Mohawk52 said:
Thank you Andrew. That was a bit more understandable, and has answered some of my questions. However, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't their market older and more established than ours? Isn't our market only what? ten years old at best, and most of those years were extremely sparce for titles?
Close, but this is actually the 20th anniversary of manga and anime hitting UK shores though
. Nonetheless you are spot on the French market has had Anime as a good part of its TV programming - about 12 years more exposure than the UK. That was with Goldorak (or Go Nagai's Grendizer to us), Nicky Larson (aka City Hunter) the other big TV anime influence came to the next generation circa when Akira hit UK shores originally too.
Mohawk52 said:
I am old enough to remember seeing the few VHS anime titles from the early Manga UK days, and a few dodgy ones from Kiseki ( remember them?) in video rental shops back in '98, but you could count them all on one hand. In short our market is still young and growing. Yes we are getting more than those days, but when I see the releases that come out of the US, and how many we get, in the same year, it's then I feel like Oliver holding up my bowl begging, "Please sir, can I have some more?".
Actually if you compare the two markets there's hardly any bowl offering upwards given the amount companies are doling out. But to an extent that's the price paid for having and industry that due to financial markets etc has to leech of the US now mostly for titles. That part's more picking at semantics though as I fully agree with you the UK are a growing market still. This doesn't change the fact that financially it's not sane to go buy out a company in an emerging market, plus very bad business practice.
The fact is by not buying Manga from Starz (if that were even a reality) I can guarantee you the UK will get a better deal for Anime than if they were bought up. MVM and Manga's pseudo-independence guarantees you that variety of content that is difficult for a company who is a part of a Japanese larger company. Sure we provide a variety of content and we push for new works unrelated to Bandai (Haruhi, Gurren Lagann etc) - but there's always more boundaries in place. If you look at other emerging markets like the Czech Republic - there's far bigger bottlenecks on DVD releases there.
Ultimately the UK is past the early emerging market phase - now it's about developing a sustainable market and breaking the vicious cycle of picking up UK titles
.
Mohawk52 said:
BTW if you think City Hunter is that great, why have you held it from us? Do you think that HQ in the US might be a bit mift by you suggesting I import it from there? It's no good you thinking "it's done well in France and Germany, but wouldn't do well here." You just don't know until you try it. And you wonder and lament why most of us download, when you are in a position to do something about it? Sorry Andrew. I'd better stop. I can feel my blood pressure rising again., and I don't want to say something I'll regret later. It's your business after all. I'm just a customer, or could be.
First: We have no HQ in the US, we're a part of the same Special Business Unit - but we do not answer to them
.
Secondly: They don't hold the US rights - ADV did until they lapsed so whatever's left is the last of their stock.
Thirdly: Actually I did recommend it but the only way to take it for the UK would be to take ALL of it. Taking a 50-100 episode series on the premise a few people would like something out of the 1980s is taking a big gamble really. When you evaluate the fact for that price you could buy all of following series if they were available (Bacanno is in that mystic pile of licenses bottlenecked by a certain company in the US owning the R2 rights):
- Bacanno
- Xam'D
- Kannagi
If faced with that choice, which would you go for both from a business perspective and as a fan? At the time it was a different set of three but they performed equally well as I would hope the three I listed would (also accurate for pricing comparison too).
Fourth: City Hunter never did well in Germany, in fact it only aired on TV there in 2001 and the DVDs are hardly stellar material there. Had it done well across the two markets then the odds are we *would* have brought it to the UK - honest! Sadly at work we always have to keep an eye on things as it's very easy as fans to snap a license up, only to realize while the 200-400 or so fans of it in the UK will buy it - after that nobody else will! Those kind of decisions are never easy though.
I also fail to see how that has anything to do with any lamenting why people download titles I may do. When I do so, it's related to fresh titles sales being impacted by people downloading and not replacing anime. The culture of anime being for all intents and purposes worthless to many barring in the form of free-to-download. Present company excluded as everyone on the forums here have bought DVDs or manga before at some point
.
However with any retro title you must factor in the fact that many who want to buy it but can't will have imported or downloaded it years ago. So in that kind of case you have to evaluate - will there be even a medium-sized fresh market for this title or not?
Hope this helps clarify
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- Andrew
