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Top Five Things Anime Companies Did Wrong in 2008

An Imploding Industry?
© AKIRA Committe

It’s certainly been a hard year all around for just about everyone and the anime companies are no exception. Things go wrong no matter how well you do things, but sometimes there are things that are within your control as well. With a problematic economy, plenty of uncertainty and people watching their pennies even more, they’re becoming more cautious about what they buy. And the things that the companies are doing are affecting those purchases. So, in no particular order, we have a look at the top five things anime companies have done wrong in 2008:

1) Communication – Or lack thereof really. Communication from companies has been of a mixed bag for years, but this year was decidedly worse because of various conditions. ADV Films led that off spectacularly with their silence on just about every topic this year. Some of it is certainly understandable as there’s only so much you can say when you’re going through issues with licensors and whatever it was that happened with Sojitz/ARM. Their lack of communication hit the retail side as well which left retailers unable to answer basic questions about products that they were listing based off of solicitations made by companies. ADV Films also had this made worse throughout the second half of the year as conflicting and incomplete statements made at conventions generated talk, and then couldn’t or wouldn’t be confirmed afterwards, which only led to more speculation.

ADV Films isn’t alone in this either. FUNimation’s acquisition of the Sojitz/ARM titles earned them quite a lot of chatter, but they also spent several months with absolutely nothing being said about what would happen with a lot of the titles. Some time is to be expected given the amount of titles involved, but with several of them close to completion at the time of the handover of titles and dubs up in the air for others, the silence didn’t help. With three series in particular, the fate of the final volumes were in doubt right up until the end even after some positive words on various forums. With many fans having bought the first five volumes of series, the idea of being told to buy a set of the second half to get the last four episodes didn’t sit well. And with nothing but silence for so long, that only rubbed salt in the wound.

Media Blasters has its own special communications issues as well. The company is know for making licensing news in odd places and seemingly at random, but that comes with some problems of its own. A number of shows were talked about where it was stated that they’d have dubs only to turn out that they didn’t when solicited. Other newly licensed shows were talked about with a general time frame, only to be seemingly forgotten thereafter. Ikki Tousen: Dragon Destiny in particular is a standout in this case where people are left wondering what the deal is.

2) Faulty Discs – While DVDs aren’t exactly the same as making a ham sandwich, they’re not exceedingly difficult either after ten years of putting them out. This year, it seems like a lot of companies simply forgot how to make good DVDs. A lot of this goes back to cutting corners where poor replicators are used and the inability to sample discs prior to shipment to retailers. Bandai Entertainment has burned several bridges with fans over this during 2008 with some big name titles at that. The number of problems that they’ve had with their August releases, particularly the big visibility release of Code Geass which was airing on Cartoon Network, has a lot of people avoiding their titles until they hit the street and others sample them or until the eventual collections come out. When people are afraid to buy your discs because the odds of them not working are greater than the odds of them working, that’s not a good sign.

Other companies have had their issues as well, but there’s a strange one brewing that’s mixed into the communication issue as well. People experiencing problems with some Geneon Entertainment releases are finding that they’re unable to get the problems resolved because there’s no real contact for Geneon at this point and FUNimation doesn’t seem to be answering the problems since they’re just the distributor and not the company authoring and replicating the discs. This puts a lot of their releases in the same category as Bandai where people back away until the dust settles.

3) Announcement Overkill – I have to admit, there was a certain fun years ago when you were sitting at a convention and the reps would suddenly rattle off a list of ten or more new licenses that they got, often mixed in with other titles that were already known. You’d get this bonanza of titles all of a sudden and most people would find something in that list to be excited over. The downside to this is that a lot of titles get lost in the shuffle that need more care and attention. This phenomenon has actually lessened in the last few years, but it’s still there. Media Blasters did a swath of titles back in 2007 and FUNimation has been doing it with their Kick-Off event and now doing their new Go-Go event at the end of 2008 with ten titles announced over ten days. This has the problem of building up expectations too high, causes lesser known titles to be dismissed easily by those that may actually enjoy them and….

It now also sets up the expectations even higher. FUNimation’s listing of this many titles at once, such as they did after their Kick-Off event, now has fans waiting to see how the company will queue up ten titles into the schedule. And similar to past events, those tiles may not have materials any time soon, could still be figuring out a release pattern (singles vs box sets, tentpoling, etc) and it creates the impression of an overly long wait for a title. Prime examples for this include Ouran Host Club and Darker Than Black. When Ouran Host Club is licensed in July of 2007 and released in October of 2008? Yes, it builds anticipation, but also frustration and disappointment.

4) Incomplete Releases – Some titles are incomplete for a number of factors. Only so many episodes available at the time (Saint Seiya), licensors unwilling to put out that part of a show (Sailor Moon Stars) or the dreaded “it was lost in a fire” statement. But there’s another kind of issue as well where a company ceases release of a series midstream, generally for underperformance. Often this can be found to be related to how the series was marketed and released, particularly in the last few years. And in most cases, fortunately or unfortunately, this seems to really be a Viz Media issue. The company has changed its release pattern in the last few years as seen with Naruto where it does the average of thirteen episode box sets. This lets them work through a long series easily and quickly, bringing bang for the buck for the fan and keeping them from having to deal with a far too long release schedule. Anyone who bellied up for either Ranma ½ or Inu-Yasha knows what that feels like.

