Each Friday, I scan the Hey, Answerman! column on ANN and find that either the questions aren’t as compelling as the ones AnimeNation’s Ask John regularly answers or that the responses to the question of the week aren’t either. However, the query that Zac has tasked his Answerfans with pondering in today’s edition is an interesting one: “How much do you personally believe a single episode of an anime series is worth, and why?”
It’s somewhat vague in its plainness but that means it will force respondents to interpret it in their own ways, which should yield a fruitful variety of results. I would expect many responses to be around the standard download-to-own price of $2 (I’d be in this camp), some fansub devoted “flakes” to say they are worthless, and still others to use some cockamamie method of determination. I’d like to see if anyone gives a split value model based on circumstances like timing and format as well as qualitative criteria about the episodes themselves.
Here’s a range from a physical media perspective based on recent DVD MSRPs:
(real prices may be lower, extras are ignored)
Black Lagoon #1 single reissue: $30 for 4 eps = $7.50 per episode
Ouran Host Club Part 1: $60 for 13 = $4.61
Marimite Season 1: $50 for 13 = $3.84
Lagann sub-only Part 2: $30 for 9 = $3.33
(Best Buy pricing at $20 yields $2.22 per ep)
Bleach Box Set 2: $70 for 21 = $3.33
(Amazon pricing at $40 yields $1.90 per ep)
Shana Box Set: $70 for 24 = $2.92
(AnimeNation/TRSI preorder at $52.49 yields $2.19 per ep)
Dragon Ball Z Season 6 Set: $50 for 29 = $1.72
Yu Yu Hakusho Season 1: $35 for 28 = $1.25
So what monetary value would you assign to an average, nondescript anime episode and what would your reasoning be?
I have previously mentioned my ambitions of creating anime music videos and as such, I have had many half-baked and a few full-baked ideas for projects but have barely acted on them due to software and time. (The former might change since Vegas 9 just came out and it’s relatively cheap for $55 online.) One anime and music combination that I had on my mind for a while - since May 2006, in fact - is BECK: Mongolian Chop Squad paired with Foreigner’s “Jukebox Hero”. It seems so obvious to anyone who has seen the series and it was inevitable that an editor would actually create such an AMV once the DVD’s had finished coming out stateside.
Meredith “Meri” Cantoni was that person and so far her video entitled “One Guitar” has won 2nd Place in the Dramatic/Serious category at Otakon ‘08 and won that same category plus Judges Best Overall at Anime Evolution last weekend. I think she did a great job in editing and while I had some of the same scenes in mind, her effort turned better than mine likely would have and I am thankful for that. This wishful project has been fulfilled but the next ones should be done by myself so I can feel more satisfied with my abilities and with using artists like Josh Rouse.
The CLANNAD port for the Xbox 360 comes out this Thursday (August 28th) in Japan and there was a trailer for it during Japan’s Inside Xbox segment for Saturday after a countdown of the top 10 Live games for August 4-10. I figured that some people might care about something like this so I captured the whole segment - skip to about 1:50 if you only want to see the trailer.
The bulletpoints for this version include a visual upgrade to 720p resolution, Dolby Digital 5.1 channel sound, and distribution of the drama CD audio from the spin-off short story Official Another Story Clannad: On the Hillside Path that Light Watches Over over Xbox Live. The game will also support custom soundtracks if you want to pipe in different music while playing the visual novel.
The process was kinda like this…not as smooth as planned….
What had been planned since the redesign has finally come to fruition: this blog’s migration to a domain that fits its name - nigorimasen.com for the Nigorimasen! Blog. I had trouble with the mySQL tables and redirecting links over the past few days until all of it finally worked a half hour ago and I’ve been updating links on other websites since.
Previous links to the old crumplednapkin domain should automatically redirect to this new one without a problem so you shouldn’t have to change your bookmarks and blogrolls immediately, although I would advise doing such activities sooner rather than later. There is a new header for now stitched from the BECK opening sequence and I removed a few pages from the top navigation bar as well as shifting the post tags to the bottom of each entry. Now that all the technical business is done, I can begin concentrating on writing content again.
