Questioned By Fandom For The Week Of May 9th, 2015

No, I didn’t get the exclusives for that. I did for the Space Dandy releases, but those were fairly solid pieces overall with the big boxes.

Warner’s potentially got a very full plate, so I’m not sure they really want to dig into another franchise like that. They’ve got the 3 or so new Harry Potter universe films in development and then ten or so possible DC Entertainment films.

As well as the Tolkein material did, I’m not sure anything else has the same kind of name recognition. Even if they did a side story or arc from the Game of Thrones world that isn’t showing up in the TV series, it wouldn’t reach even half of what the Lord of the Rings stuff did I think.

I love fantasy and there’s a lot of good material out there. But Tolkein is that once in a century kind of fantasy project that got brought to reality. I’m curious to see how Shannara does on MTV though when that hits. With Elfquest, I could never get into it myself when it first came out, and I tried a few times over the years but it never clicked.

Since I essentially watch just about all anime that’s put in front of me, this doesn’t really apply to me. I also don’t read any reviews of series until after I’ve seen it myself. I do naturally read/write about a lot of shows beforehand, but there’s always the difference in staffing/premise and reality that I like to give everything a fair shake. There are a ton of shows that I love that I would have missed out on if I had gone just by what the research side of it had said as opposed to my own viewing and interpretation.

I was hopeful with Locke & Key before, though I haven’t read it myself, simply because it seemed fun. I read a bit of Y the Last Man though and that’s like ideal TV series stuff. Really wish that got off the ground. I couldn’t make it through the first issue of Rat Queens unfortunately. 🙁

I’d absolutely love to see something like East and West brought into live action form. And I’d kill to get a kind of scenery chewing Showtime series for The Manhattan Projects. Over the top and deliciously comical.

It’s…. possible. Aniplex USA is doing their near simul-dub thing with Durarara X2, but I think that was partially because it’s a known quantity with its popularity and sales and that it was a given that the home video release would get one. I think Aniplex USA will be more restrained in what they do this kind of simuldub thing with. They’re very, very cautious with dubs in general – and home video formats – that I think the decision to dub is one aspect they put off until they have as much data as possible to determine the return on investment. And that kind of approach really doesn’t work with doing simuldubs.

I’ve gotten all three over the last few years for different reasons, but the PS4 is the one I mostly play. I got the Wii U when it came out and it was a family thing for awhile, but the kids are the ones that play it.

I was a huge PS3 advocate and the PS4 was the sweet spot for me. But I’m hugely frustrated by the lack of no real entertainment remote like the PS3 had. That’s made it just a gaming console as opposed to my all in one console like the PS3 was/is. I hate using the game controllers for movies and the others in the household (including my mother) just can’t use them that way.

We do have an Xbox One, which was gotten for my significant other’s son for Christmas last year. I haven’t used it myself yet.

I just wish I had time for gaming. I get to play so little. And I’m only playing LEGO games these days when I do since they’re just fun.

I miss them, but I’m not sure how they’d figure into today’s market in some ways. When they were rolling right along, they picked up a lot of oddball shows and OVAs from the 80’s and 90’s, which has its appeal. But so little of that kind of material that they were regularly associated with (action/violence oriented in some ways) is made now that they’d have a different look and it would be a different CPM.

I knew a lot of the folks there and liked them a lot. And I just hate seeing a company fold up shop that was releasing fun stuff that nobody else was. And most of their library has essentially been lost as outside of the hentai material, hardly anything has gotten rescued. It’s a bit of anime history that has disappeared.

The 1979 Italian science fiction film? Wondrous!

The anime OVA from the 80’s? I saw it ages ago, I think I own the VHS for it, or did at one point. but it didn’t leave any sort of lasting impression.

If the fans are watching, and paying for access, and they’re going to be dubbed anyway, why should they? If it’s a case of “too much out there”, well, we’ve had that problem for a few years with simulcasts in general. There’s what, 40+ simulcasts this season?

I’ve got a limited involvement with the season for what I’m watching, but as much as I was willing to give Triage X a lot of chances to just make me enjoy it from a fanservice point of view, that series has cratered. And cratered hard. Which is unfortunate because it could have been stupidly fun. But now it looks like another 10 episode Kadokawa series that’s just a quick grab. Only the Prisma Illya 10 ep series have been good I think.

