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NEWS: Bandai Entertainment to Stop Releasing New DVDs, BDs, Manga

zanarkand princess wrote:

Our tastes are more similar in the sense that we like stuff with more action, "normal comedy", and shounen jump stuff. It just tends to be more Western tuned. Comparing 1999 to now makes no sense anyway. My point was that we like Naruto and Bleach exponentially more then we like Hayate the Combat Butler. I'd wager that most people in Japan couldn't tell you what Outlaw Star was anyway.

I am going to say I can see where you are coming from too but there is a line between what's mainstream in Japan versus mainstream in America. The few titles that Americans happened to jump on-board with are just the tip of what is considered to be mainstream in Japan.

"Normal comedy" doesn't hold much water with some of the most successful animated comedies here being shows like Family Guy, South Park, Beavis and Butthead, and Futurama.

If more and more distributors decide to just sell imports how can companies like Funimation and Sentai survive?

Charred Knight wrote:

If more and more distributors decide to just sell imports how can companies like Funimation and Sentai survive?

By not pricing us out of the market, by releasing better, more well written subs, by continuing to include dubs, by knowing how to market to North America. I highly doubt that Japanese companies are all going to up and distribute their own stuff and stop licensing series, because they must know this does not work in the long run.

Anime fans prefer "Normal comedy" over highly targeted obscure otaku jokes. Basically, I was making a generalization. Not talking about absolute equivalencies.

If the Japanese distributor was thinking long term than we wouldn't be in this situation. We wouldn't have the glut of moe shows. We would have someone trying to do something new instead of relying on manga, visual novels, or light novels to find source material.

zanarkand princess wrote:

Charred Knight wrote: If more and more distributors decide to just sell imports how can companies like Funimation and Sentai survive? By not pricing us out of the market, by releasing better, more well written subs, by continuing to include dubs, by knowing how to market to North America. I highly doubt that Japanese companies are all going to up and distribute their own stuff and stop licensing series, because they must know this does not work in the long run.

What he was asking is if these companies won't LICENSE the anime, how will Funi and Sentai even get them to release? If a significant portion of the license holders decide that subtitled releases are the way to go, then Funi and Sentai are out of luck since they won't be getting anything to dub or release on DVD.

And it won't happen right away, but if these experiments going on now go well, I don't see why they won't. None of these companies make much money from foreign sales, so its not a big deal if they just cut out the middleman. Adding an extra 10% to their local sales would most likely make more money than if they bothered with a North American release.

Charred Knight wrote:

If the Japanese distributor was thinking long term than we wouldn't be in this situation. We wouldn't have the glut of moe shows. We would have someone trying to do something new instead of relying on manga, visual novels, or light novels to find source material.

We have moe shows because the Japanese react to trends, which is also why American TV went through reality TV, game show, courtroom drama, and criminal science phases. Can those be looked back on in a negative light? Sure, if you're cynical enough but tough fact is at the time those shows worked up until the point they didn't.

No matter how long term they were thinking few in the anime industry could accurately predict economic problems like a depression. Getting through financially uncertain times is about making really hard decisions and reducing as much excess as possible.

I thought you guys were arguing about business. To a businessman a few extra bucks should be the more important then their mother. You can't start to devalue the importance of profit to a business just because it might now effect how you entertain yourself.

I don't think you are seriously trying to entertain the idea of subtitled streaming somehow being a large time solution to how to expand Japan's cultural ability.

If more and more distributors decide to just sell imports how can companies like Funimation and Sentai survive? In a few years, you're looking at the American anime market basically being a bunch of Japanese distributors selling a couple hundred to a couple thousand disc imported from Japan, while the vast majority simply pirate anime.

...and so now there is a chance that Beez Entertainment has closed down. The majority of their titles were released by Bandai Entertainment in the US.

http://www.uk-anime.net/newsitem/Beez_Entertainment_has_closed_its_doors?.html

If more and more distributors decide to just sell imports how can companies like Funimation and Sentai survive? ...

No. That's just silly, slippery slope alarmism. If a major distributor like Funimation or Sentai ever goes under, that'll be significant. For now though, it's just one pretty minor player who really didn't license much these days anyway. Could this hypothetically be the first step in major, industry wide changes? Possibly, but that's just idle speculation right now. Of course, to be fair, I'll admit that the reasons for this shutdown are somewhat more concerning. (Keep in mind that my comment was originally made simply in reference to Bandai shutting down). If, as we've more recently learned, Bandai Japan wants to do more self-releases then that lends some credibility to your concerns. That could at least potentially be a sign that more and more companies will be following Aniplex example in the future. Again though, that's just speculation right now.