Photo by Flickr user Sklathill (under Creative Commons)
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 reports and 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.]
There were only a couple non-company panels I was interested in reading about - Anime is Serious Business for the raw figures and the aforementioned joint fan/industry Fansubbing panel for its potentially different perspectives. (The original transcriber was “bayoab”.) The fan-run business panel led off with a look at ratings and the costs of putting an anime on the air (apparently 150,000 yen/episode is being paid to air Geass in primetime) and ended with a detailed breakdown of the provisional budget for Bamboo Blade that leaked due to the Kintama virus.
I won’t copy over the whole thing but here’s the short version, in per episode costs:
- production expenses were 9.554 mil yen
- production reserves were 10% of budget (955.4k)
- the total internal budget was 10.5 million yen
- expected profit was 2.49 milllion yen, (109.4k below the planned 20%)
- production cost was 13 million yen
In terms of recouping costs, the typical DVD sells about 3,000 copies per volume at 6500 yen each and that will usually cover the cost of production. That number jumps to 5,000 for a bigger budget title and 5,000-10,000 for a late-night show.
Photo by Flickr user sorakirei (under Creative Commons)
The fansub panel was hosted by Ken Hoinsky and he began that it would not be an “us vs. them” panel and that they’d operate under the assumption that fansubbing will go away voluntarily. The panel lasted about an hour and a half with Ken asking 10 questions spanning different issues and the audience getting their chance to pose queries in the final 12 minutes. I’ll summarize some highlights here and save the deep analysis for another, more fluid post.
Lance Heiskill, Marketing Director at Funimation, recanted some lines form his participation at the AX Fansubs: Death of Anime keynote panel about how easy access has become and also made reference to their power of attorney rights for production company d-rights, which they exercised last week to take certain fansubs offline. John Sirabella from Media Blasters reminded the audience that it’s a really small market based around collecting and is not large enough to support widespread sharing, unlike the film and music industries that possess a greater ability to recoup funds through merchandising and concerts. He wasn’t convinced that digital distribution would totally replace home video sales nor would support the costs of running the industry in the United States.
From the fansubber contingent, Dattebayo translator Hisshouburaiken said people need to understand fansubs need to be made moot and that the way for the industry to compete with DB is to do the same thing they do but legally (kind of like Gonzo and BOST). getfresh, who has been involved in three groups including Anime-Empire and Shinsen-Subs, hates it when their torrents are put onto The Pirate Bay and other sites because then they can’t control it anymore - a sentiment that Interactii from DB/Live-Evil somewhat shared when he said DB would pull their torrents and attempt to keep them under control if they were asked to stop subbing. (I seriously wonder how favorably Viz looks upon their group.) However, getfresh also said that if a company told him to stop without having defined rights or plans, he would tell them to take a hike but would halt if those were presented.
Photo by Flickr user j_kub (under Creative Commons)
In terms of industry-related stuff, the Gurren Lagann LE looks enticing with its box design and glowing core drill. I’ll probably continue to buy the 2-disc subbed sets, then see how much that package will cost. I was pleasantly surprised to hear that Hayate the Combat Butler will have the uncensored voice tracks alongside the TV censored versions. No more bleeped out Gundam references!
AD Vision appears to be moving in a different direction with their Switchblade label announcement, although they have been distributing live-action for a while including Dark Water, Synesthesia and, uh, Farscape? As long as they achieve their goal of becoming more profitable, I don’t have any deep qualms especially if they truly have 15 other titles in play as claimed. Unfortunately, the Kiba DVD release allegedly depends on Upper Deck to decide the dates since there is a CCG tie-in to the series so we still don’t know when that’s coming out nor when (looking more like if) it will air on Cartoon Network.
Photo by Flickr user Sidereal (under Creative Commons)
Next year’s Otakon has been scheduled for July 17-19 in the same place, the Baltimore Convention Center, and while I would like to go next year and attend my first con outside the Pacific time zone, it would depend on the guests and the airfare costs. 2010 seems a bit more likely than 2009 but if lolikit can travel across the country, I certainly can do the same within two years.
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I WANT A FROG NOTE NOW!
I have to say, for person who didn’t attend the show, this was a very well detailed report on it.
I think that ANN is holding back on the fansub panel video because it really was a big waste of everyone’s time. As much as they claim it wasn’t a “us verses them”, the audience was completely pro-fansubbing. The 90 minutes mostly consisted of the industry panelists talking, but watching what they were trying to say in order to avoid upsetting the crowd. The fansubbers rarely spoke, but then they did, the audience would laugh and applaud at every single little line they said, while they gave the industry reps the silent treatment. And the brief Q&A section only consisted of fansub watchers telling the industry why they watch fansubs and why they will continue to watch fansubs.
Also, I thought the “Anime is Serious Business” was a little full of it himself. All he knew was the “leaked” information he was able to get off of the internet. When I tried to ask him the effects of online piracy to the business, he side-stepped the issue completely with the false statistic of “90% of all anime is aired for free on Japanese TV.”
[...] Yea, he had real speakers. Speaking of which, Cal’s “I wasn’t at the con” con report is worth a glance [...]