Hey, Answerman!

Welcome back to Hey, Answerman!

Questions, ho!

Answerman,

I have a question about "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya" and Bandai's release of it a couple years ago. On anime forums, I've seen users say that Bandai's Haruhi release was an unforeseen flop that did not perform as well as Bandai expected it to. But then I've also seen people listing it beside Cowboy Bebop as one of Bandai's few great hits! I'm so confused. Did this show do well or was it a turkey in sales? Who's lying to me? Does anyone actually know the real story here?

For the life of me I can't remember the exact quote, and a quick internet search doesn't seem to help much, but I'm pretty sure I know the line from which all this confusion is spreading. Somebody on the production side of Bandai Entertainment said something to the effect of, if even one-eighth of the people who downloaded the fansubs of Haruhi had bought the DVDs, the anime industry would literally be "saved."

And to bring up ANNcast again, this is the sort of situation that arises when companies can't seem to be transparent about which shows are a hit, and which shows weren't. A few episodes ago, Zac said that there should really just be a little more information out there about this to stop the wild speculation and rampant falsehoods that percolate throughout image boards and forums and wind up in my inbox. And I'm completely on board for that. It may not serve the "business interests" of the companies involved, but when they're already claiming to be "closely linked" to their fans, I think it would serve them well to simply be a little more open about this process in order to put a stop to this tide of half-truths and fabricated facts.

To Answerman,

A while ago someone posted a topic on the anime forums I used saying there was an English Dub for K-On! So first I checked ANN to see if their was a cast list, and since there is none I assumed there wasn't one. So the person told me to download this episode and I did, what I found was a pretty awful English dub. I didn't know this but apparently Animax Asia makes English Dubs for distribution in Asia or something along those lines.

My question to you is why does Animax Asia make an English Dub for people who don't even speak English as their first language? Also do you think these dubs are acceptable to North American viewers (I don't, since it was awfully dubbed)? And lastly why do people never talk about these English dubs?

The important distinction to make about how Animax operates is that they have stations in Korea, Hong Kong, India, the Philippines, and other various countries in Southeast Asia. The population for those countries obviously don't speak English as their first language, but I wonder, perchance, what their most common second language might be? (PROTIP: English.)

And yes, they are usually all completely awful, awful dubs produced on the cheap, usually in Singapore, and those dubs almost NEVER leave the hallowed halls of Animax to wash up on Western shores. And that's, of course, why you never really see people talking about them much; nobody outside of the service area of Animax has ever seen them, except with the intention to ridicule them, as your case tells us. It's the same reason we don't talk about the Tagalog dub of One Piece, or the Finnish dub of Digimon. They're curios, usually done cheaply for local TV networks in areas of the world that don't usually come into our radar when we think about "Anime."

Hey Answerman!

Do anime series that appear on Crunchyroll ever get DVD releases? If so, could you hazard a guess as to how long after the series appears online do the DVDs come out?

I'd love to hazard a guess, but... DVD releases for shows on Crunchyroll is quite the rarity at the moment. The only one that I can recall off the top of my head, aside from shows that already had DVD releases in store like Naruto, has been Gintama. Gintama started streaming on Crunchyroll in early 2009, and it was only last month that the first DVD hit shelves, if that's any indication.

But I'm sure there's much more of that coming, because a lot of Crunchyroll's simulcasting slate - shows like Heroman and Durarara! - are such natural hits here in the US that I think a DVD release is inevitable. It's more a matter of "when" than "if" in the case of those shows. The majority of their catalog, though, is unfortunately on Crunchyroll because, for better or worse, it had already been passed over for a license by Funimation and other US companies. And in a shrinking DVD market, that's a difficult stigma to shake off.

So! As I was recording ANNcast the other day, I was reminded of an ancient relic still lying dormant in my old Answerman inbox that I hadn't thought about in months. "Oh, one day I'll use this, but not today," I thought. And then I tried to put it out of my mind. But then I brought it up in the podcast, and I had to crawl through it one more time:

Greetings and felicitations. I realize I'm late in responding to this column, but I take a bit of issue with this statement:

"Hentai is, more or less, just about sex. Incredibly aberrant sex."

