Anime Boston Final Wrap Up - Anime in the US Today
When I think about my weekend up here in Boston this year, I guess it can only be summed up into one word: different. Every little aspect of the convention experience seemed a little off this time around. It’s like having that little voice in the back of your head saying, “No, this ain’t right, something is very, very wrong here.” Was it a change in my personal situation and attitude? Possibly. But I think that it’s the change within the industry and fandom that caused this worry.
The biggest issue that I’ve been talking about all weekend is the fact that only three anime companies were present this year. If you go back to the Anime Boston of two years ago, you will see a much brighter picture. All the birds of the industry, from the tiny Synch-Point to the giant Bandai, couldn’t wait to strut their newly developed plumage to the crowd of onlookers. All the companies were snatching up titles left and right. Some of them even announced 5 titles that year! If there was a golden time for anime, that was it, and they were living it up for everything that they could squeeze out of it.
Last year, the companies returned to the stage, but many came empty handed. The pretty feathers from the year before were now dull. Everyone started to tremble as they saw sales not growing at the rate they needed to in order to survive. The only thing they could hope for at the time was to be saved by a couple of little ninjas, who were about to make their way over to the US with in a couple of months.
But the little ninjas didn’t save them. Only three companies came back north this spring, which left many to wonder what happened to the rest of the flock. One of them had died right before the journey, and the rest must have been too sick to even try. One show, no matter how popular it is, cannot save an entire industry. If that was the case, then what one show sparked the golden age of three years ago? Pokemon? Cowboy Bebop? Inu Yasha?
None of them caused the boom, it was the new, innovative ideas that sparked it. It was the fact that you could watch mature anime every Saturday night on Cartoon Network. It was the fact that you could either listen to your anime in Japanese or English all on the same disk. It was the fact that you could go to your local bookstore and discover the awesome sensation of reading something backwards.
But these changes came about 4 years ago, and nothing has changed since that time. Yes, many companies came in and joined the party, but no one brought anything new that wasn’t there before. Did the fans finally get sick of this anime thing? Did it completely die off like every other fad of the past?
Well, if fans had gotten sick of it, then why are these conventions seeing increased attendance records year after year? Anime Boston alone roughly sees a linear increase of 2,000 people every year. That means that attendance was actually the lowest during the “golden age” of anime, and is at it’s highest right now during the slump! Anime is not losing their fans. We’ve been sticking with it the whole time.
I think the problem with the industry right now is that anime is no longer a fad, it has become a part of our modern day pop-culture. That boom from four years ago was actually the point in time when that change happened. As the snobbish, college-aged anime bloggers that we are, I think that we often forget just what importance making an anime “mainstream” in the US really is. We somehow think that having something dubbed over takes away what makes anime anime. And then we use this bullshit reasoning to justify downloading “pure” fansub anime without paying a dime for it. But if it wasn’t for the work of the US anime companies making these titles mainstream, then how the hell would you ever discover anime in the first place?
The truth is that it is only us, the fansub community, that gave up on anime.
Looking at the audience at this year’s convention reminded me that “true” anime fans were still alive and living well in the world today. Since the event was held a month later then usual, most of the college “fansub” crowd had gone home for the summer, leaving only the innocent high school kids free to not be persecuted for still loving Adult Swim anime. And instead of putting up a snobbish attitude at the genre and criticizing it, they embraced it with loving admiration. We were all these fans at one point, most of us during the golden age. And so the golden age never went away, the same fans are still around. While many were lost to the evils of fan-subbing, more came up to fill their shoes.
So as more and more of these companies start to die off, many will ask “How do we make anime popular again?” However, that is impossible to answer because anime never stopped being popular. It’s just as more fans enter the mainstream, many of the previous fans enter the underground. So I think the issue that truly needs to be asked is “How do we win back the fansub community?” That is what ADV has been trying to figure out for the past year, coming up with little schemes that will hopefully lead to that break-through innovation that will win us back for good. I’ve been very opening supporting them and their efforts, and I am fully confident that they can do it.
I went to this convention with a slight motive: I wanted to tell the companies, particularly ADV, on what I think is the key to winning back the fansubers. The reason why the fansub community is doing the illegal downloading are all the same reason why we all turned to Napster back at the turn of the century - it’s easy, free, and offers a much larger variety of options then what’s on store shelves. Apple realized that the satisfying these conditions and just changing the “free” to “very affordable”, they can actually turn to profit for the record industry. And so they were to win back the Napster community with their iTunes service.
