2008 – Make or break for anime?

People may or may not have read the stream of open letters going back and forth – for those interested the links to these go as follows:

Interview with Arthur Smith, GDH (Gonzo)

Open letter to the industry from Anime News Network

Response from Bandai Visual’s president

The above serve as back story in case people are interested.

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It’s been a pretty turbulent year for the industry on whole, we’ve seen one new company enter the field in the form of Revelation Films, seen DVD sales drop across the board (unrelated to the previous item!) while on the flipside the fan base is growing and TV is starting to pick up both in the UK and other countries such as South Africa.

On the outside things may not look peachy, but they look like anime is on the rise in the UK, yet things are a bit amiss. You’re seeing more new titles released almost monthly, boxsets as well – but sales are dropping.

Why? Well the open letters I linked to above discuss this in better detail and have said most of the things I would have anyway. Here’s the crux of the matter though and do feel free to correct me if people think I’m wrong, but the real problem is no company at least within the Anime industry has yet been able to formulate a financially successful business model in the UK, or even for the most part US, yet. Arguably this is directly attributable to the strict rules placed upon us all by the people licenses are acquired from though – making it all one big vicious cycle:

- Licensors expect Industry in US/UK to provide more revenue or they get twitchy.

- Industry tries to make DVDs more and more appealing, but with most fans having watched, enthused and then thrown away with a series by the time the dub is prepared, subs readied etc that sales have dropped through the floor.

- It isn’t unexpected to only receive materials when a series finishes in Japan, thus adding time onto the delays.

- Fans complain.

- Repeat, lather, rinse, sandpaper face, take eyes out with novelty straw etc.

VoD has been tried, but with a lot of DRM-filled issues that rendered it virtually useless as why download at that kind of price what you can download for free from fansub groups?

DVDs are of course affected, along the lines of “I don’t have the money to spend on 19.99, 15.99, 10.99 for 4 episodes a DVD.”, “I wasn’t going to buy it in the first place, I just want to watch it like I would on TV” etc.

Who’s to blame? Is it the fansubbers? Is it the fans? Is it the industry? I’d argue like many that it’s a mix of all three and it’s very close to being irrelevant.

Whatever the reason, the failure to grasp this digital era and ensnare it for profit making has been a huge faux-pas. Whether it’s recoverable now or is also a whole other gloomy question :/.

Yet, you go ask your regular Joe Anime on the street and what are they going to say? On the outside looking in Anime is at a premium in the UK, the sell out of Amecon in 3 weeks is proof enough of that and it is an amazing achievement.

Also citable as evidence would be the seemingly endless proliferation of cons with an attendance almost as large as I’d get for holding a party for the returnees from Guantanamo Bay (by my count there’s been more than one fresh, never run before events that have popped up this year and announced plans to run next year…).

Sad to say unless someone grabs the bull by the horns and produces a solution to the whole problem, as raised by a friend, of the fact fansub groups are offering a service that fans want and the industry at present is not equipped to provide, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the following happen:

- Japanese licensors take a more “hands on” approach to the UK, issuing their shows via internet channels akin to the way a lot of internet-based channels works in Japan and how Gonzo’s latest venture in China looks like it will play out. It’s something several people including myself have suspected would happen for a while – and has already begun both with BOST TV and Azeureus/Vuze leaning towards licensing and digital distribution now.

- At least one company in the UK scene bow out or cut back its staff dramatically or at the very least release dates to combat fading sales (the latter already happened to an extent).

- Number of “original series” produced in 2008-9 decreases, good selection of the ones that do come are aimed at a western audience from the start.

- Sales will drop again for most of the industry with a few fan favorite exceptions.

There’s more doom and gloom where that came from – but I’ll save it there. Sufficed to say things aren’t to pretty at the moment – not to say they’re over by far and a lot of people have a lot of good ideas at the moment (too many to list all of them, but there are some very interesting solutions to the internet problem being devised, just listening to what the fans want more than ever and trying different release styles).