Questioned By Fandom For The Week Of February 14th, 2015

It’s part of it. If people want the home video release quicker, they’re going to have to pay for it. If you want it at what’s considered a reasonable market price (US), then you have to wait a year.

I’m glad they’re providing some sort of release for titles that Crunchyroll has home video rights to that might otherwise be in limbo for an age. Granted, if they were elsewhere, they might have a better chance at a dub or a blu-ray release. So there’s there.

I’m definitely glad that we have Discotek though in their “archaeologist” form and I don’t think we’re going to lose that as there’s a treasure trove of shows out there for them to mine. My preference is for them to go after various license rescues nobody else seems to get and previously unlicensed shows. But some of these newer shows are going to really pay the bills, so it’s win/win.

Not ironic at all. It’s just the nature of the beast.

The 90’s had CPM as one of the big companies with ADV Films growing right alongside it. AnimEigo was plugging away, you had a slew of other little companies like USRenditions, Viz Media dabbled, Software Sculptors, the hentai places and so forth. And Pioneer got rolling along the way as did Bandai. FUNimation was “late” to the game because they were mastering a single property that everyone else would kill to get.

Things shifted in the 2000’s and of course we had the shakedown in the latter part of the decade with consolidation – that was needed – combined with other changes.

I’ve worked in a few different industries and I’ve followed a lot of others through various hobbies. Fortunes rise and fall with far too much ease. Which is why I just try to enjoy the here and now.

This is another huge year for movies that have me excited. Star Wars realistically tops that list, because that’s my generation defining film.

I’m looking forward to Avengers, but it feels so serious that I’m hedging on it a bit. I’m actually looking forward to Ant-Man a lot just to see how it turns out after all the brouhaha over Edgar Wright’s leaving and so forth. I’m really keen on it overall because it’s like Guardians of the Galaxy, a departure in type of hero even while playing to the Marvel formula.

Jurassic World will be fun, but the first movie was my favorite and it’s gone downhill fast since. But I’ll hold out hope with the Pratt-man.

Other films I’m looking forward to include Age of Adeline, hugely excited for Mad Max: Fury Road, Minions, Terminator: Genisys, Trainwreck, M:I 5, Crimson Peak and a whole lot more. There’s a lot of smaller films that don’t make the list because I generally don’t think of them too much until they hit. Since I can see one movie every 24hrs for $30 a month, I try to get to the movies as often as I can.

I’m not a huge dub fan, they’re not my primary listen, but there are some that I do like. I had fun with Outlaw Star and obviously Cowboy Bebop tops the list from back then. But I also have an affection for the Nazca anime dub.

I don’t know what his plans are, but I hope he does. He’s done some great dubs and I continue to find his work on Godannar to be my favorite of them all. He did a lot of great work over the years and it’s definitely the industry and fans loss that he’s not more actively involved in directing or other visible areas.

While I like pieces of the original Ninja Scroll film, I’m largely not a fan of it. It was just never my “thing” when you get down to it. I can definitely appreciate the technical quality of it, especially for the time, but the film as a whole is very underwhelming for me. It’s like the first Ghost in the Shell film; I get why people are all over it, but that’s not what I’m into.

Screenshots are useful, but not the final result. The folks that do it right obviously do them uncompressed. But you can pull screenshots from some of the best shows and produce awful results. It’s like when you pull a still out of Beyonce from the Super Bowl previously. At the time of the performance and through it, you’d be hard pressed to get that image in your mind.

But pause at the right time? Everything can look like crap.

There are always issues that come with licensing works in terms of quality of masters and so forth, but you’re dealing with work going through human hands and different visual interpretations. JP releases are not flawless either, but they’re generally viewed as better for good reason. They’re also pricing you at an average of $35 an episode for new shows. And they’re dealing with two episodes per disc, where they generally hit the max bitrate and keep it there for the whole thing.

Well, we’ve got it to some degree with what MB VoiceWorks is doing. And we’ve had a few things recorded in the last couple of years for continuity’s sake. But with a lack of an actual distributor in the city, they’re generally not going to be a first choice location, especially as most companies work locally or in-house.

If you mean Lunar Legend Tsukihime from the TYPE-MOON material, there is, though apparently a lot of fans disavow it. I saw it when Geneon released it years ago, but it didn’t leave much of an impact.

Yeah, it’s one that I enjoy from the past since they played it well. Part of it is nostalgia as it was an early exposure for me as well, but it was well cast and they fit the tone just right.

The only way I feel retirement is if I’m on my deathbed. My significant other tells me that if I retired, I’d just be doing the same thing that I do now.

I really don’t think they will. The show had a lot of hopes of being the next One Piece from the production side in Japan, but it was underwhelming there and it didn’t translate to much here either. I’m surprised they got as far as they did with it.

That said, I do hope that they can finish it out in subtitled-only DVD, but that’s my pipe dream at the moment. It’s likely not economically feasible. I’m not a huge fan of the show, but I enjoyed its creativity, which harkened back to 80’s kind of anime where it just wanted to have fun and do its own thing, logic be damned. It worked its own internal logic.

Sadly, no. And I wish I had. His work is basically what got me into all of this stuff. I may have discovered it another way somehow over the years, probably through some manga, but it was Robotech that got me to discover anime as I saw the Macross movie at a SF convention in the 80’s and got my first taste of subtitled material, which made me want more.

But I have a real love for Robotech and what it is, and quite a few other Streamline Pictures projects that I’ve owned over the years. I’d always just want to say a very sincere thank you to the man for what he opened me up to.

Freaking frigid. We’re getting another foot of snow this weekend – on top of the record breaking 6 feet we had in the past two weeks. February is going to be our snowiest on record. Plus, it’s 1 degree out with a wind chill of -21. Suffice to say, I’m shivering. And spending way too much of my time dealing with snow removal.

