Forum - View topicAnswerman - Halloween Hangover
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Hardgear
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And it doesn't even have to be all that good either, since we all know where all the attention is going! |
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Divineking
 Posts: 1293 |
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Glad this week's Answerman has answered the question to how much dubbing costs are since it helps paint a clearer picture of what disc sales have to look like for a billingual release to break even and none of the R1 licensors have ever mentioned exact numbers (looks to be around 4-5K if my calculations are right).
On the note of Gundam I'm hoping something can be worked out with one of the current R1 distributors though I imagine they won't have much interest in doing so till another major Gundam TV series is out (and targeted at an older audience than AGE). In the meantime I can imagine they'll probably keep handling things themselves though I think there's some potential for Gundam Build Fighters. It seems like it'd be perfect for the saturday morning cartoon audience and I think it would be worthwhile for Sunrise to look into that. |
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levonr
 Posts: 809 |
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I think with Gundam there hasn't been any new interesting Gundam besides Unicorn which Bandai is releasing and RightStuf is now releasing on DVD. AGE and Build Fighters aren't something that even Gundam fans are really excited about. However do you think this will change with the upcoming Gundam The Origin anime?
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walw6pK4Alo
 Posts: 9322 |
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It's not like they didn't have Gundam 00 recently, dubbed, and also aired on TV. If that didn't set off a huge spark, I'm not sure that a re-visitation to 0079 will do anything more that Unicorn hasn't. Maybe they're looking at Yamato 2199 kinds of success for that, but I don't think also that enthusiasm carries over well to the west beyond the space/mecha diehards.
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Yoda117
Posts: 406 |
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Yeah, I'm not so sure about the metrics they're using there. Figure at least three people in a studio (Talent, Director, Engineer). That's just to record the track. Then factor in the mixing and mastering, QC, etc., and the $ value quoted in the article quickly goes up. If it happens to be a union (SAG-AFTRA) project, which is rare, but still happens, then it's really not a feasible number for a budget. Now if we're talking about just recording the tracks, then it might be possible, but I still have problems accepting that 6-8K range per episode. I'd go with 8-10K for tracking though. FWIW: that's not counting the costs of renting the studio space, which can get pretty insane depending on location and the facilities used. /just my $0.02, and more power to the folks who can do all the work, reliably, within that budget |
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Agent355
 Posts: 5113 Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready... |
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I like dubs and hope they don't disappear. I'm trying not to put too much hope in it, but if Space Dandy succeeds it would be a very good thing for dubs. And maybe Animax dubs will improve in the future and R1 companies will be able to release them here? As long as South Asia has anime on TV, English dubs will exist, which is a good thing. Nodame Cantabile had a great, LA-produced Animax dub (I think) for season 1, which is available streaming State-side on Crackle.
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GATSU
Posts: 15309 |
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That's not Bandai. That's Sunrise, since Bandai screwed them over with scorched earth tactics, because no one gave a damn about the Visual stuff.
Thanks to the CR streams, the subbed sets were selling, and the original show made money again. They had good Amazon sales ranks. The re-release of the manga covering that arc from Vertical makes money. It's just that there was no proper venue to build an audience for older titles through television, which is why 0079 failed here the first time. But the Internet's made it possible for classic anime shows to compete with the new stuff, which is why Discotek's still in business. But, once again, Bandai Japan decided to screw over Bandai America, even though the latter group admitted they were doing decently here. And the only reason is because BVUSA didn't get to have its way price-gouging American customers with niche releases like it would in Japan. |
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lewisfoster
Posts: 13 |
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I live in Japan working for IBM. There's an animated feature film released at least once a month here, even more in the fall months. Right now we have the new Madaoka Magica movie, Patama Inverted, the new Tiger & Bunny movie, Yoyo and Nene, Garden of Sinners part whatever and Persona 3 in the theatres or about to be released. The OAV also hasn't disappeared. But the difference is the release those to movie theatres first, like they have with Yamato 2199, Ghost in the Shell:Arise, Code Geass and Mardock Scramble.
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walw6pK4Alo
Posts: 9322 |
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I also believe that fan personally viewed the anime atmosphere of the 90s as one of films and OVAs because those would have been licensed and released more readily compared to TV shows. It's easier for an anime club or a presentation at a con to feature 100 minutes of a high budget movie compared to much lower budget and much longer format of TV, same with trading and buying tapes.
