Shameful Otaku Secret!

OGT and the final word

Are you sick of this yet? I know I am, and it was my idea. But I sent out a lot of requests, and was pleasantly surprised to find most of them got responses.

OGT runs Anime Wa Bakahatsu Da!, and contrary to its explosive-sounding name, it’s a place where I go for rational discussion and well-thought-out blog posts, not to mention the only place I know of where someone is as much of a fan of Real Drive and Itazura Na Kiss as I am right now. I love the site, and I know OGT is a big anime DVD buyer, so I was expecting to love this response:

The problem with the anime industry these days isn’t wholly dependent on the fact that people aren’t buying DVDs (I’m, frankly, surprised that you can still buy a “limited-edition” Haruhi DVD 1 + boxset when I was pretty sure that they wouldn’t be available after a month of sales. Unless the “limited edition” was a sales gimmick, but that’s kind of hard to believe), but a complex problem involving the economy in general, the companies’ own questionable spending ethics (over-saturating the market), and a few other Mysterious Economic Problems are partially to blame as well. I don’t think totally eliminating fansubs and forcing everyone to buy DVDs sight-unseen is the solution, and I still maintain that it’s 100% A-OK to watch fansubs, as long as you buy the series you enjoyed. Define “enjoy” however you feel like it, make decisions based on price point vs. how much you enjoyed it, make sure you have food to eat and a roof over your head, etc.–I own a ridiculous amount of anime DVDs, and question only a fraction of their purchases, but I’d never expect someone to buy more than a quarter of what I have over the years. The best thing R1 and Japan can do–and they’re testing the waters already, in a haphazard way–is to simply beat fansubbers at their own game, and give the audience legal, official digital subs with little or no turnaround and at a small price point. But that’s not going to work unless people actually buy things, digital, physical, or otherwise. Information is free, but to keep it that way, sometimes a system needs to be fed with specie.

I sometimes wonder if sales of anime DVDs are relatively well distributed or if about 5 people buy most of them. I own less than a hundred DVDs of any kind, anime or otherwise, and I generally only buy anything if it’s best-of-breed or I just feel like rewatching. Netflix, or in the past, a conveniently located video rental, is perfectly acceptable from me. But there are people like OGT (and some others I know that I can immediately think of) who buy DVDs like they’re going out of style.

That brings us back to that numbingly-repeatable question: has the current age of internet-distributed fansubs altered that pattern any? Well I, for one, am buying more anime DVDs because anime is in my face a little more, but I could also attribute that to my blogging, since that has definitely sped up my purchasing as well.

As mentioned in some of the earlier comments, we DVD-buying fans are probably not going anywhere anytime soon, and if anyone is attached to the sight of a brightly-colored shelf of DVDs, it’s otaku. But just like the changing music market of the past few years, a host of issues — whether practical, technological, or economic, may make those shelves expand a little slower than they used to.

CCY weighs in

Yes indeed, we’re up to part 5, and almost done. We’re starting to see some repeating themes in these answers and the comments, so I’m going to wrap everything up with what we’ve learned at the end. And then the whole world will be solid, right? Yeah, essentially what I’ve done is create that bunch of old men sitting around the garage in lawn chairs fixing the world’s problems while drinking Keystone out of a can. My latest virtual old fart, CCY, writes the site Mega Megane Moe (which is a surprisingly descriptive name) and was an early supporter of my corner of the internet.

In typical fashion, CCY’s response consists of a dam-break of ideas:

What I’ve seen so far from the responses is pretty much spot on one of my thoughts: the “FANSUBS BAD” attitude that the industry for the most part holds needs to change. True, there are some unscrupulous people out there, and illegal subs / torrents do damage sales, but limiting the amount of ways to get anime out there (or attempting to) by trying to be the sole provider won’t fix the problem.

I liken it to Whack-A-Mole. You slam the hammer down on one fansub group and two more pop up in different places. Perhaps it’s a bit mean of me to say this, but you’re not going to stop pirates, at least not without going Odex and alienating the entire fanbase. Just look at video games, movies, other TV shows; stopping a force like BitTorrent is something beyond the scope of any company today.

Rather, I think a focus on more positive solutions would work better than trying to crack down on the negatives, at least for the time being. People like fansubs because they’re fast and free, and dislike official releases because often they are neither.

Idealistically what I would love to see in effect, is some sort of ad-supported (but otherwise free) streaming or download mechanism, similar to the Anime Network online streaming from a few months ago. Bookend the videos with ads, place banners above or below the anime, whatever, as long as it’s not too intrusive. It seems to be a win-win situation, as long as it can generate enough revenue or even just any profit at all.