I believe the same can be done with fansubbers.
And so my question to the industry was meant to get them to start thinking about this concept, “What are your plans beyond DVD? Blu-Ray? HD-DVD? Downloads?” I didn’t really care about the Blu-Ray, HD-DVD part. I was well aware that they were never going to touch that subject at all. But I was hoping that they would realize that not only were those two formats dead to them, but so was DVD. Fansubs and bittorrents killed the potential anime DVD market. The true answer in that equation was downloads. Media Blasters shunned the idea, and I’m not surprised. I have a feeling that they will soon be in the same unemployment line as CPM any day now. But ADV answered the question as if online was the next step in their plan to “come out on top”, as Dave puts it. The company has already been experimenting with bittorrent promotions and video podcasts. And at the convention, he was dropping hints that “we will soon be able to get anime to the fans a lot faster then before.”
I would keep a close eye on ADV over the next year. I have a feeling they’ll find a way to change the entire fansub community very soon.
While your argument is valid, don’t forget that there are those of use who, even though we watch fansubs as the series comes out in Japan, we still buy the DVDs as they come out in America (assuming we can afford it). I feel like another thing that is killing the DVD industry and boosting the downloadable industry is sheer price. When you have stores charging $30 per DVD (or $180 per boxset) just because they think they can claim that these are imported and that means people will pay for it, that tends to make people (especially high school and college students) shy away from buying it and go to see if they can find it on download.
Wow, that turned out longer than expected >.>
Comment by Ace — May 29, 2006 @ 3:46 pm
To say that fansubs somehow killed DVD sales is to buy into worst lies spread by ADV. I, for one, buy everything I see on fansubs. If I know I won’t like it, I don’t download it.
It may be easier for you to discount my opinion as one-off if you know that I never connected to Napster either. Maybe you were stealing, I weren’t.
I think absolutely clear that ADV carries out an organized campaign against fansubbers. Their PR person said so, in no uncertain terms.
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.anime.misc/msg/f34d5ef7175739eb?hl=en&
To expect that ADV would make some “legal downloads” affordable is dumb. To promote such views at a high-profile blog is irresponsible. They showed enough of their contempt for their own customer.
Comment by Pete Zaitcev — May 29, 2006 @ 4:00 pm
Wow, looks like it’s time to put on my flame-retardant outfit again. Seems like just yesterday I was blasted for the same thing. But I guess an article that can create such long-winded retorts has to be doing something right.
Since you all have to go through the spam filter now, I’ll approve all your comments telling me how wrong I am. I do know that a minority of the community still buys DVDs and what not. And if you are one of them, then I salute you. I just wish that the majority of the community was like you.
Comment by Scott — May 29, 2006 @ 4:26 pm
I also buy dvds and download fansubs. The reason I download more that I buy is not cost (I only nned to eat once a day
), but the varity of different shows, I mean who the hell picks some of these shows to license in the US ?
Does ADV actually send out promos of unlicensed shows on their dvd’s or downloads and allow the anime community to vote online?
No I fear it has to do with a name brand anime (previous series, well liked director etc..) or more than likey money. A cheap series that has a few key elements (mecha, loli, moe, etc) that will trigger enough sales, or tv rights ….
Comment by daRAT — May 29, 2006 @ 5:04 pm
You don’t have to approve this one past the spam filter, just wanted to drop a note and say that my intent wasn’t to flame, I was just throwing my two cents in, for the most part I do agree with what you’ve said in your article (I’m actually debating on doing a response in my own blog if I feel up to it later).
Comment by Ace — May 29, 2006 @ 5:07 pm
I think a huge majority of people completely miss the point with the whole fansub “debate”. I only ever see people say “They’re bad! They’re killing the industry” or “They’re good! They provide a way for shows to be discovered!”, without actually realizing that perhaps these two diametrically opposed views actually indicate that perhaps this topic is much, much more complex than people are making it out to be.
Secondly, there probably needs to be serious research done into what exactly prompted the early 2000s anime boom. There are a lot of different potential reasons (DVD, Cartoon Network, Pokemon/Sailor Moon/DBZ fans maturing along with their tastes, Bittorrent, access to college filesharing systems, etc.), so then people need to actually get down to the nitty gritty and figure out how exactly the conflux of forces in that period interacted with each other.
