A-Kon ADV panel
I showed up a couple of minutes late due to the massive elevator backup,
but I managed to take a few notes. The accoustics of the room, well, SUCKED,
so sometimes it was easier to hear all the noise from out in the hall than
from the table - and I was in the front row - so please forgive any oversights
or errors. I've tried to keep it accurate. I'm sure DLW will slap me silly if
I screwed up too badly.
Matt Greenfield and David Williams aka DLW from ADV did this panel.
ADV announced they've acquired Lady Devilman. (The only Devilman I've seen
is the one Manga put out, which totally sucks, but I'm assured by Matt and
other fans that Lady Devilman is actually very good. Actually I've heard
enough people mention it online in a favorable way so I'll be checking it
out.)
ADV Fansub releases are on hold for approval of bounus materials to be
offered only to subscribers. Since some of them will require a subscription to
the *entire* series they want to get it all in order before shipping more
tapes to give more people a chance at the extras. DLW said they hope to have
approval to put the offer up on the site this week. Once it is up they will
hold the second tapes for two weeks (they are all ready to go) to give people
time to jump on board. The third tapes should ship two weeks after that. They
will follow an accelerated schedule to catch up to where they should be based
on the original one-a-month plan. They also reiterated that ADV Fansub
releases will not be on DVD until the dubs are complete, so please stop
asking. And yes, they are in negotiations now to bring both series to TV. (But
they are somewhat hampered in that they want to keep any content editing to
the absolute minimum, so it makes it harder to get them aired. For example
Nadia has nudity and sexual content (not *sex*, ok? sexually based humor, etc)
that make the task harder.)
When asked about reports of a potential all anime cable channel Matt said
he cannot comment on that at this time - in a tone that I took to mean "We can
neither confirm nor deny..." He did go on to say that he personally expects it
to happen soon, and that it will be a premium channel and not a free channel
due to the content issues. In that you have to request and pay for a premium
channel and free channels just show up - and for some reason boucing breasts
and violence, animated or not, seems to upset a percentage of the population.
Being a premium channel affords the channel protection in that people can't
claim it is being sent into the homes unwanted. It may potentially also be a
satellite channel, not cable.
The Samauri X title was chosen to tie into the mainstream market. Sony will
be marketing it on TV, etc, with that title and ADV wanted to take advantage
of their marketing machine by tying in the dub. The sub packaging will be
different and will have Japanese on the box to make it clear. Matt said that
having two titles is actually a pain in the ass but they wanted to increase
business (hence Samauri X on the dub) and also please the hardcore fans (hence
Rurouni Kenshin on the subs).
Spriggan should be released for the fall. They are shooting for a wide
release, covering all the major markets. The comment was made that it will be
a wider release than say Princess Mononoke got.
Parasite Eve live action subtitled should be out next month. I'm not sure
but I think they said in theaters.
In response to questions along the lines of "When will be out" ADV said
they have 3 production teams working on dubs and one devoted entirely to subs
and they've just maxed out right now. They're getting through their titles as
quickly as possible.
ADV has three production houses working on their DVDs. They're still in
something of a trial phase, and said that none of them are really where they'd
like them to be just yet. They are performing ongoing evaluations to decide to
stick with a house or not based on the quality of their work on the titles
they do.
ADV is holding Eva DVD 2 to give them more time to compile and evaluate the
feedback they've received from disc one. They may go back to using subtitles,
or perhaps a compromise with fewer overlays. They reiterated that they did
receive many complaints about too many subtitles on Eva, especially on later
episodes, and that if they do go back to all subs - you've been warned and
they'd rather not hear the complaints again when you have the screen covered
again.
Alternate angles were brought up and they said that they moved away from
using them after experimenting with them because of the problems. Sakura Wars
was mentioned directly, saying that they'd had many complaints about players
not handling alternate angles and that causing problems playing the disc. They
didn't want to use them on Eva because of the fear of selling thousands of
discs and having half of them returned because they wouldn't play correctly.
When asked what brand DVD player to buy DLW and Matt said, repeatedly, "BUY
A SONY!" They play anything. DLW said you can't use Sony's to proof discs
because nothing bothers them - discs that had trouble in Toshiba, Pionner,
etc, will play fine in the Sony. And no, they don't get any kickbacks from
Sony.
On the ADV Music front, they said the discs will be priced at less than $15
each and will be nearly identical to the Japanese pressings - though perhaps
with simpler inserts and not the massive gatefolds some import discs have.
Matt made the point that they weren't going to cost 30,000 yen either, so...
They are aiming to do the most they can within that price point. They're
hoping to make some major ADV Music announcements at AX.
Actually, they indicated they are hoping to have several major
announcements for AX.
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