Not all hentai (anime) is about "incredibly aberrant sex"--some is about ordinary, "vanilla" sex. I've compiled a list of this type of hentai-- see the "Normal" worksheet:

http://www.editgrid.com/user/docwatson/H_genre_lists_20090115

As a side note, not all hentai is just about sex, either--see the Plot worksheet/list linked above for examples that are not.

Here is a cartoon approximation of what happened after I clicked on his link.

And now, it's Answerfans again! Last week I threw all of you on top of this little doozy of a question:

Starting us off, Daniel tells the companies to be wary, very wary:

It's interesting how even industry people continue to condone piracy of unlicensed titles. Not always, but often, people consume unlicensed content instead of licensed content because it is free. I often see Japanese buzz over popular stories continue years after they end, while, among users of the English language, they are marginalized once they are sold. (For instance, lots of people were evangelizing for Fate/stay night on mixi up to recently.) People have finite hours; consuming unlicensed material without paying is an alternative to consuming licensed material and paying.

How can advertising-supported licensed sites compete if they pay for the material and other sites don't?

After being allowed to consume for free for a long time, many consumers now see free as the norm and producers demanding compensation as stealing. Trying to change the norm back angers them and can turn them away. But industry has to stand up for itself or it will only be taken from more in the long run.

If it's possible, major pirates like the big manga sites should be stopped and punished. (What is going on, seriously?) I agree that random consumers suddenly getting fined millions is too harsh considering how little thought is required to become a pirate these days, but people need to see that eating and running isn't okay. I don't tend to see the cops trying to reason politely with people.

Japan chased its WinMX pirates until they were driven to use something called "Perfect Dark." It may still be possible to pirate, but it's much clearer now that it's not something to brag about.

I used to watch fansubs and then try to pay what was deserved. But then I realized it was hard to judge how much I "would" pay for something that I didn't have to pay for.

I buy manga in Japanese volumes, falling behind almost everyone else I've met who reads manga because they read Gangan just for Fullmetal Alchemist for free. This discourages me from reading manga at all.

Odex got destroyed trying to stand up for itself. Scary. Don't be like Odex. Maintain a stable base and be political. But stand up.

JJ is gonna stir up the pot with this one:

I want to read Manga. I am not going to pay any company my hard earned money when the 'Scanlations' groups are doing a better job of the entire process for free.

The issue, as I see it, isn't with the websites that allow you to read the manga on-line, page by page. These sites tend to go through their archives and cross check the series they are 'running' with what has been licensed for their area with varying degrees of regularity. What is it that you're truly dealing with? Is it the dark, dank world of IRC? Is it the caviler, 'steal it while you can' attitude of the so called 'Millennium' generation? No. As always, you end up dealing with the same group of people who are behind everything that Yon Uber Corp. both loves and hates: The Fans. 'We are being actively sabotaged by the very people we are attempting to make money off of!' Why? Because you're doing a bad job of it!

Paper quality? Poor. Cover? Mediocre in comparison to the Japanese Cover. Size? Smaller than the Japanese release, which means the image quality and readability suffer greatly. Translations? All across the map: from very good to so poor they make a Pioneer Anime release subtitle track look like a thesis paper in comparison.

You could shut down every manga-viewing site on the internet and all you would accomplish is disappointing the less internet savvy. Many of these sites get their 'releases' second or third hand, and as such, you wouldn't even be touching the distribution. And the distro is what you really need to 'stop'.

I have wondered for years if there is a better way. And if I were working for one of the Big3 (Viz, TokyoPOP, and Dark Horse Manga), I would have attempted to propose something simple:

Buy them out.

Fan-translations are poorly funded. They are fueled by the passion and love the translators, editors, typesetters, and proof readers have for the series. Otherwise, they wouldn't be doing it. In many cases, this love is reflected in the work that they do with the resources they have at hand, and the end result is imagery and story that speaks to the English reader despite poor quality Raws and other, intrinsically Japanese-specific humor and reference issues. Find the best of the best, in the opinion of the new Rights Holders (and hopefully the fans, as well), and BUY THEM OUT.

