[WTK]

11:04:57 <bay|Ota|Sentai> Q: What's all involved in the licensing process? How do you know when you want to license it?
11:05:35 <bay|Ota|Sentai> A: That's an involved question, it depends greatly, there are titles at ADV where it took us 10 years later, there were others where we'd get the same title in the same day
11:05:40 <bay|Ota|Sentai> and now, the big thing is simulcasts
11:05:49 <bay|Ota|Sentai> that's often now why you hear announcements
11:06:01 <bay|Ota|Sentai> like kids on the slope....we're not going to have the bd/dvd out till next year
11:06:18 <bay|Ota|Sentai> because of simulcasting, you hear most of the announcements at the beginning of the season, it has our names on it so we have to get the announcements out
11:06:26 <bay|Ota|Sentai> older titles, we're more relaxed on
11:06:42 <bay|Ota|Sentai> that gives me an opportunity to talk about "how come it takes so long after it airs to get the bd"
11:06:45 <bay|Ota|Sentai> first of all, it has to air
11:07:06 <bay|Ota|Sentai> then what the japanese do, is they go back to the show and touch up the video, add scenes, remove censoring, and then releas it in japan
11:07:12 <bay|Ota|Sentai> their release schedule is very different
11:07:24 <bay|Ota|Sentai> we have to wait till they finish production work to do ours, especially since we do complete sets
11:07:33 <bay|Ota|Sentai> they give us the masters after and then we can do our work
11:07:40 <bay|Ota|Sentai> that's why you see a long gap between streaming and video


11:15:51 <bay|Ota|Sentai> Q: How do you decide what will be dubbed and what will be sub only?
11:16:07 <bay|Ota|Sentai> A: basically it boils down to, there are a lot of shows out there that will sell really well, kids on the slop,e high school of the dead
11:16:15 <bay|Ota|Sentai> so you can afford the expense and know you can recoup
11:16:27 <bay|Ota|Sentai> and there are other shows which we know fans of the title want to have it, but that it wont be a bigger enough title
11:16:36 <bay|Ota|Sentai> before it was that you dub and lose, or you don't do it
11:16:49 <bay|Ota|Sentai> but for sentai, we decided to do them subtitle only, and they do what we expect
11:16:53 <bay|Ota|Sentai> if we dubbed them, they would have lost money
11:17:04 <bay|Ota|Sentai> is there enough interest for the cost of the dub
11:17:13 <bay|Ota|Sentai> i've mentioned before that we look at the streaming numbers
11:17:31 <bay|Ota|Sentai> we were originally going to release demon king subtitle only but the numbers were second only to HSoTD, so we dubbed it
11:17:40 <bay|Ota|Sentai> if you want a titled dubbed, get people watching the stream


11:20:06 <bay|Ota|Sentai> Q: Do you guys have any plans to release anything as BD/DVD combo pack?
11:20:12 <bay|Ota|Sentai> Why no OVAs when buy seasons on itunes?
11:20:24 <bay|Ota|Sentai> A; Would depend on the title, would have to ask A-net about that, i don't deal much with itunes
11:20:28 <bay|Ota|Sentai> I'd have to go and ask
11:20:43 <bay|Ota|Sentai> DVD and bluray combo packs, we've looked at it, but it doesn't work out financially
11:20:53 <bay|Ota|Sentai> like right now, bluray is very expensive to press
11:21:07 <bay|Ota|Sentai> anime in it's heyday, it sold really well, 10000 used to be a bad seller
11:21:12 <bay|Ota|Sentai> these days, 3000 it's WOHOOO
11:21:21 <bay|Ota|Sentai> the market for physical dvds has really changed
11:21:24 <bay|Ota|Sentai> so bd is really expensive
11:21:26 <bay|Ota|Sentai> DVD is really cheap
11:21:53 <bay|Ota|Sentai> so how do i release that, press extra bd and put them with dvd, vice versa, how can i afford extra expense? who will buy it?
11:22:00 <bay|Ota|Sentai> people who want to upgrade, will they pay the extra cost of the bluray or balk?
11:22:12 <bay|Ota|Sentai> now there are people who have bluray, and they don't want to pay extra for DVD
11:22:29 <bay|Ota|Sentai> the only market it seems to fufill for me is someone with DVD and bluray, with those in differnt locations
11:22:34 <bay|Ota|Sentai> i can't see it work financially
11:22:44 <bay|Ota|Sentai> and plus, since we're doing complete collections, we got more discs in the pack
11:22:48 <bay|Ota|Sentai> are we going to use stackers?
11:22:56 <bay|Ota|Sentai> so I don't see how we can make it work for us


