New Anime Releases 31/10/2011: House of Five Leaves
- Thread starter Neferpitou
- Start date
fabio de lunatico
Claymore
/glares at backlog
Eh, I'm fine with waiting. It might be a different story with Tatami Galaxy as that's a high priority title for me, though you can guarantee that the moment I tear off the shrink wrap Funi will announce a bilingual BD release...
Eh, I'm fine with waiting. It might be a different story with Tatami Galaxy as that's a high priority title for me, though you can guarantee that the moment I tear off the shrink wrap Funi will announce a bilingual BD release...
devilrules666
Combat Butler
what about series that has a season 2 and so on that didn't get released over here?
You have done one already remeber? Don't do the same one again.
You have done one already remeber? Don't do the same one again.
So realistically all anime is "niche", even the "popular" ones, and releasing them sub only just guarantees that it will never sell over 100. Do you think Pokemon, or Yu-Gi-Oh, or One Piece would be a "massive hit" if they were sub only? I don't hate subs. I hate not being able to read and watch them at the same time. So more and more sub only's means more and more I'm being driven out of the hobby that I love. Never mind I can still buy print manga "dubbed". :roll:Rui said:
I assume that if there is any commercial success to be had from dubbing a series, they will, because the companies are all in this to make money. If House of Five Leaves was live action, it wouldn't be dubbed because it's obviously a series with very limited appeal, nothing like a big hit aimed at children. I would hate to see a world where western fans are absolutely locked out of anything that didn't run in Shounen Jump or have a tie in to an enormously popular game just because the only kind of paying customers are unwilling to appreciate subs.
I appreciate that people who are anti-sub won't be able to enjoy the release this way, but they weren't going to enjoy it anyway as it will quite possibly never be dubbed in the current financial climate. Not every release can cater for every single fan. The days of companies like Geneon completely self-destructing by bleeding money dubbing all kinds of crazy niche series which nobody bought are hopefully over. I want a sustainable, healthy anime industry.
R
I appreciate that people who are anti-sub won't be able to enjoy the release this way, but they weren't going to enjoy it anyway as it will quite possibly never be dubbed in the current financial climate. Not every release can cater for every single fan. The days of companies like Geneon completely self-destructing by bleeding money dubbing all kinds of crazy niche series which nobody bought are hopefully over. I want a sustainable, healthy anime industry.
R
I perfer exceptionless choice for everyone including people like me. :wink:reborn said:
Please stop labelling me as "anti-sub". I'm not. By your example FUNimation should have gone bust long ago then, so it wasn't making dubs what caused the destruction of Geneon, it was poor business and marketing decisions, and pirates/fansubs. Many of the titles on my shelf are Geneon USA, some even Pioneer before them in both R1 and R2. They got my money one way or another.Rui said:
Mohawk52 said:
Apologies, but if you say that a title being licensed and released sub-only may as well not have been licensed at all (as per a previous conversation) it seemed natural to believe your stance was anti-sub.
FUNimation deliberately licence only the big hits, which is why we will never see the end of shows like Kodocha, xxxHolic and Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni from them. If a series can't pull in the numbers, they drop it. If streams don't pull in the viewing figures, they don't get disc releases either. Geneon were much more generous, fully dubbing flops like Hajime No Ippo, Saiunkoku Monogatari, Kyo Kara Maoh and the infamous Rumiko Takahashi Anthology (which, according to a widespread rumours, sold under 100 copies per disc while requiring sales of 10k to break even). I own all of those releases, and they're great, but it's hopeless to expect companies to be able to do things like that any more. And several of those shows remain orphans now with no later seasons being picked up, because they are seen as unmarketable
If dubs had no cost, I'd agree with you, but it's widely accepted that a dub is an absolutely enormous overhead when it comes to anime. If having a dub means that something needs to sell thousands more copies to be profitable, but having a dub only means that a company should expect sales to double, it's easy to see that it's impractical for anything that isn't going to be a hit.
The poor business decisions you speak of which brought Geneon down were dubbing shows that wouldn't be popular. You could argue that they should only have been picking up Shounen Jump titles too and dropping anything which didn't show promise, but a world with nothing but mainstream action shows is far worse than one with the occasional release without a bilingual soundtrack in my mind.
The Beez/S23 model of licensing a healthy mix of titles (ok, so the latter mainly seem to pick up trashy bishoujo stuff lately, but there are gems too...) and putting dubs on series which can support them seems to be the best of both worlds. Revisiting hot sellers to add a dub later without killing the licensing company is great.
Bleh, I'm just annoyed that the one thing keeping me being 'driven out of a hobby I love' as far as UK anime releases are concerned is being condemned for the same, but opposite reason
R
Accepted, and understandable when one misunderstands what I've written. I meant that for me if a title is sub only it's as good as not being licensed at all. I'm not a child. I'm a married father of two teenagers. I'm not that immature to moan "if I can 't have it dubbed no one should have it at all" like I've been wrongly accused of.Rui said:
Fair enough, but they don't just licence and dub "big hits". Was "Rumbling Hearts" , or the 3rd. Tenchi OVA a big hit? But at least they gave them all a chance covering both languages.
Chad Kime, former marketing staff at Geneon USA, begs to differ.
I would never be so foolish. Never.
That remains to be seen. Just staying at the same sales level is not the growth a company should be aiming for.
Mohawk52 said:
To be fair I should have said anti-sub-only in your case, as your stance is like mine is to dubs. They don't annoy me merely by virtue of existing, but a dub-only DVD is worthless to me.
Tenchi I would have expected to sell very well though just on name recognition, even though I thought the 3rd OAV was disappointing. Rumbling Hearts is a fair call though. In Funi's defence, they have done a lot to try out a varied catalogue of titles - it's just when they completely give up on series or entire genres (sports anime) thereafter that I feel demoralised. I'm not seeing the same chances being given to as many kinds of shows nowadays as back in their prime.
Some of the content of that interview is mortifying to this day. I'm not sure what kind of marketing could compensate for such high break even requirements, though. Bloated licensing fees aside, if shaving off a dub for the first release lowers the break even points for companies to affordable levels which they can build on it seems very practical to me. Given the advantages of dubbing, especially in a country like America where the mainstream isn't used to subtitled film, there's surely no rational reason any company would go sub-only unless they really thought they had to.
I agree, I just want them to do it slowly and cautiously rather than overreach and disappear. We've lost far too many anime and manga companies that way, and I have far too many incomplete series on my shelves as a result. I want to believe that the way S23/MB/Nozomi are doing things now, cautiously but optimistically, is helping to grow their business.
And I do, as a general thing, wish there were enough fans who actually bought things like you to make anime profitable enough to support dubs for everything :/
R
Shiroi Hane
Dragon Knight
The (probable) explanation for some "odd" licenses is package deals -
licensor says "if you want this mega popular title which will sell gangbusters you have to release this title we've been trying to offload as well"
Funi says "well OK, we'll probably make a loss on the B-title, but the profits from the A-title make it worth it. Done."
licensor says "if you want this mega popular title which will sell gangbusters you have to release this title we've been trying to offload as well"
Funi says "well OK, we'll probably make a loss on the B-title, but the profits from the A-title make it worth it. Done."
Shiroi Hane
Dragon Knight
Last dub-only DVD I can recall (other than kids stuff like Digimon and old stuff like BotP) was the ultra budget release of The World of Narue.
There was also the hopefully ill-fated US release of Kurokami, where the blu-ray version only had the English dub in order to make it less desirable to Japanese fans. Which had the side effect of also making it less desirable to a lot of western fans as well. I like to bring it up occasionally to remind myself how stupid some decisions can be ;_;
R
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