Not really. It’s probably the smart move overall, though impossible to say without seeing numbers, increased membership data and so forth. It’s a natural evolution that was coming and it’s mostly win/win for fans. Over time it’ll be even smoother as they have less to do when the home video side comes around other than some cleanup and possibly additional recording for animation changes, and the focus will be more on the broadcast dub side with the occasional older series getting licensed and needing a dub.

There’s always the potential for it, but I was getting questions so irregularly that it ended up just falling away. I do like doing more singular question based pieces, but finding a good set of questions to work with isn’t as easy as it sounds. And partially it’s a time issue as well. We’ve gone from an average of 12-15 articles a day when we started Fandom Post (coping with site issues that first year!) to doing 30-40 a day. Which is why I cut back on the simulcasts I review as I have little time.

I do enjoy the larger article format for it, though I find myself getting all soapbox-y on it and I try to tamp down on that. 😀

I’m not a fan of gore, which is why horror films since the early 2000’s have been off my radar as it’s more about that (or the torture horror stuff). as opposed to “horror” in the traditional sense.

Gore and violence certainly have their place and there are violent films and shows that I watch that I love. Not because of the gore and violence, but because of the story and how it’s presented as a whole.

Tolerance levels for violence are fairly high, but partially because I’ve been exposed to so much in media over the years.

Which means I must be a psychopath by now! Muahahaha!

They should get the best actors for the roles regardless of their location.

Oh definitely – and more so for your “casual” audience because they’re just watching to enjoy. Just because it has a deus ex machina element to it doesn’t mean it can’t be good and must be bad. Some are written craftier and smarter than others and even go unnoticed in some ways.

Disagree. What’s the correlation between the two? I’m taking out the AND side of it because that makes no sense to tie together.

It’s like there’s a hate-on about certain things each company does. It gets tiring after awhile to basically answer the same question in different ways that all come back to the same thing. Company X is doing something I don’t like, therefore I’ll find ways to make it seem even worse than it is.

My poor Diabolik Lovers. The punching bag of so many. And here I sit, patiently waiting for my new season to enjoy…

Anyway. While Jojo’s has a certain popularity online, I really get the feeling that what drives it isn’t owning the show but just the watching of it. With Viz Media being a master licensor, there’s two basic scenarios at play:

There’s no money to be made in going the distance with a home video release

or

Warner Japan is intent on keeping it as in-house as possible.

Now, the streaming numbers are available to licensors and Viz Media also has manga sales to go by and obviously merchandise potential. So they know what the potential is for it.

I personally have not seen any of the new series nor have I read the manga. I saw the two OVA series that were released back in the early 2000’s and that’s it. It didn’t work for me at the time and I haven’t revisited since. So I have no skin in the game. So it just leaves me to believe that the risk/reward on this has the parties involved going for the simple route of just getting it out, making a few bucks, and leaving it at that.

They’ve done the number crunching and don’t believe that it’s a worthwhile investment to dub it or go big on it.

And since one of Warner’s recent anime releases was the Supernatural series, which was bilingual and Blu-ray – and had the involvement of the actors from the live action series, we do know they’ll put in investment when they think there’s return.

I totally want Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure fans to get a great release with all the bells and whistles. But I’m in no way surprised.

I do subscribe to Netflix and at the time this was asked, I had just finished the final episode. I’m hoping to put a few thoughts down on it after I process the season as a whole. The short answer is that I thought it was amazing.

I’m very excited about the other shows coming up and very, very excited that Daredevil will be getting a second season. There’s a lot of good material to mine and Netflix with its lack of broadcast TV restrictions and scheduling makes it ideal toe expand on everything in a great way.

I just want a six episode Black Widow/Hulk romcom.

My Love Story!!, plain and simple. I haven’t seen a ton from this season (I’ll see them on DVD/BD down the line), but of the new shows I’m watching, this one just delights me. And it’s the only one I’m watching for sheer pleasure and not reviewing.

It’s a two season show that while critically acclaimed, isn’t one that’s really a big seller. It does well in Japan, but shows like that don’t sell well here at all. Slice of life shows used to get a dub back in the day, but it’s the rare one that does now. With that many episodes to dub, it just has the odds stacked against it when factoring in all the costs.

I’d love to be pleasantly surprised by them producing one. But I’d guess that the number crunching won’t work out in its favor. There’ve been a number of talky/slice of life shows that really deserve a dub that don’t get one. This will be another.