I’m very confident that there is an answer, but I’m even more confident that the answer will be very complex and will need to be very nuanced.
(also, don’t forget that DVD sales are projected to decline in TV and movies as well this year, which is primarily attributed to the fact that most companies have finally (re)released all of their old material)
Comment by jpmeyer — May 29, 2006 @ 8:00 pm
I’d have to say part of what’s killing the anime ‘market’, such as it is.. is, as you’ve noted, the lack of variety in series, as well as the long time between licensing and releases - and then having to wait 4-5 months per volume of whatever anime they’re putting out, when fansubbers did it with an average turnaround time of 1 episode every 2-3 weeks, if not faster.. and it’s not like the videos aren’t already extant in an encoded format (since they’re usually released in Japan on DVD in just a few weeks, with about 2-3 months between volumes).
Downloads CAN help speed up distribution some… but I still feel the main problem is that these companies can take an awful long time to release material, and by the time it’s out there in the North American market, many of the people who may have bought the series had it been available sooner are either onto the next big thing, or else they’re no longer interested in purchasing, because they’ve since found their ardor for the series in question has cooled. Between that and the series that they DO license and release (and do we REALLY need three or four releases of NGE, not counting the 10th Anniversary Edition?).. well, I know what shows I’m interested in, and I’d have to say that they’re not releasing them fast enough for my liking, or not licensing them at all.
Another thing I really dislike is the way the pricing works, almost as much as the slow release times that some of these companies have. I’d purchase the whole series for a bit more, if it was available at once… instead of paying $40 a disc, since sooner or later they’ll have a ThinPak or Complete Collection which will save about $5-10 a disc when I buy that. The iTunes example is interesting, given this context, as that IS a problem I’ve got with the current system - the pricing’s outrageous, but then again the licensing fees are probably similarly exploitive now.
Comment by Haesslich — May 29, 2006 @ 11:24 pm
I really don’t think price is the issue here. After all, in Japan, they pay a few times more.
I would think its the timeliness of the release that is a bigger factor. Would I buy something I liked 2 years ago? Or would I buy something I like right now?
Sure I would buy Last Exile since it’s a work of divine beings. But how often do Last-Exile scale anime come out?
With the huge amount of anime being produced lately, they are becoming more like newspapers, where old ones are pretty much useless while great articles are clipped and stored. They were once like books though.
Comment by tj han — May 30, 2006 @ 12:45 am
I’ve always assumed that the reason for the fallout from the anime boom of the early 2000’s was that anime companies assumed growth would be constant. When the money is flowing in, you can license any show you want no matter how it will sell (even though a lot of shows released simply don’t have mainstream potential) but then you’re stuck with a property that won’t move. Add into it that the cost of licensing a show from the Japanese studios has gone up dramatically, and I’m not too surprised the companies are playing it safe.
Also of interest: virtually none of the major companies were at Anime Central except Manga Entertainment even though it has a larger draw, different market and has been around longer than Anime Boston.
Comment by Alice — May 30, 2006 @ 2:05 am
I guess the question is do fansubs kill DVD sales, and are they a cancer eating away at North American anime distributors like CPM? I find that a little hard to believe, any more than anime being broadcast on Adult Swim kills sales. If was true that people don’t buy things they can watch for free, then no one should buy DVDs of “Friends” either, but they still do. Hell, if you’re Japanese and living in Tokyo, you can set your VCR to tape Haruhi every night, but the DVDs will still sell anyway.
It’s impossible for someone without access to CPM’s books to say exactly why they’re doing badly, but companies, like people, have a tendency to think the good times will roll for eternity. In anime’s case, during the boom the market was growing 20-50% a year. Those numbers don’t keep going forever–with any product, whether it’s anime DVDs, iPods, or an amazing new flavor of Sprite, there’s a period where sales rapidly increase, and then there’s “maturity”–where the market plateaus, and if there’s growth at all it’s single-digit. The DVD market in general is at that mature stage right now–and I think part of the reason is when you have over 100 DVDs, you start to do the math and realize if you keep buying several a month your entire home will be filled with them, leaving no room whatsoever for things like a sofa, kitchen table, oxygen, etc. So you slow down–you buy things you really want to watch again and again, and the rest don’t make the cut. Are there DVDs I bought back in ‘99 when there was very little to choose from that I wouldn’t buy again? Absolutely. At the time any anime on DVD was like gold, and my standards weren’t as high. Plus there was a big catalog of older series like Urusei Yatsura coming out on DVD, in addition to new stuff. But personally, my DVD buying rate has no correlation to how many fansubs I watch. And if fansubbers all quit tomorrow, would I just go buy my anime DVDs sight unseen? No, I’d use Netflix instead. If I don’t like it enough to watch it over and over, I’m not buying it. What fansubs do is they give me the same information a Japanese person would be able to get watching Haruhi on TV late at night, whether it’s good enough to buy on DVD or not.