In Example, Franky House has been doing a great job with their releases of One Piece! Buy them. All the translation work has been done. All the 'Localization' is complete. Buy their scripts. Buy their time. Buy their Love. Hire the scanlation group that's doing the best job out of all of them for the franchise you purchased, and have them continue to do their thing FOR you instead of AGAINST you. Most of the scanlations groups do their editing via script, so if they've saved them, you'll save money. Just think of the back translations, from Issue 1 to Issue 450, that have ALREADY BEEN DONE. Hire the Fans who have been doing a stellar job rather than hire your own, in-house 'Professional' translators, editors, typesetters, etc. And use the money you then save to increase the production quality of the final product.

Good Translation? Good Paper? Larger Format?Overall, great product? I'd pay for it.

And if said Company were to do the above, and support the fans who previously scanlated the same series? Now you have my money, and my respect.

Also, I would suggest releasing a 'Digital Line' of Manga. I know that I would gladly pay $5 for an 'Internet Issue' of a toukubon that would otherwise cost me $15 or more. Give me full HD scans of the Printing Proofs, throw in a 1280p resolution wallpaper of the cover, and yeah, I'd buy it. Good translations, better quality, and you'll have my money.

Would this work? I have no idea. But as I said, it would gain my respect, were someone to try it. And in Piracy, respect is the ONLY coin that spends well.

B-Rye is the resident contrarian:

I don't think scanlations are making as big an impact as publishers would like everyone to believe. I'm not saying they have no effect on sales, but it's probably not huge, and here's why:

First of all, sales are down because the economy is in the gutter. It's rather interesting that articles about falling manga sales seem to make no mention of the worst economic disaster in a generation. I know it's to the publishers' advantage to take any chance at blaming scanlations, but they shouldn't ignore the fact that young people are having a very hard time finding work. How can they be expected to buy manga when they're broke?

Next we have to consider that the market is flooded. I recall a time when my local bookstore had just one shelf of manga. Today manga takes up almost 10% of the store (and it's a rather large building). Not every title on all those shelves can be expected to be a big winner - there's simply too much junk out there. It's pretty similar to what happened with the anime industry; there was a mad dash to put out as much stuff as possible without giving any consideration to quality or overwhelming consumers.

Lastly, even though the domestic manga market is flooded, there's still a ton of unlicensed manga, and that's what most scanlators are working on. People might complain about scanlators impacting sales of a big series like Bleach, but how can they have an effect on something that isn't being sold? I suppose *some* people might not buy any manga because they have a source of free entertainment online, but I doubt those people would be buying anything anyway. Real fans will buy the manga they care about, while leechers just read stuff because it's available; they'd find something else to do if it wasn't.

But if publishers want to combat scanlators they should step into the 21st century and establish online reading services (Japanese fans get manga on their phones, so why don't we?). A reasonably priced service with high quality images, speedy translations, and a willingness to listen to what fans want would help to put a dent in the illegal translators. Potentially it could be very profitable for manga publishers to make a shift into digital distribution since they would save a bundle on paper and ink.

Stephen's honesty speaks volumes (MANGA VOLUMES, THAT IS):

I think this is a very tough question. Piracy is evident in just about every format of intellectual property, and the piracy itself seems to follow a few standard paths. For anime and manga, it's fan-created amateur translations distributed largely by word of mouth. But each stream should be treated differently, even though they flow through the same channels. Fansubs and scanlations are legally very similar, they are often frequented by the same consumers, but the driving forces are not the same. Fansub viewers praise a quick turnaround, high resolution, proper timing, and from time to time have arguments about translating certain sentences. Scanlation readers value the same rapid response and resolution, but timecodes are obviously irrelevant, and translation is not transparent to the reader.

With readers unable to see differences in translation quality, what advantage does a licensee have? Currently the way official suppliers stand out from pirate distributors is their ability to provide hard copy. But this distinction will not last long, and will grow irrelevant even in its waning years. Small-scale on-demand publishing is a burgeoning industry; it's only a matter of time before a group of devoted fans, or a malicious pirating agency, offer to provide physical paper books that rival manga tankobon. Yet even while they have this advantage, the creators of physical objects are watching their a market sidling towards ones and zeroes. Traditional book publishers are losing ground even without an entrenched pirate culture consuming their consumers. In the current paradigm, American manga companies will inevitably go bankrupt.