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Alan45
 Village Elder Posts: 9841 Location: Virginia |
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I can still remember a columnist in Animerica Magazine expressing worry over the anime industry because all the good OVAs had been licensed. He expressed the opinion that the American public could not be induced to buy something as long as a TV series. Most at that time were 26 episodes.
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Angel M Cazares
 Posts: 5424 Location: Iscandar |
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In my opinion R1 anime distributors are making too many dubs. I want Funimation to keep dubbing action oriented stuff like Attack on Titan and boob shows because that is what sells. I think that dubbing niche shows and otaku-oriented shows is a waste of money because they do not have much commercial appeal.
Sentai is doing a better at selecting what to dub. The problem with them is that their dubs tend to be of low quality because they rush them. Sentai is licensing too many new shows and probably does not have the resources to churn out a quality dub every two weeks. I would rather see R1 anime distributors cut down on the numbers of dubs they make. I would be cool with only having 30 quality dubs per year rather than 100 crappy ones. |
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Alan45
Village Elder Posts: 9841 Location: Virginia |
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@angelmcazares
There is nothing wrong with saying what you would like to see, however, you will have to accept that others would prefer to see everything dubbed. It doesn't matter either way as neither you nor they are in a position to change things. Sometimes we have to accept what is. As to Funimation, they are experimenting with a sub only show. I hope it is successful as it may mean more niche shows that they wouldn't have done otherwise. Concerning Sentai, I think if they did less dubs, they would just spend less money. I'm not sure their quality would improve. While an attempt to speed them out may have been the original cause, to change things now would probably require a complete change in corporate culture. New managers, new directors, new technical staff and new quality control. When people get used to doing "good enough" work, slowing down usually just means they produce less. In other threads it has been indicated that providing a dub opens up additional channels for streaming and that Sentai sometimes gets money from companies in other areas who want to use their dub. This would explain why some shows are dubbed that don't seem to make sense based solely on sales. In any case, each company knows their finances best. I doubt they are intentionally setting themselves up to fail. Even if they are headed for a financial train wreck, all we can do is watch. |
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vanfanel
 Posts: 1242 |
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I've been primarily a subtitle-only kind of fan since getting into it in 1992, and I remember the suspense I'd be in back then whenever something I wanted to see got licensed: "Will there be a subtitled version, or will it be another dub-only show?" I was one of those suckers who grudgingly paid an extra $10 a tape just to avoid dubs, only to have the whole issue become a (mostly) moot point once DVDs were invented.
At that time, there were plenty of TV series that people wanted to see, but the conventional wisdom (which also held that Ghibli films and Five Star Stories could never be released in the West) was that it was not financially viable to release TV series (unless based on manga by Rumiko Takahashi, of course). That started to change more and more in the mid-late 90s with Evangelion, Blue Seed, and Fushigi Yuugi. Anime Village made my heart rejoice by putting out Escaflowne. Then Cowboy Bebop got on TV and was a big hit. Good times. Eventually, even some TV shows that had gotten skipped during the OVA/movie boom started to trickle out (Macross, Kimagure Orange Road, the rest of Nadia, and so on). Japan still makes a lot of animated features -- some of them very good and, yes, aimed at older audiences; however, it may be easy to lose sight of them in the sea of TV anime that makes up a lot of what is watched now. |
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katscradle
Posts: 469 |
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Wow, I didn't have the impression dubbing was that much more marketable for streaming. When I have watched Anime streaming (which isn't a lot) it's usually subbed and if not then it seems a majority of people (or maybe they're just the vocal ones) tend to complain to the service company about not offering it subtitled. Maybe I have niche tastes. The only Anime I watch on television is pretty much subtitled as well so, hearing about half of titles get English dubs these days is also more positive to me. Especially since my significant other can't read subtitles easily, so watching anything not spoken in English together is hard. I don't need a dub but, I like them and will happily fork out more money for a disc with more options. I've even purchased certain Anime solely for the different language options whereas I wouldn't have bothered. So I truly hope offering dubs end up more profitable in the future for even the little shows. |
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Zump
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I'm actually surprised by this. I was always under the impression that stuff like Ghibli was an easier sell for American fans because it's more family-oriented like much of mainstream American animation (more specifically, because it is arguably the closest thing Japan has to Disney animation), and that the violent, gritty stuff like Akira and Ninja Scroll had fallen out of fashion. |
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