Viz VP Gonzalo Ferreyra Interviewed

By: Chris Beveridge
Date: Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Source: ICv2

ICv2 has a new interview up with Gonzalo Ferreyra, Viz Media Vice President of Sales and Product Marketing. The interview covers mostly manga but one of the four sections deals with anime in light terms and how the company sees its plans and operations being largely immune from current market forces due to their small selection of strong titles. As is usual, there is nothing said about the various canceled titles and what's going on with them. The manga portion of the interview is stronger as it covers the possible problems with Borders, the strength of their catalog in general as well as touching on the issue of scanlations in a way that's almost amusing. By and large, the interview feels like it could have been done in 2007 while talking about 2008 instead of looking at the market today and going forward. One telling comment in the anime section is that they're looking at the trends and are intent to analyze it over the next few years to see where things will land. On the positive side of that however, Viz Media has been on the forefront of the release model by offering download to own options, working with companies like Joost and Hulu as well as being strongly interested in box sets for quite some time now outside of a series like Death Note which is ideal for singles.