Viz Media has always been quick on the cancel button with their shows as they won’t let the big sellers help to cover the smaller ones. Corrector Yui faced a quick and quiet death ages ago. In recent times however, Viz Media has unceremoniously simply stopped shows without a whisper of how they’re doing. Rather than try to raise awareness (beyond a mention at a panel at a convention by a rep who “doesn’t deal much with the anime, I’m a manga person), they simple nix it. Hikaru no Go has faded after being released one volume every three months. How could Full Moon sustain any kind of following with one volume every four months? And Mar actually had volumes solicited that were simply canceled after the sales results of the first two volumes. Even their box sets don’t seem to be immune as Prince of Tennis ended rather abruptly after a few sets, leaving fans hanging.

Viz Media even seems to be of the mind of canceling a show before release. Well, not really, but how else to explain the absence of several eagerly anticipated titles such as NANA TV, Honey and Clover and Monster with their announcements made so long ago? The company is one that simply seems unable to figure out how to market their shows unless they’re massive phenomenon’s on TV such as Bleach, Death Note or Naruto.

5) The Dying Dub – Back quite a few years ago, there were all sorts of numbers thrown out there about how a dub VHS tape would outsell a sub VHS tape by ten to one or five to one and that’s where the money was, even if the dubs cost a lot of money to produce. Of course, then companies started licensing shows for upwards of 75,000$ per episode before the 10,000$ average cost of a dub was factored into it. With fewer shows selling like they used to, dubs are becoming a bit of an endangered species with some companies. Media Blasters has long dallied with sub only shows, but now pretty much admit that only marquee titles will get it. (uh, Ah! My Buddha is marquee?) Bandai Entertainment is dabbling in it as well with a number of sub only releases out there. Nozomi Entertainment has been working the boutique market similar to AnimEigo in some ways, so it’s not a surprise to see them working it more since they’re going after super niche shows.

With how things are going, it’s becoming too expensive to produce a dub for a show that’s at best selling a few thousand copies. Yet the dub is one of those things that differentiated a release from what you’d be able to get free online through fansubs. For awhile, some strong followings were built with dubs, particular dub studios and directors, but a lot of that has dried up in the last two years. Nary a word is spoken these days about New Generation Pictures. The ADV Films in-house studio is obviously a pretty quiet place these days. Geneon Entertainment opted out of using American or Canadian talent and decided to farm out a number of its titles in the last two years to Singapore, a move which alienated a lot of people who wanted companies familiar with the US market involved and with a varied cast. The fewer dubs coming out these days is a natural product of the economy and the shrinking number of sales, but they also could be seen as only making it worse for those that steadfastly refuse to buy sub only releases. 

Bonus) Devaluing the Product - The one thing that bothers me the most, and has for far too many years now, is the way the companies continue to devalue their product. Anime has been expensive since its introduction when we had $39.98 VHS tapes with one or two episodes on them. DVD started to change things where the companies only needed to produce one release instead of two separate VHS releases. After a series was released, a company would put out a box set at varying discounts in comparison to the sum total of the singles. But then, in order to be competitive, some started to release the box sets at an even lower cost and much sooner than they would before. Instead of waiting a year, it’d come within months of the end of the last volume. Sometimes, Media Blasters would solicit for a collection of a series before the final volume of a series even hit and at a reduced price.

Central Park Media used to price down their releases fairly quickly when they were looking to bring in any amount of money. Before you know it, titles you were buying for $30 a few years before could retail for $10. Complete collections of series were going for less and less and every new price drop lowered the bar for what was acceptable. Fans wanted to see everything at the rock bottom price possible, and everything at the same price. The shift to full collections, or half season collections, is the next stage in this game as the prices are now essentially cutting out two volumes cost of each series and you get a lot at the same time in order to bring the season sets competitive with Hollywood. But this is chasing the wrong game because the companies have to cut costs to do this and alienate those that actively want a quality product.

Legitimate, legally bought releases from retailers in the US of Japanese animation is competing for price against free downloads – sometimes against downloads offered by the company itself! DVDs is a shrinking market, one that over the next few years will turn decidedly more into a collectors market than it has before. But will these collectors be driven away by poor quality releases at a bottom drawer price that have may or may not be dubbed, may have glitches (intentional ones or not) and feel even more bare bones than releases made ten years ago at the dawn of DVD? And how many of these collectors are already swearing off DVDS (and downloads) while waiting for high definition releases which will now be in competition with same-region Japanese Blu-ray releases?

Anime has a value, and each series has a different value. Anime companies know this and they need to get that out there to the fans who need to be more receptive to that. If you want it as cheap and free as some seem to, packaged media may not be for you.

2008 had its share of issues to be sure, some of which are emblematic of how the industry has always operated but is far more noticeable now. These issues likely aren’t going to change since they’re part and parcel of how most of the companies actually live and breath. At the same time, the industry continues to evolve and adapt to the changes that go on around it and because of it. All these issues provide is an opportunity for the companies to step up to the plate to try and fix the ones that they can, or for someone new to come onto the scene and hit it out of the park from the start.

What things did you think were the worst things that the anime companies did in 2008?