The easy answer is that it was a low seller back in the day and there are higher priorities to rescue from the Bandai Entertainment pile ‘o licenses first.

It’s a title that had mixed results, but it also came during the glut of releases era and was done in singles to start. I personally liked the title overall while I watched it during its… seven volume release I think it was, but I think it might do a bit better as a full season set.

It’s a title that should find its way back into the home video market. Bandai Visual has at least kept it up on Hulu.

http://www.hulu.com/wolfs-rain

I can’t see them doing this in general. It’s just not their style. I’d love to see them do it with some of their titles, but with the large slate they work with, it just feels like it would slow down their workflow.

I do hope that they manage to grow and alter their workflow as time goes on though because there’s so much they could do. With the CR shows, I’d love to see them go all out on Arpeggio of Blue Steel.

Guess it’s not a good time to admit I liked Diabolik Lovers?

There’s a lot of factors that go into the decision and it’s the kind of thing that will almost never make sense unless you’re actually involved in it. With its shorter running time and connection to the games, it probably had a lower threshold to hit. And remember, DVD/BD sales in Japan are not the end all of determinations as merchandising can be a bigger impact there.

I’d love to see more NouCome too. That show was hilariously fun, though I’m not sure if more would feel overplayed. I haven’t seen the other two shows yet to comment.

This was a big point of contention between fans years ago. Fans who wanted the original experience wanted to have the credits unaltered – especially as some companies didn’t handle credit presentation right (scrolling end credits, I’m pointing my finger directly at you). Some of those would just look awful.

A lot of fans wanted translated credit sequences because, well, you wanted to know who was involved with what you were watching.

There’s also the tension that comes up in how with some productions, the English language talent (voice acting or production itself) would get a higher billing than the original creators.

Every aspect has its own merits.

But the main reason it’s largely not done anymore? It’s cheaper not to do it and to just throw a translated credits scroll at the end of the release. Not mucking with the main video and all by altering it saves time and money. Which is even more important now as companies are working with twelve episode average seasonal set blocks.

I prefer them without English language credits. A lot of the Japanese opening/closing credits are designed really well and it’s difficult to mimic them, though some managed it really well over the years. As long as we get translated credits on the release, I’m good. But I prefer the original credits during playback.

I suspect it mostly came down to how the final licensing went down with FUNimation and its acquisition of the series itself. As a distributor, the more control you have over how a show is presented, the better off your plan usually goes. When you have other services bringing out a show, it can totally alter your plans, especially if it uses a different translation, etc.

I had totally forgotten about Daisuki intending to stream the series, to be honest. But it’s easy to forget about Daisuki in general.

Surveys are always interesting, but they’re rarely reliable in terms of what can actually be picked up.

The same with stuff streaming, like Aikatsu. If you like it, watch it, because it could disappear at any time.

When the NY dubbing scene lost some of its players, with Central Park Media going out and Media Blasters dialing back for several years, there was basically no business to be had. The companies there do more than just anime of course, and there’s a healthy Pokemon dubbing industry there, so it’s not all bad in a way. But with the way your other companies did things in house, there was little need to deal with a studio halfway across the country unless they wanted some continuity for a particular acquisition.

It’s unfortunate, of course, because we lose variety and talent that way within the industry. The same with the few dubs we get out of Vancouver and the reduced LA presence overall compared to the boom of ten years ago.

That’s the nature of a hobby. You’ll find things that you truly love and you’ll suffer through the price structure for it sometimes. I’ve done that over the years with many things, especially where some special limited edition gets made.

Way, way back in the 90’s, AnimEigo put out a ten disc laserdisc set for Urusei Yatsura. The thing is a pig in terms of size and weight. But it was the only way we’d get any of the show on laserdisc, which I really, really wanted. It was like $400.

And in mid 1990’s money, for a kid just out of high school, that was a huge amount of cash. So we all have our things. If Pony Canyon had a show I wanted more than anything else, I’d be all in.

For class president? I’d change schools.

Tremendously. From a review perspective, it’s a mixed bag. On the plus side, I could do a couple of volumes a day and get a lot out there. You could also dig into the episodes a lot more than you can with seasonal review sets where you talk more about themes.

The art boxes are full of love. So many neat designs over the years, especially the creative stuff like the metal ones, the wood boxes and so forth.

I miss all of it.

It’s a noble attempt that’s hamstrung by logistics and the fact that it has to use their own crowdfunding service. That alone keeps it from being well promoted across the spectrum and that added sense of ease and understanding for many that are very familiar with Kickstarter, for example.

The company also has to basically rely on limited social media interactions in order to get the word out on what’s going on, which is like shooting arrows in the dark when you’re that small.

I want them to do well and to bring more shows out that never got a release. But I also admit that I got burned recently on a pledge which made me scale back my interest.

There’s a couple of variables with it. First, sometimes they’re now licensable as the Japanese content holder wants them to be an exclusive for their home release, providing added value for that market.

Shock! And horror! A dub?!

Pony Canyon is the rights holder for the series in Japan and they’re listing it as one of the series they’re part of the production committee for. So it’s a show they own and FUNimation has licensed the streaming rights for it, and will likely nab further rights as well.

Pretty much. We really don’t see it all that much anymore outside of a couple of legacy series that are just trying to keep a bit of continuity with what came before. The fears of many series being treated this way has largely disappeared as time has gone on.

Zelda’s the one in green, right?

I wish I knew.

From their point of view, it’s a bargain. They were charging 6,500 yen for a six volume release. So, basically $65 for two episodes per disc. For the American side, they’re doing a three volume release with four episodes for $72.