I think a lot of US anime distributors got greedy, splurging on licenses in the boom and effectively betting that the market would grow 20+% a year forever. But at the maturity phase of the lifecycle, if you were hoping the thousands you spent on licenses last year would be paid off by sales that are up significantly this year, you hoped wrong. Next step is to bust out the pink slips and retrench. Having lived through the dot-com bust, I’ve seen a lot of good people get fired because their management assumed a 50% increase in sales for the year, since that was the way the year before was–and then they got caught short when sales merely flatlined. It’s hard to see the end of a boom, but the fact some distributors (like Geneon and Funi) are doing much better than others makes me think their management saw it coming before ADV’s or CPM’s did. In the end, I think blaming fansubbers is a lot more convenient for management at ADV and the like than admitting they screwed up and didn’t adapt quickly enough to the market.
Comment by suguru — May 30, 2006 @ 2:30 am
It’s also difficult to purely blame fansubs because ADV and CPM have completely opposing views regarding them, yet both of them have been having financial trouble lately.
Comment by jpmeyer — May 30, 2006 @ 9:27 am
As someone from the fansub world, I can only say that I find it difficult to suppress my anger at ADV propaganda like this, especially the ridiculous oversimplification that “fansubs are killing the anime world”. It’s the opposite. Without fansubs, there wouldn’t even BE an anime market to exploit in the first place. Yes, maybe ADV started the R1 DVD world, but their impact in spreading anime throughout the world was small. No, the cornerstones were the application of digital video to anime sources as the technical foundation, the utilization of japanese p2p networks as developer base, and the adaption of bittorrent for simple and cost-effective distribution. Not northamerican DVD labels who exploit this market. Please don’t confuse cause and effect here. R1 labels are exploiting the fansub-grown anime market, not vice versa. Smart labels (like Geneon) succeed, stupid labels (like CPM) perish. And aggressive labels in the middle (like ADV) will continue to struggle.
The fundamental misunderstanding of the R1 labels is that if people aren’t buying their DVDs as expected, it’s got to be because of the evil fansubbers and rippers. Look at CPM. Which thousands of necessary fans are supposed to buy second-to-third rate releases with the well-known names of “Gall Force”, “Machine Robo” or “Roujin Z”? DVDs in the modern world are not bought “unknown” anymore. R1 releases aren’t “enablers” of new shows. People buy DVDs of shows they’ve seen before and love, so that they want to possess it, preferably in a higher-quality version than the initial fansubs gave them. And unfortunately, too many DVD labels fail to provide just “acceptable” quality.
ADV is in trouble because they stupidly bought licences like mad, and now realize that the pockets of their customers are finite. And that only top-quality animes can be converted into R1 to break even or make a profit. Look at their manga section which ruined their finances. ADV has too many mediocre products in their line - it’s the top titles they also have which make them squeeze by.
If they were smart, they would use the download numbers of the fansub scene to properly gauge their market potential, and then release the cream of the crop in good quality (something which Geneon tends to do). It’s just like Geneon said: Fansubs help good shows and punish bad ones, because they give customers the opportunity to check the quality of the product BEFORE they splurge money.
I wouldn’t hold my breath over the new torrent-distribution plans of ADV, as long as it means that the content will be DRM’ed. People in the majority won’t accept that. What COULD work would be something like this:
1) Abonnements for fans in some kind of affordable flatrate
2) Highly actual content. Not mediocre-quality rehashes of shows of the past
3) No DRM. Do it like some XXX labels do with decent success: Allow DVD images (or other forms) for torrent download which can then be burnt and used.
4) Enlist the help of fansubbers instead of vilifying them. I know many who are able to produce professional-quality results and would be willing to venture their service for no or next-to-no fees in return for an “officially endorsed and legal” release.
5) Make HDTV material available this way. Higher quality would be a real reason to purchase shows.