So how do we address the problem? I don't know. I'm thankful it's not my job to figure out. But what I do know is that the business model will have to change. In the information age, it is harder to sell a physical product than in the past two or three generations. Especially when that physical product is a single-purpose data containment device. Books will always be around, but they will not always be the medium of popular choice. Were I in charge of sales for Viz Media, my first priority would be to discover or create an online distribution platform. Experimentation will be necessary, but ideas for potential profit models are taking place all over.

Even with online distribution, effort must be made to upset the establishment of piracy. This is an even more daunting task than finding a profit model. As you explained in your column, simply taking legal action against pirates will not stop the piracy. Publishers will have to compete with the pirates for an audience, and win. This may mean advertising campaigns to tell fans how important licensing fees are to the producers of original content in Japan. It could include side-by-side comparisons between professional and amateur translations, to showcase a superior product. It will certainly include streamlining content availability. Time is always money. Simultcasts are a great way to undercut the unofficial translators, especially when utilizing internet product streams. Once again, though, the word must be spread to reap the benefits.

My personal wishes are not necessarily in keeping with the best interests of a company. I, too, am guilty of consuming pirate goods; I like free stuff. Cost aside, I prefer to read manga on my phone. As a professor of literature and advocate of books in general once said, the smartphone is the best reading experience in this busy world because it never gets left behind. In this sense, even the smallest paperback is a liability. I would love to give Viz money for the joy of reading Naoki Urasawa on my Droid, but as yet they don't let me. This makes me sad. Even sadder, a company that tries to market the obscure titles I adore may put itself at risk by doing so. I am distressed that there's no official channel to throw money at my favorite manga of all time, Yokohama Shopping Trip. I can only hope that some bright individual can find the profitable path for this industry, so more gems can make their way to me, guilt-free.

Morgan's got a cost-benefit analysis that will **** your ****:

As far as stopping scanlations from hurting sales, I think the publishers in the US need to look at what makes them popular, and see if they can do something. In my opinion, the two big reasons people use scanlations for licensed series are speed and cost. As much as I like having my physical copy of a book, it can be hard to wait for them to come out with a new volume every six to eight months when I know perfectly well I can catch up on the next couple years' worth of stories with a google search. The most likely way to get around this I can see would be magazine or digital subscription services. For those who just can't wait, it would be nice if what magazines are available in North America weren't on a monthly release schedule. With this system in place, you become 42 additional chapters behind the Japanese release (and the scanlators) every year. It would be nice if perhaps they could be released weekly, or at the least biweekly. This plan has it's detriments as well, of course. More frequent publication would lead to higher production costs, and then we'd see higher subscription fees. That's why I would advocate a digital subscription service, at least as an option. A digital distribution system would cut out significant printing and shipping costs. Having this option open could potentially save the publishers money otherwise lost to scanlators, while still allowing them to continue along at their crawling pace releasing each volume.

It can also be hard to justify spending $8-$20 for a book that I can read in an hour or two. Speaking strictly in terms of value, there are so many other books I can buy for the same price (in the very same building, at that) that will keep me entertained for much longer. Subscription services offer more of a value than buying individual volumes do, but aside from suggesting offering more varied series be put in magazines (not all of us want an omnibus of shoujo or shounen titles), I can't really think of much to help with there.

Unfortunately, all of my suggestions depend on the fan base paying into it.Since I've seen much acclaimed series, that seemed to have been licensed solely because of popular demand, hardly sell here in the States, I worry that people may not buy into it. I think that these ideas could help, but it would be a real shame to see companies try them out and fall flat on their faces because nobody bought into it.

Regarding scanlators sites, I don't exactly think that publishers should roll over, but I believe it would be foolish of them to try and totally eradicate them. You can get the sites taken down, or the group shut down, but there are plenty of replacements. I feel it would be wise to go after groups or sites that blatantly advertise their scans of licensed material, but it may be counter productive trying to go and shut down every group, even if their only scanning something obscure.

