Nigorimasen! Blog

Yesterday, ANN posted a two-page interview with John Ledford in which topics spanning the revival of their manga department, licensing, and the anime market in general. One thing I took note of when reading it was Ledford’s reference to A, B, and C ranked titles. First, he used the term referring to buying habits:

If there are 20 titles or a hundred, you’re only going to have 10 percent or 15 percent be considered marketable. A lot of stuff might be very oriented to the Japanese domestic market; other things might simply be just B or C grade titles in today’s market. They may have sold 5 years ago, but thanks to the download business, most people buy their A titles and they download their Bs and Cs. There is no market for B and C titles anymore.

A question later, he used it in discussing retail shelf space:

Five years ago, three years ago you could buy anything and almost anything would sell, not everything but almost. Now you have to be a sniper. You have to snipe the good titles, that’s all that will sell. Everything else, the stores don’t want it, the fans will download it.
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There’s simply not enough shelf space and the product doesn’t turn fast enough. So I think that’s what you’re going to see. A much lower quantity of titles but you’ll see a better quality. Perhaps some silly company will put some Bs or Cs out there, but that’ll come back to them.

So, don’t be surprised if certain anime with little or no profit potential in America stays unlicensed for many years even though you REALLY want it to appear on Region 1 DVD.

When I win the lottery, I’ll put some of the money toward starting my own anime licensing business and form the “silly company” that Ledford referred to that produces B or C titles. Hopefully, the quality will be better than what Illumitoon first put out and maybe it’ll start out subbed-only with lower MSRPs to get people to buy the titles with less buzz. Oh well, it’s just a idea at the moment - I don’t even know what I’d call this fake business!

Most of the Bandai Entertainment panel was spent showing trailers about its existing titles including Eureka Seven, Zegapain, FLAG, and My Otome. There was one announcement that revealed through a guessing game, though. The crucial hint was that CLAMP was involved in it. The first two guesses - xxxHolic and Code Geass - fell short but the third - CLAMP Detectives - was a winner. They had previously released it on VHS and are now going to re-release it on DVD. Here is a review of the first subbed video on ANN.

And hey, Spiritsnare, you know that poster you got at the Bandai booth this afternoon when you bought the Haruhi limited edition box. Well, I got the same poster for answering the last trivia question during the Bandai Entertainment panel. Not to brag, just flaunting my luck I suppose. Thanks for your help on the panel, by the way!

After looking around the swap meet and buying some cheap 5-year-old Japanese Newtype magazines, I went to the Shira Oka: Second Chances panel. The panelists from Okashi Studios (the developers) were the main programmer, a marketing person, an intern, and the lead artist. The main philosophy I got from the panelists about how they are going about their project is that they wanted to create a game that had more gameplay than visual novels and had more character depth. It was a pretty fun panel overall and I found out about how the game basically works and some background on its development.

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I am currently typing this from an “Internet Cafe” within the convention center but earlier tonight I tried out the TV internet system within the Marriott room I’m crashing at. It had a weird interface because there was a keyboard but no mouse but besides that I worked okay given the slow loading times and the lack of an address bar.

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Marvel at my bad drawing skills.

Okay, I’m nervous about going to Fanime this weekend and probably will be until Sunday since this is my first big convention. I’m leaving later this afternoon and may or may not get there in time to pick up my registration tonight. After the jump, I detail most of what I plan to see and do within the Convention Center over the next few days.

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According to a post made yesterday on TorrentFreak, anime fans who use BitTorrent sport the highest share [seed/leech] ratio (2.5) over other more popular categories like TV shows (1.87) and applications (1.53). However, anime only made up 5.4% of traffic whereas “TV shows” was the most popular category at just under half the total traffic, 49.68%. Also, something interesting to note is that only 10% of torrents offered are TV related; anime torrents make up 4.3% of all listings.

The stats given in the post were based on a sample of over 400,000 .torrent files from public BT sites. Supposedly these numbers will be reported monthly so it’ll be interesting to see how they change in the future. Personally, I’ve started to use IRC more than BitTorrent to get my fansubs especially if the series is more than a couple years old and there are only a couple seeders.

If you have been unable to access many aspects of this blog for the past couple days, that problem was fixed this afternoon when I upgraded the blog’s software to Wordpress 2.2. (It was previously on version 2.1). I made a post last night (please go back and read it!) and then realized I couldn’t access my own stats page or users online page so I decided to upgrade and although that happened to solve the problem, I doubt that was the actual issue.

Next, a little bit of personal news: I hurt my left elbow while biking to campus today and my left arm is now in a sling and my wrist in a brace with what the doctor at the student health center called a “radial head fracture”. I will attempt to continue making posts over the next couple weeks but it will take longer than usual as I will be typing (read: pecking at keys) using only my right hand. Perhaps I should try some voice recognition software…or just scan in handwritten stuff… Anyway, I hope that recovery will be quick so I can get back to my normal way of life.

Finally, I’ve come to the conclusion that I likely will not be able to finish the manga reading project that I set upon a couple months ago but I’ll try to read as many volumes as I can and write mini-reviews for whatever I end up completing.

Over the next couple weeks, I am set to receive the first DVD volumes of Tsubasa Chronicle and Haruhi. One reason I preordered their initial releases was because I enjoyed both series when I watched them on fansubs and, to cite the “moral anime fan” line, I wanted to support the artists and studios involved. Another more curious reason was to hear for myself how the characters are voiced in English. Unfortunately, I almost always seem to worry that they won’t sound “right” - not in terms of faithfulness to the sounds of the original seiyuu, but rather if the new voices work with each other and appropriately and accurately convey the characters’ feelings.
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ADV made it known during their panel at Anime Central and through a press release on Friday that they have licensed four GONZO titles: Red Garden, Welcome to the NHK!, Pumpkin Scissors, and Magikano. Most of those sound like they would be good fits with ADV’s marketing but I am a little concerned about NHK, probably because I’ve watched the most of that one out of the bunch.

Here’s the release breakdown from the press release:

• Red Garden: 24 episodes over 6 discs
  Volume 1 due 9/18/2007
• Welcome to the NHK!: 24 episodes over 6 discs
  Volume 1 due 10/2/2007
• Pumpkin Scissors: 24 episodes over 6 discs
  Volume 1 due out 10/23/2007
• Magikano: 13 episodes over 3 discs
  Volume 1 due out 12/4/2007

Okay, I know I haven’t made a post in a couple weeks but I am not dead. I was just busy with school and distracted by many things like a trial subscription to Blockbuster Online. Also I didn’t have much inspiration to write about anything in particular. Hopefully there will be a flurry of manga postings over the next week as I try to get as close to finishing the Buncha Manga project as I can before next Saturday.

For those of you who care, my panel at Fanime will be Saturday at 1pm in Panels room #1 (aka the Santa Clara room) at the Hilton Hotel. Some of the other panels I am interested in checking out are Blogs and Anime Popularity (the other blogging one with Lolikit), Mad About MADs, and of course the industry panels. Apparently, there will be a maid cafe as well so I’ll try to stop by and take pictures.

Also, something from the May 11th edition of the Anime Corner Store newsletter caught my eye:

- TOUKA GETTAN ANIME AIRING EPISODES IN REVERSE ORDER -
The creators of the Touka Gettan supernatural anime series have acknowledged on their blog that the twenty-six episodes have been airing in deliberate reverse order from the chronological story. The first episode (which aired on April 2) told the ending of the story arc, and each successive episode has been going backward in time to tell how the ending came about.

I haven’t seen Touka Gettan yet so can anyone confirm that that the ordering is like that and if it works as a narrative device?