6) Cherry-pick. Only the best shows should be tackled. Scratch the rest and accept that if only 10.000 people download a fansub, much less than 1.000 people would buy the DVD. Stop producing third-rate massware lying in the shelves like lead.
Would this allow for rampant abuse? Yes, but that’s what we have today aswell. It would limit alot of production costs (getting a simple DVD mastered is EXTREMELY expensive) and still allow labels to make some profit. Itunes proved that it’s possible to do.
I don’t expect ADV to be this smart though. Nope, they’ll rather blame the goose laying golden eggs they’re exploiting that their numbers don’t increase by 20% annually.
Comment by Mentar — May 30, 2006 @ 10:49 am
Heh.
I see a lot of parallels with this and the American music(aka the equivalent of the anime industry in Japan). The companies can’t adapt, and then they start to see the industry starting to crumble. And then they start to blame the consumers. It’s one of them horrible cycles that’ll never stop until they realize the root of the problem. Overpriced DVDs and very little in the way of goodies. And taking way too long to publish said overpriced DVDs.
Comment by DrmChsr0 — May 30, 2006 @ 11:24 am
I’ve been an anime fan since long before this most recent “golden age”. It is true that I buy less anime now — but fansubs have nothing to do with it. I buy less now because I can rent anime now. Before, I bought series because, outside of a local anime shop with a small rental library and limited hours, I couldn’t rent it. I bought as a hedge agains uncertain supply. Now, I can go to Blockbuster, and there’s a shelf full of anime. Even better, I can go to Netflix and there’s most of the catalogues of all the anime distributors available.
I do not think the blame for declining sales lies with fansubs and downloading. I think it lies with the fact that anime is now mainstream enough that it is widely available.
Comment by dm — May 30, 2006 @ 11:36 am
Just a note: animeboston coincided with two other rather large East Coast cons: Animazement and Anime North, plus F-Anime out on the west. It’s not surprising to see a more fragmented showing that weekend.
Comment by omo — May 30, 2006 @ 12:00 pm
In a way, one can agree with ADV that fansub is “killing” the anime industry. Afterall, with fansubs providing near-instance access to the latest anime shows, businesses are less likely to get away with using the imperfect information of the consumers to hype medicore or bad shows as quality products. Any business that tries to sell inferior goods to the consumer will eventually suffer, and the anime industry is no exception (see the US auto industry). Companies like ADV can access the Internet just like anyone else, thus should know what the fans who download fansubs like to watch. It is their choice to bring over shows that are medicore or just sticking mainly with the sci-fi and action genre, and they are receiving the consequences of their action. Nothing against the sci-fi/action genres or catering to the mainstream’s need for action shows, but anime companies should understand there are great shows like “Air”, “Mahoraba”, “Kanon” and “Honey and Clover” that only get talk about on the Internet. Blaming fansub and its watchers for “killing” the industry when these companies are not providing shows the “underground” anime fans want is totally unreasonable.
And just like previous comments, I buy most of the anime DVD based on how I like it through fansub. I also haven’t buy any new anime DVD that came out this year. Not that they are bad shows, but the anime companies don’t bother bringing over any shows mentioned above. It’s not like they are completely new shows like “Haruhi” or “Higurashi.”
Just a final thought: Highest profit can only be made through the ignorant consumer. Thus it natural for the information provider to be blame when businesses don’t get their expected income.
Comment by Liberator — May 31, 2006 @ 2:01 am
dear fellow fans,
if you regard anime as a medium of ‘cinematic art’, even shows which seem to target adolescent and underage audiences, do have its artistic merits. as a medium of cinematic art, you don’t judge anime solely from story-wise point of view. anime should be review just like any other art film and for this, there are objective standards when valuing an anime. these standards include, and may not be limited by: visual effects, the ability to create suspension of belief, distinct art style, plot lines, sound and the music effects to name a few. even though, one anime show is undermined in one or two standards, it may excel or surpass in the others. if you are a TRUE fans of anime, then, you should display your appreciation for its artistry and give the creators their proper dues; by this i mean, you treat and give any anime a high value. actually, a $40 dvd or even a $100 dvd is still much low in comparison to the artistic value an anime holds. when you collect anime from pokemon to ghost in the shell you are actually gathering a very valuable collection of various distinctive art styles which shall become an important treasure and legacy in the future. finally, there is no good or bad anime because each has its own merits.
Comment by yatsuri yakita — January 26, 2007 @ 4:01 pm