B.J. says to change your brain, change your life:

I'm almost tempted to say that what is needed isn't a different tactic, but a different mindset. Think about a very related industry: books. Thanks to television and the internet, the only people who read and buy books are the people who want to hold a physical book in their hands and read it. Granted, I don't know how popular the e-readers have really become, but I think the majority of book readers still want to buy physical books and read the paper pages.

Manga is similar. Sure, webcomics have made reading comics online or on a computer more popular and reasonable, but I still think there will be a crowd of people who prefer to read them as books (OR SERIALIZED MAGAZINES, HINT HINT). I should know, I'm one of them. Yeah, I've read scanlations, but I know I prefer the official books (better translation, production values, etc.) and I know that I'm not alone. I may not have all of the information manga publishers do, but I do believe it's good business sense to sell where there is demand.

I think all of this stems from a common problem and it is not unique to manga or anime production: impatience. Everyone wants to have a massive blockbuster or market, like the Dragon Ball Z era and the manga boom that followed, but they don't want to wait for the next surge of popularity; they want to make tons of money right now. The problem is people haven't had as much money to devote to their hobbies recently, so sales in EVERYTHING has gone down. My advice: be patient, endure the tough times and hope for the next big wave.

Speaking of which, fanboy.com posted an interesting article concerning that: http://www.fanboy.com/2010/01/most-overlooked-anime-series.html . In short, this author thinks that Bakugan might be setting up a new generation of anime fans just like Pokemon set up our generation to hit Toonami and Adult Swim or check out the anime and manga sections of their local stores. Now, I'm not prophesying anything that is for certain, but I do think something may be coming. Things like these come in waves: there was one in the late 80s and early 90s because of Robotech and Akira, another in the late 90s and early 2000s because of Pokemon and DBZ, maybe we're at the valley of a 10-12 year cycle right now and something could be coming in the next little while. (IMHO, if handled well, Fairy Tail could be that next step all these Bakugan kids take!)

With enough patience and awareness, good things will come.

And now, the aptly-named Differently Phrased:

My take on this week's question: the publishing companies should stop being so full of themselves. Oh, I don't mean that they should let scanlations run free. What I mean is that they really need to (in my opinion) let go on a few points:

1.) Stop printing the manga as oversized paperbacks with color pages and shiny paper and all that (DMP & SJ in particular). Not only are they hard and awkward to hold (I get cramps in my hands every time I try to re-read my volumes) but as far as I understand it, it ups the price.

What I suggest is: keep a small amount of them as a special edition for the hardcore collectors. For the rest of them print them at regular massmarket size, do it with recycled and bleached paper and give up on the color pages, then price them lower.

2.) Minimize the waiting as much as they can. I do understand why they space them out, but minimize. Don't wait six months, wait three or whatever reduced amount of time serves.

3.) Pre-empty the scanlators. If they license a long-going series that's at a zillion volumes, do offer the latest chapter in Japan online. They don't have to offer back-issues, only the current chapter, and sneak ads or something like it in there to make at least a little money off it.

In the end though, it comes down to whether even that would help. What I do know, is that I read scanlations. I don't keep them afterward and I do buy the volumes when they come out. Well, unless they're huge-ass glossy things that cost too much. I'm multilingual and believe me when I say this: as of this moment, I'd rather (and actually do) import those regular-sized recycled paper manga in another language than shell out money for the glossy things from hell. And I'm willing to wait for such a release somewhere while I keep on reading the scanlations. When I buy (and I do buy - I'm running out of shelf space actually) I choose what to buy. Glossy and highly priced will never be on the list.

Mo' Money Mo' Problems, according to BPC99149:

The problem with manga is that it's expensive. Not in the same way that anime is expensive, though; when I buy anime, I usually feel like I get my money's worth. With manga, though, I'm usually paying around $10 for something that I can read in an afternoon. If I'm standing in a book store, why would I settle for the latest volume of Bleach when I can go a couple shelves over and spend the same $10 on a novel that will last me a week's worth of afternoons? Essentially, I see manga as a collector's item: it's designed for people who want something permanent, something that they can hold onto. These people don't care that the money-to-time ratio sucks, they just want something that looks pretty on their shelf, and they're willing to wait for it to come out. The manga industry is slow as molasses, sometimes taking months to release a single volume of a given series. If there's one thing we know about today's manga fans, it's that being raised on the internet has made them a very impatient lot.