Earlier this week, ANN reported that numerous Kodansha and Bbmf manga such as Hataraki Man and Keroro Gunsou have been or will be added to the Japanese iTunes App Store to be read on iTouchs and iPhones. The chapters are mostly priced at 115 yen (a few are free in the case of Keroro and many BBmf offerings) and are in both English and Japanese, which I guess is why these are apps for that functionality alone.
An slightly different offering under the “Books” category is a 3-volume, 53-page Yoshitoshi ABe doujinshi called Pochiyama at the Pharmacy for 600 yen, which I would like read except I don’t currently own an iPod touch - a condition I hope to rectify in the near future as there is a rumored price drop/update happening next month. It would be my first Apple hardware product ever even though I have previously used Macs in campus computer labs and played with an iPhone inside an AT&T store. All those free games… [Just after posting this, I found out ANN wrote a story about Pochiyama a hour before. Whatever.]
I guess I should also talk about DMP’s initiative to also provide digital manga to the masses. Their method involves renting a volume for 72 hours for $4 that can be upgraded to unlimited use by re-renting for a total of $8, but the starting 3-day limit shouldn’t be a detraction for many people. The current offerings are BL and how-to drawing books, neither of which particularly pique my interest - Gia had some recommendations of non-yaoi titles they could add such as Enchanter. The interface was not perfect for me because while Panel Focus zooms in on each panel so you can read the text, I read manga while surveying the whole page. Luckily, I was able to switch to actual size at medium scaling and just drag around to see the rest.
The chapter drop-down menu, keyboard shortcuts and bookmarking features are nice touches that compete with Tokyopop’s online “player”, which allows you to view opposite pages simultaneously with readable text but at a lower resolution that what DMP is offering. (How do you play manga, anyway?) The eManga site is easier to remember and to navigate than Tokyopop’s site so I might use it in the future to preview titles or even rent one. The points system has a logical ratio of 100 pts to $1 but the option to actually add points 1,000 at a time isn’t available at the moment.
Like last year, I did not attend Otakon and instead watched the first days of the Beijing Olympics. Sorry, anime - sports trumped you this time. But I was able to catch up with the help of Gia-Japanator combo liveblogging as well as reading raw transcriptions from an IRC channel (I think I saw one of those guys at an AX panel). Surprisingly, ANN lagged behind in terms of reportsand also no video as of Wednesday evening, which is strange since they supposedly were taping the fansubbing panel based on one of Scott’s tweets. [UPDATE 8/16: ANN has posted a 79-minute video of the Fansubs and Industry Panel along with a breakdown of the event.] Read the rest of this entry »
Inventorspot (via Mahalo) reports that a number of companies such as Geo and Dibra are offering extra-wide contact lenses that are tinted prominently on the outer ring to mirror the big-eyed look familiar to those with 2D complexes. Contact lenses in cosplay are not new to me since The Contact Lens Company (yes, that’s their name) had a booth in AX’s dealer hall - those are strange on their own because the irises don’t appear to move and sometimes freak me out. These appear to be more general use lenses as they work like clear contacts and you can have them made to order. It’s just…*sigh* why aren’t normal sized eyes good enough? I know it’s Japan and some women want to appear younger but really?
P.S. If I had the choice between wearing glasses and wearing contacts I’d spring for glasses because I have an aversion to touching my own eyeballs and might have trouble putting in contacts. Plus you shouldn’t lose glasses as often. Thank goodness I have fine vision so I don’t have to deal with either.
Last week, I finally added an overdue comment policy explicitly telling readers not to post or request links to illicit material after seeing yet another comment asking where one can read the Karin (Chibi Vampire) manga online:
OMG Can enyone tell me where i can get Chibi on line!!!! its driving me crazy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
One of the unspoken rules of participating in viewing fansubs/scanlations is to not publicly ask for where to obtain such illicit goods. (Another is not to monetize it through donations or subscription fees but that’s another subject.) If you really want to read or watch content for free, then do your own damn research - it’s not that difficult, sadly. While I don’t believe that scanlations have as severe an effect on the manga industry as fansubbing does to anime, it can still breed the feeling that one deserves to read something for free.
