Anime Boston - Day 1 - Part 3
The people who were going to run the visual novel panel did not show up, but that might not have been a bad thing. It was going to be run by one of the only US companies that import the games, so it probably would have been just a big commercial to sell their product.
But the panel that followed it was wonderful. It was a lecture by the Japan Consulate in Boston on how he feels that the “Father Knows Best”-style American TV shows of the 50’s completely changed the way the Japanese perceived family life. I gotta take some time to wrap my head around this idea, but I am absolutely fascinated with this kind of stuff.
That was followed by representatives from JET, who basically just confirmed all the things that I have learned about the program. I am even more confident that I am the kind of person they’re looking for, so I’m even more excited about the program.
The Media Blasters rep didn’t even know that he had a panel to go to! They had to drag him out of the deal’s room. He did announce a new version of Kite, which I thought at first, “What? Like a Super-Extra-Deluxe-Dirrectors-Cut version?” But no, it’s actually a sequel… or more exactly a follow-up… to the original OVA. As far as my question on the next step in media, they are not going to deal with Blu-Ray or HD-DVD as of yet, and neither are thy planning on downloads.
I believe that at this point, none of these anime companies will ever comment on the physical media side of content distribution. After all, that is a topic that even major Hollywood studios are unsure of. This rep completely agreed with my view that the general public will not adapt to the new formats while DVD is still going strong. But I personally believe that downloading anime will be the future of the industry, and you can very easily use the fansub community and bittorrent as a model on how to do it. So while Media Blasters is still one of the smallest companies attending this thing, it’s no sunrise that they aren’t doing anything about it. However, I’m hoping that bigger companies will mention something about it.