Scanlations come in for just about everyone who doesn't find themselves part of the manga niche. It's cheaper (free), and faster (almost as soon as the manga is available in Japan). If you think manga is overpriced, or if you don't care about the collector's value of the physical volumes, then reading scanlations seems like a no brainer.

I'm not saying that piracy is right, and honestly I don't know how the manga industry can fix itself. They can't exactly slash prices; a lot of people worked on bringing that manga to America, and they all need to get paid. If they want to appeal to a wider audience, though, they will need to work faster and cheaper. Perhaps they could introduce a digital subscription model, where you get to read the latest chapters as soon as they're translated online for a reduced price; essentially, offering paid-for scanlations. You can't exactly undercut free, though, so getting the pirates to jump ship would rely entirely on them growing a conscience, and in the end, that will probably be the biggest challenge of all.

Our final respondent tonight, TheSoc IsAwesome, what do you think?

In short, I don't think there's anything that can be done to stop scanlations. However, I do believe that there are some fairly simple ways to solve the issue. I'm going to say upfront that I don't know all too much about the industry so some of my suggestions may not be feasible, but that's a given I suppose.

For starters, work to have simultaneous releases. Obviously this is near impossible in some aspects, but I think if everyone works hard enough, it's possible. Again, I don't know the in and outs of everything, but I think many series can be released in the US in under a week after their JP release.

Secondly, small bonuses included with translated volumes could be a huge plus. Most scanlations are from the original source, and don't include the bonuses that are typically included in the "volumes" you see in stores. I think if you put a larger focus on this, perhaps including something like a coupon for a figure or something along those lines. Del Ray has been very good so far in terms of including cool bonuses, like the untranlated previews of the next chapter in their releases of Genshiken, and the character profiles and blogs included in Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei.

I think the industry really has to get into the mindset of asking, "what can we provide that scanlators can't?" Things as simple as additional pages of artwork could easily change minds when it comes to people being satisfied with what they are getting with scans rather than physical content with bonuses.

Yikes, that was a lot of text to edit. Anyway, next week's question is a little bit lighter, so...

Now you've got this week's question, and it's time to get answerin'.

For those of you new to Hey, Answerfans!, I'll explain the concept.

Believe it or not, I'm genuinely curious what you think.

That's right; as much as I love the sound of my own voice, I do love to listen to what other people have to say on a subject. I'm finding that over the last few years, the attitudes, reasoning and logic that today's anime fans use eludes, confuses or astounds me; I have so many questions for you, and I'm dying to hear what you have to say in response.

Welcome to Hey, Answerfans!

Basically, we're turning the tables. Each week I'm going to ask you a question, and I want you to email me your answer. Be as honest as you can. I'm looking for good answers; not answers I agree with or approve of, but good, thoughtful answers. People feel passionately about these subjects and I'd like to see that in the responses I get. I'll post the best answers I get, and maybe some of the crappy ones. Sometimes there may only be one or two good ones; sometimes five or more. It all depends on what I get in my inbox! Got it? Pretty simple, right? Start writing those answers and email them to answerman [at] animenewsnetwork dot com.

We do have a few simple ground rules to start with.

Things To Do:

* Be coherent.
* Be thoughtful.
* Be passionate.
* Write as much or as little as you feel you need to to get your point across in the best possible way.

Things Not To Do:

* Respond when the question doesn't apply to you. For instance, if your email response starts with "Well, I don't do whatever you're asking about in the question... " then I'm going to stop reading right there and hit delete.

* Be unnecessarily rude or use a lot of foul language.
* Go off-topic.

Goodbye y'all! Remember to check out ANNcast over the week and hear my nasally nerd-self talk about stuff, and remember to send all your questions and answers and things to answerman(at)animenewsnetwork.com! Toodles!