For me, I was unable to attend any conventions last year after Anime Boston due to some issues with my parents in the medical realm as I need to stay close by. That itself wrapped up this past February so Anime Boston 2005 became my first vacation in over a year. Even though it's a working vacation for me since we're doing things for the site, it's one of the best kinds of working vacations since you get to deal with friends and industry folk that you don't get to see often enough. So this report won't be quite a report on panel by panel announcements and news or such but more of a "travelogue" of sorts that covers a number of different topics.
I also rather liked the lobby area to the hotel which was very wide and open and had a convenient and sizeable bar area with plenty of seating off to one side of it. Practically every night was spent down at that bar and it was definitely easy and enjoyable to get together with a lot of people and have a good time. Another massive plus was that since the hotel is split into two towers, there's two areas of elevators for use. Unlike the Park Plaza, elevators arrived and moved fast and I don't believe any of them got stuck or "dropped" this year. I don't hide the fact that I absolutely hated that about the Park Plaza after spending a couple of incidents of being stuck between floors with other people. The people were fine but that was not a pleasant experience.
Overall though, the hotel experience itself was fantastic and I'm hopeful that the convention will use them for years to come as I want to spend plenty of time there.
I spent most of my time in Panel Room 100 which is where most of what I needed to see was held but in checking out other areas it was definitely a good setup with plenty of space as needed and a well laid out area. Panel Room 100 hosted almost all of the industry panels and it managed things just right in making sure there was enough seating for the crowds. If anything was a problem during the panel sessions, it was never anything more than one or two orange-shirted staffers who were talking a bit more loudly than they should have been while the actual panel was underway as they sat in the doorway checking for proper badges.
The dealers room itself also managed to work out well in that there was plenty of space to walk around without getting too crowded. Where the dealers' room was a problem, and I do and don't fault the dealers for this, is that their selections were for the most part pretty bland. What you saw at one table you saw at most others, especially in terms of what shows were being represented. A dealer of course wants to bring what sells and you know what sells and what doesn't so it was fairly obvious what kind of things you'd see outside of the regular things like DVDs and manga. But the lack of really neat things or harder to find things was disappointed. This is the kind of cycle that only forces people to look online more and more and then have less and less reason to go into dealer rooms afterwards. The continuing growing item though is yaoi related material and this year had more doujinshi available than I had seen before.
Their showing of a clip of the Kodocha show with the English dub was perfect; they played a piece where Sana does her singing/rap material and it plays back on one of her instruments so you could hear how the really difficult material was going to be handled. Honestly, I was thrilled when I heard it because it was done very well. Laura Bailey will I believe have this nailed down just right. More importantly, it's done well enough that I'll even enjoy listening to it so that my kids can watch the show and spend the next couple of years growing up watching Sana growing up and dealing with difficult issues. The timing of this shows release, which sadly is pushed back to August from June, is just right for my kids. They showed off the premium (a DVD slipbag of some sort that I didn't get a good look at) and talked about various other shows in production and what kind of plans are in the works. Most of it was things we're all familiar with and they did their announcement of the Sunabozu title which hasn't gotten too much pre-buzz from fandom unlike a lot of other Gonzo shows. Lance does a good Q&A session though I hope they stop passing out the Kodocha hammers before the panel since people use them to clap instead of clapping. Squeaky devils!
2005 and 2006 are definitely going to be the years FUNimation defines itself as a dominant company I think.
John Sirabella headed up the Media Blasters panel and we got to present our award to them for their win in March for the Best DVD Release of the month with Twelve Kingdoms Vol. #10. John's one of the best people to have running a panel since he's more blunt than most of the other reps and while he of course does keep the necessary cards close to his vest, he's more open about the state of things than you find a lot of other people. Their company continues to be well vested in multiple areas so while anime is a big part it's not the only part. Zim helped them immensely as stated in the past and their continued expansion into the European horror movies and investments in Japanese live action movies solidifies them even more. There's hope that things like the upcoming GTO live action movie release performs well to get more interest in those releases but it's been said that anime dramas and Japanese dramas in general will be quite difficult to get for some time to come because when they're made, the contracts and such rarely include anything related to overseas licensing, which means it's a lot of work and akin to how anime used to be years ago and how a lot of old anime series are now. While there were no licensing announcements for anime series, John did mention that they picked up the Atragon movie and mentioned a few other titles that are in the works.
There was some discussion about the Ah! My Goddess plans but not too much has been nailed down yet. My inquiry about the status of the old Kenshin character specials revealed that they do still have them but it's something that they aren't quite sure what to do with. Initially, it was believed that the specials would have some extra footage in it or something but it turns out that they're just full character recaps, similar to the four recap episodes in Wolf's Rain. Since Kenshin is a continual seller there isn't much incentive to put them out but hopefully they'll figure something out. Even though it'll be ages before I watch Kenshin again I'd love to see the specials as a way to sort of get a bit of the taste without the commitment again.
Jerry Chu headed up the Bandai panel and like most of Jerry's panels it's always fun to hear how he's going to answer some of the usual questions. A good bit of time was spent in talking about the IGPX property and how these kinds of collaborations where you have the Cartoon Network producers being so hands on with the series director must still appeal to the Japanese audience first as well as to an international audience. Some fans still have this big fear of US money and involvement being something that's going to dumb down anime but it continues to be no more than a myth. As has been borne out, more often than not, the involvement has brought about shows that would never be made otherwise in a Japanese market that's looking for very specific things at the moment. Jerry talked about the Eureka 7 property as well in how unlike the .hack franchise we'll see more of it than we did of that one and probably more quickly. Plans for things like the manga, anime and games are pretty much a lock right now and other things will follow if they all manage to hold their own. With the series running for fifty episodes, it's something that will have a chance to really do well here if the story holds up from what we're hearing of the first few episodes that have aired.
