What’s Kadokawa planning?
Forgive me for speculation based on mostly ignorance, I’ve been a bit out of touch lately. But it seems to me, while barely reading any blogs lately, that an interesting subject I don’t see many people talking about, probably thanks to the shadow of Kadokawa’s vicious real life trolling and fan provocation. That’s the fact that they’re streaming online. Surely in this, the Year of the Stream, it’s not going unnoticed?
What if, amidst all the baiting and switching, R1 is actually their potential target? Author seems to think the numbers tell a disheartening story for that theory, but that’s not really a surprise. The sales of the first Haruhi series over here were nothing like the fansub-watching internet fandom naively imagined they would be. That doesn’t mean we’re not a potential market, even if we’re more likely to buy something like Black Lagoon. Besides, Kadokawa have become in/famous for milking the golden goose, or something like that. And you would too if you were responsible for H2O.
Anyway, it makes me wonder if they’re planning to stream the next (fictional?) Haruhi series on the internet, with Haruhi-chan and Churuya-san as a litmus test. [Edit: I realize this scenario only works if a real S2 broadcasts, since streaming the rerun would get confuzzled with Bandai owning the R1 license to the first season] In a beautiful, lovely, perfect and probably completely fictional world, we’ll get the second series over here zero-day.
That is, if it exists.
[More edit: Author weighs in again, and while he stops short of calling it a no-brainer, he mentions that "Chairman Kadokawa has gone on record with his international inclinations." Interesting times ahead, no doubt. Great to see different types experimentation from different companies on both sides of the Pacific.]
