Re: Anime industry appearing to capitulate...

On Fri, 21 Mar 2008 16:35:45 -0700 (PDT), starcade@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

On Mar 21, 1:50 pm, Martin D. Pay <mar...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

So you're willing to concede that the problems facing the
industry (and I don't deny there *are* problems) are not solely
caused by piracy but also by poor purchasing decisions?

No, because without the piracy, the companies would've had proper
information on which series to license and the like.

Your (IMHO incorrect) assumption here is that piracy prevents a proper
calculation of market size. This isn't the case.

It's entirely possible to account for piracy, and make a reasonable
judge as to the size of your PAYING market. Movie executives do it.
Music distributors do it. Book and periodical publishers do it. TV
Executives do it. There's no reason save for stubbornness that anime
companies can't employ the same formulas and methedologies.

There's an entire marketing industry that exists to do just this sort
of thing, and there's no excuse (No, not EVEN piracy) for NOT taking
the size of your market into account.

Again, they used
interest in the series to determine which series to license (and, in
some cases, which series to aid the Japanese in even completing --
some (FMP) have succeeded, while some (KS) flopped).

Since they claim massive losses to illegal piracy, what they are
eventually saying is that if you want a title that appears to be quite
desired, you pretty well have to buy a lot of stuff that you wouldn't
have normally been interested in, as a coercion to see titles you
would be interested in.

A great example of this is ADV.  Massive title catalog -- floundering
near death (as I said, I believe simply on life-support) for about two
years now.  They've announced two big titles that people might want --
so where are GL and Sgt. Frog??  Ain't going to see them, I fear,
unless you buy stuff you don't want to "support the industry" to the
point where it's worth the money they (and Sojitz!) have already put
into the projects.

I personally have no interest at all in GL or Sgt. Frog. Or the
endless permutations of Gundam, for that matter. I'm probably not
typical of most anime collectors, though, as I'm very selective
about what goes into my collection.

Not the point I'm trying to make, but I won't have an issue with what
you're saying here.

The point is that what might be happening here is that ADV is saying:
"You want your Sgt. Frog?? Buy everything in our current catalog not
named Kanon..."

ADV has made no such statement. If you have proof otherwise, please
cite, or quit making false attributions.

The point I've been trying to jam down your throats is that, if that
premise is wrong...  If there haven't been that degree of losses to
the pirates, then it's fraud to jam a bunch of "crap" titles and force
people to buy them to get the titles they really want.  It'd be the
same kind of fraud that the Japanese are putting on the American
companies to say:  "You want [great title]?  You need to do these six
crap titles too..."

That argument might work if it wasn't for the fact that the
industry has worked like that from Day One.

That it has done so does not change that fact it's fraud.

You're original argument doesn't hold water. The anime companies
don't FORCE anyone to buy anything. They don't cooerce anyone into
buying anything.

There is exactly one, and only one thing that they are obligated to
do, and that is, to deliver inside that little plastic box a disc that
has all of the features that they advertise on the outside of the box.

Advertise an english dubtrack on the case, but omit it on the disc?
THAT's fraud from a legal standpoint. Manipulate your 10K to bump up
your stock price? Oh yeah, securities fraud for sure.

But they can claim that they're going out of business till the cows
come home. They can threaten not to continue a release if we don't
buy the rest of the series. They can even decide not to release a
show if it's predecessor production doesn't sell well. But so long as
they don't TAKE YOUR MONEY then FAIL TO DELIVER THE PRODUCT THEY
PROMISED, there is no legal CONSUMER FRAUD involved.

Wanna call it despicable? Fine. Hostage tactics? Sure. Even
dishonest? Absolutely. But it's NOT LEGALLY FRAUD.

Oh, quite. I was under the impression that Mike was talking about
the US companies defrauding the consumer; I hadn't interpreted
his post as you've done. Your interpretation actually makes his
post make more sense...  ^_-

Yes, that's what I said.  They are defrauding the customer if they are
lying about the state of the industry, and deserve to be put out of
business if so doing.

One man's 'lying' is another man's 'putting the best face on'...

Doesn't matter. It's still "lying".

And people and companies spin these things all the time. This means
nothing if they don't violate the law. Period.

I don't know of any corporate body that would put out a press
release when times are hard that says 'we're in deep *** and
about to go broke if we can't fix it soon'. That would just be a
very short cut to commercial suicide.

Funny... That's a lot of the press releases and interviews I tend to
see from -- the anime industry!!!

I disliked it intensely, but then I basically don't care for
Clamp's material (the exception being Chobits).

"The Internet is really, really great...

For 'Che'???"

I can't parse that comment into anything that makes sense to me.
Suffice it to say that I liked the manga and bought the anime
because of that. (In fact I actually prefer the manga, the story
is more concise and better told, but that's not relevant here...)

No no no - the point I'm trying to make (from a "Whose Line is it
Anime?" skit I saw a couple years back) is, again, nubile female skin
seems to sell... Just the same as all this "Shuffle!" crap I'm seeing
with "Have you ever seen 48 panties in 60 seconds? Want to??" Talk
about a shortcut by a (obviously) crap anime...

Screw you and your tastes. :-)

Some of us liked Shuffle, and for reasons far beyond the panties. IMO
there's quite a lot more to the show than just the panties, and AFAIC,
it holds up quite well in comparison to its peers.

Because you may be confusing Bandai Visual with Bandai Entertainment.
Don't worry -- I have too.

I did, didn't I?  ^_^  The trouble is, I still tend to think that
Bandai is Bandai is Bandai...

As I said, don't worry...

Mike
--
Abraham Evangelista
.