I personally have not read or looked for scanlations for about a year and that was just to see what Shirow Miwa’s Dogs and Sakae Esuno’s Mirai Nikki were about by reading a few chapters. I will try to check Dogs out further whenever it hits American shelves along with Maid-sama, Shinji Ikari Raising Project and some others I can’t recall at the moment.
That short list of my anticipated releases says something about my limited interest in the manga scene, which makes my authoring of this post a bit strange from my standing as a fringe reader. I never understood the rationale of complaining that something became licensed in your region because that means it becomes more easily accessible; this is more so for manga than anime because you can now read them in paper form, assuming you couldn’t read Japanese and didn’t have a Kinokuniya nearby. You can even sit on a couch in a bookstore and read whole volumes - I don’t care, just stop complaining that you cannot access a series or, worse, brazenly continue to do so.
Saying that you’re reading it in a browser and not downloading is a faulty excuse just as watching an licensed anime series on YouTube, Veoh, or even Crunchyroll is - you are still consuming the media in a non-sanctioned manner assuming it hasn’t been uploading by the actual rights holders.
I have since removed the comments that involved links or requests but you can read them in chronological order after the jump, with the links obviously taken out. Read the rest of this entry »
If you haven’t heard by now, “leading lifestyle destination for men” CraveOnline has acquired social networking website MyAnimeList. Unlike Mania’s buyout of AnimeOnDVD, I would not expect there to be drastic visual overhauls and it is comforting to know that Xinil will remain lead administrator and editor-in-chief.
This acquisition enables MAL to continue to grow without being burdened by rising server and bandwidth fees (which have increased a lot lately), and helps us branch out into more beneficial features (think video). CraveOnline has no plans to change our community or thwart the direction we’re headed. If anything, they’ll help us get the things we need faster and more efficiently.
Onto the slightly worrying part: in the press release, Mike Dodge, SVP/General Manager of AtomicOnline (CraveOnline’s parent company), said that “MyAnimeList continues to bolster CraveOnline’s leadership position in the highly competitive online male youth market“. As far as I know, the general anime and manga fan community is diverse between both genders and MAL shouldn’t be too different.
A quick advanced search of MAL’s user base conducted this afternoon shows that 14,107 of its 79,056 users have described themselves as female, 19,364 as male, and 45,585 have not specified a gender. So that means out of the 33,471 who picked one or the other, it’s 58% male and 42% female which seems to be a pretty good balance.
I’m not intending to make a mountain out of a molehill so I apologize if it appears that way but my minor worrying is based on a perception of AtomicOnline’s attitude toward its brands. While I know MAL won’t be totally messed with, there could be a change in the way it is marketed toward non-users and in potential shifts in on-site advertising including cross-site promotions.
Variety is reporting that Paramount Pictures and Brad Pitt’s Plan B have acquired the rights to adapt Mark Crilley’s four-volume OEL manga Miki Falls into a movie with Sera Gamble, a producer and writer for “Supernatural”, attached to the project as the scriptwriter. Crilley is best known for his Akiko series of comic books targeted at 9- to 12-year-olds; all four volumes of this latest series are being published on HarperCollins’ HarperTeen label.
Miki Falls‘ beginning plot is that Miki Yoshida is starting her last year of high school when she falls in love with new boy in town Hiro, except that he doesn’t want anything to do with her or her town. She decides to be his friend but she finds out he is a Deliverer, someone who monitors couples about to break up and snatch their before it dies to pass onto another couple. Deliverers are forbidden from falling in love but Miki ignores that rule and acts on her ambitions. The series takes place over the seasons of a year so it would seem natural for the film to start in spring and end in winter.
Greg McElhatton from Read About Comics’ reviewed of the first volume, Spring, last July and described it as “well-rounded” with a “very soft, relaxing art style” that could appeal to readers outside its intended audience. All Ages Reads, whose review crew is a teacher and her grade-school daughters, also liked the series and recommended it for the 10-and-up crowd as the romance is confined to kissing. In September, Brigid at MangaBlog published the full version of an interview she conducted with Crilley in July 2007 for a Publisher’s Weekly article (that’s where I got the story description).
The process was kinda like this…not as smooth as planned….
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