planning on going, they’re stuffing all of yall into a hall that sits 3000.
That’s right, 3000.
They have the Javitz Center. Which means it has enough space that can hold at least 10,000 in the basement. Of course, odds are that’s simply not possible as the Comic con doesn’t really use up all that space overall, and it probably costs a metric ton of $$$.
For comparison, when L’arc en Ciel went to Baltimore for Otakon, they had over 10,000 people show up at that gig. Of course Otakon draws like 30,000 people all by itself so much of that can be attributed to that fact alone, but this is the Big Apple and not the dump that is Baltimore. It’s midtown madness! TMR’s Otakon visit topped out at around 4-5000 or so? But that was in 2003.
But anyways, even if TMR was not coming (and, FWIW, I’d have made plans to go much earlier if he is bring Abingdon Boys School), NYCC is a crowd crunch anyways if it was anything like last year. I suppose I can go again and try to score free loot, but I’m a lot more busy now than last year. Even if TM Revolution is showing himself in a venue that holds 10,000, it’ll be a crowd anyways.
Choices choices.
Anime On the Go
How many of you watch anime on the go?
I’ve been doing that lately and it’s rather productive. I suppose I’m in a small minority in the US who commute by train, but I imagine some of you Europeans and Asians might find it just as appealing.
The rise of cheaper PMP makes this really a breeze too; my current piece-of-crap is a no-name Chinese thing that I got for free because of connections. It holds 2 gigs and has a SD slot (but I can’t get to it from the default UI…), plays the usual mix of encodes and media including whatever that may run on an iPod. The battery life is acceptable but the quality of everything is about as bad as it gets. The screen works fine, I guess; but in its cruddiness lies a comfortable simplicity and wide compatibility.
Watching fansubs on it is a bit of a challenge simply because some fansubs have a text size of TOO SMALL. Some are pretty ok however and suddenly it is as if my eyes are opened to all the neat little optimizations some fansubbers put out on their videos to make those who do watch anime on their PMP easier, like encoding it a certain way or the use of certain sort of typesetting. I never noticed these things before.
I haven’t really experimented with what pay-to-download solutions there are for this file format.
If you got any pointers or tips as to optimize your experience in doing so please share. I don’t know anyone who are into PMPs that care enough about anime to use it to sway what they may purchase hardware-wise, but I suppose I can hit up the usual venues about what’s a good transcoder and the like. I think I’m just using some generic anything->ipod converter. Alternatively I can just use something like TVersity, which is what I’m using to stream to my PS3…
Pillows And More Pillows
March 22nd is the world pillow fight day. You can read all about it on their website, which is pretty simple and straightforward. I mean, it’s a flashmob armed with pillows, exercising their freedom of assembly as strangers and comrades in arm, may it be feather, cotton, or something else more sinister. Or oops, not a flashmob. Just a bunch of people doing something people don’t do.
What’s more interesting for me is March 21st. The Pillows is hitting up Anime Boston that weekend, a con I never bother to visit and is sort of kind of a local thing for them anyways. On Friday March 21, however, they’re playing a gig in New York City, where Ryusuke’s friend died. I guess.
Having been to a prior show with a similar lineup (Noodles, the Pillows) back in ‘05, I can say with some confidence that this is a pretty fun gig that you don’t want to miss if you’re at all a weeaboo, or otherwise have affinity with this breed of rock.
Speaking of that breed of rock, I just got Rock Band the other day and it’s a pretty addictive and fun game. Especially with a group of folks. Kind of like this picture.