What some companies like Gonzo are doing right now with same-day paid downloads is a good stop-gap, but a majority of anime viewers can’t take advantage of this, if you consider that many are teenagers with little to no ability to pay for things online. Taking advantage of this massive audience will be the big challenge for the industry.

I love the idea of ad-supported content. As someone who works on the internet, I’m familiar with that (ad-supported content puts food in my mouth), and most of us are probably also familiar with the success of Hulu. But there are a couple things that are potentially problematic with that. The big one being, if there really are such a significant number of penniless teenagers watching, the CPM on those ads would be ridiculously small and advertisement could never compensate in the way Hulu’s network-backed system does.

Thing is, I’m not certain that’s true. Buyers of anime have been younger folks, the kind with no rent to pay, textbooks to buy, kids to feed, etc. who don’t have to budget 50 bucks for a DVD series out of all those other more “important” costs.

One problem here is that we’ve made a lot of assumptions in every installment without really having access to the kind of hard data that could drive real decisions. But I’m not sure if that data exists — there are no metrics on bittorrents, although someone like Crunchyroll may have some age metrics.

But CCY’s overarching point is the same as Kabitzin’s: finger-pointing isn’t constructive. Instead of trying to resist a changing market, roll with it and capitalize on it.

TheBigN’s big idea

TheBigN is another American blogger whose work I love to read, although he updates somewhat infrequently. He’s one of the writers at the awesomely-named Drastic My Anime Blog (a great reference though I’m not a big Scryed fan), and though he seems to like Strike Witches, I value his opinion. TheBigN is in med school, so I assume he’s pretty smart, and I’ll choose my words carefully because he may be cupping my balls someday while I turn my head and cough.

What could I as a consumer actually do to fix it? I don’t think buying anime DVDs and merchandise by myself fixes the problems that the industry, no matter which one you’re talking about. It definitely wouldn’t hurt to do so (in fact, I regularly by DVDs, CDs and manga during the year. Enough that I’d probably cringe if I paid attention to what was coming out of my pocket), but at the same time, it wouldn’t necessarily help the situation at hand. And though you could say that’s better than downloading fansubs and that’s that (which I feel also help a little and hurt a little). One thing I can do as a consumer is complain that we’re not getting the best deal out of things, based on what you’ve already said about getting “good” stuff out of here (good in the eye of the beholder of course) as quickly as possible and with the best cost-benefit ratio possible. And trying to let the companies know that things could be better might help, but then I don’t necessarily know how.

I do think there needs to be a good, solid dialogue between the industry and the fans about the problems on both sides of the issue, and some consensus might be made. How to go about that though is another question though. Surveys? Panels? Calls to action? Either way, there needs to be a way for both sides to be able to communicate in order to learn things. Like how/why the industry is exactly in trouble. We see evidence like companies restructuring, and folding in the like, but coupling that with falling DVD sales, fansubs and torrents, etc. how does this mean that the industry is in trouble, for example? Are companies able to do things free samples and get feedback on whether or not these shows are what people would want to buy? How would fans be compelled to buy things instead of grabbing them for free if they present themselves well, like what GONZO’s trying to do? What are the incentives for both sides here, and can they coexist, or even better, work together?

It would be good to try and ask and answer questions like that from both sides, if just to get some bearings on this complex issue that’s not going to get simpler anytime soon. What we can’t do is lob bombs at each other, since that just ends up alienating both sides from each other and making the situation a lose-lose for all involved.

There may already be answers to some of these example questions, but in essence this is a great idea we can all get behind. Let’s open a dialog. Let’s get people on both sides of the equation — consumers and providers — talking.

How does that happen? I don’t know exactly, either; companies in various industries have made giant leaps by becoming more transparent thanks to the power of the Internet. Corporate blogs and the cluetrain style of marketing have made consumers feel like they’re being listened to. I think anime buyers, like any other consumer, would feel much better about supporting companies that they feel aren’t just faceless corporations, but groups made of people who actually want to provide them a good product.

I suppose as consumers we have our own responsibility if there is to be a conversation. Our desires are important, but let’s face it — getting everything for free is probably not a reasonable desire (although the Internet and its largely ad-supported content do make it theoretically possible). Perhaps omo’s insistence that we vote with our wallets is the first step in saying what we need to say.

Any thoughts on how to get the conversation flowing?