11:23:16 <bay|Ota|Sentai> Q: I've heard that sentai might be stretching too thin, licensing too much? Any comments?
11:23:13 <bay|Ota|Sentai> A: That has ben brought up in many a panel
11:23:23 <bay|Ota|Sentai> I think we are being very careful at sentai
11:23:27 <bay|Ota|Sentai> we saw what happened in the past with other companies
11:23:35 <bay|Ota|Sentai> and we're trying ot be very careful with what we do and how we do it
11:23:39 <bay|Ota|Sentai> we're really small, we have very few
11:23:48 <bay|Ota|Sentai> back at ADV, everything was there
11:23:58 <bay|Ota|Sentai> Sentai is just the actual company, there is verty few people there, we contract everything out
11:24:10 <bay|Ota|Sentai> so we know pretty much what the production capacity is for the people we're working with
11:24:17 <bay|Ota|Sentai> we know what we can afford to license and w eknow how sales are going
11:24:28 <bay|Ota|Sentai> we factor all that in and are not going to get stretched too thin
11:24:40 <bay|Ota|Sentai> and the moment, i think we're at a pretty good peak, we got a good number each month
11:24:47 <bay|Ota|Sentai> and the good thing is we've gotten more and more into streaming
11:25:01 <bay|Ota|Sentai> and the company has grown since it started
11:25:17 <bay|Ota|Sentai> we understand that concern very well
11:25:32 <bay|Ota|Sentai> i think we did a good job of avoiding it, i wouldn't be concern, enjoy your anime


11:25:38 <bay|Ota|Sentai> Q: Limited edition releases or special extras?
11:25:52 <bay|Ota|Sentai> A: There aren't any planned at the moment, we'ved kicked it around for some of those,but we don't have in the works that i can talk about
11:26:00 <bay|Ota|Sentai> that is something that we've looked at, doing special editions of show
11:26:18 <bay|Ota|Sentai> another thing i concidered is taking a lot of similar shows of the same genre or story
11:26:25 <bay|Ota|Sentai> for older titles, and maybe do a special collection of things like that
11:26:33 <bay|Ota|Sentai> we are looking at stuff like that bu nothing i can talk about


11:29:21 <bay|Ota|Sentai> Q: Top sellers?
11:29:32 <bay|Ota|Sentai> A: High school fo the dead, angel beats, and demon king are the top 3
11:29:46 <bay|Ota|Sentai> well, i have to look and see if you get all the incarnations of clannad, that's going to be near the top


11:37:12 <bay|Ota|Sentai> Q( how dvd sales cover costs)
11:37:15 <bay|Ota|Sentai> A: DVD is still king
11:37:21 <bay|Ota|Sentai> it's still where you make most of your money
11:37:37 <bay|Ota|Sentai> streaming is growing, but streaming and digital have not reached the point where they can support the costs of the title
11:37:40 <bay|Ota|Sentai> bd is still growing
11:37:42 <bay|Ota|Sentai> DVD still outsells i9t
11:37:52 <bay|Ota|Sentai> for a while, hsotd bd was outselling dvd
11:38:05 <bay|Ota|Sentai> what i suspect was all the hardcore collectors watned the bd and pre-orders and the rest get the dvd
11:38:11 <bay|Ota|Sentai> that was the first time i ever seen a bd beat DVD
11:38:18 <bay|Ota|Sentai> but DVD is still king