David Williams and Mariela Ortiz headed up a few ADV panels over the weekend. On Friday, we attended their Premiers panel in which we got to see the first episode of Area 88 TV. The analogy of "Initial D with planes" is not far fetched with this and having been a fan of the original OVAs I am even more excited to see this show now than I was before. It looks great, has plenty of atmosphere to it, fantastic aerial battle scenes and a male-focused cast that will be a great change of pace from the norm. We didn't attend the other premiers since we try to avoid repeating what we see and I'll be getting discs of those titles soon.
Their second panel was the standard panel where they talked about the company and what's going on. As usual, a lot of the questions centered around the Evangelion movie and the Anime Network (hopefully they'll start spinning that off to its own panel for larger cons in the future). While no new licenses were announced they did confirm the video rights for the Place Promised in Our Early Day movie. There were little surprises at the panel and they covered most of the things that are typically covered at an ADV panel.
Their third panel on Sunday was a bit more specific as it was a panel about production at ADV. This was a bit more interesting since it went over the life cycle of a show, things that can slow up releases and what it takes to get from point A (licensing/acquisition of materials) to point B (you putting your disc in the player). For a lot of people I'm sure this was new and quite enlightening and hopefully helps explain just why things work the way that they do.
Stephen Tang headed up the Geneon panel this year and though a bit late to the panel, he was good enough to kick off a few trailers of some of their bigger properties and shows that are coming out later this year. Stephen ran quickly through the three new titles announced, Doki Doki School Hours, Starship Operators and Bottle Faeries. I'm most excited about Starship Operators myself since it's been described as Crest of the Starts done as a reality TV series in the midst of a space war. Stephen talked about things Geneon has in the works, showed off some packaging for a couple of premium items like Appleseed and Tenjho Tenge and through the usual areas as well as plenty of standard "cannot confirm or deny" statements.
TOKYOPOP ran a couple of panels, with the Friday one being for their original works and the Saturday being for the licensed works. The panel was decent as it covered a lot of previously known material that folks here would know about but a con crowd may not and they snuck a few surprises in such as the licensing of Trash. Both TOKYOPOP and Tofu records talked about how FUNimation has the Beck anime license when they were asked about Beck manga, though of course FUNimation won't confirm what someone else says. This doesn't happen often but we do find it amusing when it does as it just illustrates the game we all play to some extent. The downside to the TOKYOPOP panel is that it IS so focused just on the manga that they can't speak to the video side of it at all. The video side of TOKYOPOP continues to be a strange mystery that nobody seems to be able to really break through to find out what's going on.
I knew ya'll were just like me.
When talking about what's being affected, it comes down to this: The A titles are selling, though some don't sell as well as they should (and mind you, all the companies know exactly what the other sells, so they're able to compare expectations and classify titles pretty well – and "A" titles doesn't always mean A quality but A performance). B and C titles aren't selling as well as they should be though and their numbers are falling off. A problem in discussing this within fan circles I've found is that what people consider an A or B title is rarely the same, so until that gets settled a bit more we'll never change the nature of the debate properly. I've seen in recent discussions where titles such as Wolf's Rain is considered a B title when it's clearly an A title. Unfortunately, only Lance from FUNimation would admit a title when I asked about it and mentioned Spiral as being a solid B title and how its performance is going. Most people will see that and classify it as a B or C title and easy say that it's the kind of title that we can easily lose in the market, and that's where the problem is I think.
Based on what I've read in the past and talked with retailers about, and this is all supposition and editorializing on my part, when Fruits Basket first came out, it's performance would probably be classified in the C title range. While I'm sure Bandai does well with the Crest/Banner of the Stars material, I doubt it's selling Gundam level or close to a lot of things they get on TV and it's sales performance classifies it as a good B level title. Shura no Toki from Media Blasters is likely doing well but I'd bet that it'd fall into either category as well, at least when compared to things like Berserk and Kenshin.
Some fans seem to want to get rid of anything but the A level titles. This really worries me more than anything else since there are so many great titles out there that should sell and should be doing better. The companies are starting, far too late in my opinion, to make some changes that should help stanch some of the bleeding. ADV Films talked about their upcoming collection release plans. When a series comes out now, it's quite easy for fans to pass on the series and wait for a box. I remember complaining about this with Media Blasters a few years ago when Gun Frontier ended and a keepcase brick was solicited the same day I bought the last volume – the brick was almost the same price as the last volume I had just bought. What was the incentive to buy the individual volumes then?
So according to David Williams, the plan is that when future collections are released, the series will be reauthored onto fewer discs but it will remove all the extras on the disc as well as all the booklets and inserts. While no specifics were given, I can easily imagine a 7 volume series being brought down to four volumes, thinpaked into a small collection and sold at a lower price. But you'd just get the show, no commentaries, no extras, no clean openings and endings, no booklets or reversible covers, etc. This then brings back an actual value to the individual releases that come out prior to the box. This is something that should have been done years ago though and it's a too little too late measure but one that still needs to be done.
LOGIN
REGISTER
RSS
HOME
