Blah blah word vomit about animes
Alright guess I feel like starting internet fights today!!
So, it was just announced today (not even a few hours ago, I'd assume by the amount the story is exploding on Twitter) that Viz just had a MASSIVE layoff and restructuring. 40% of their staff (something like 60 people?), gone. This is super alarming to me, because Viz has always been the grounding point of the anime/manga industry in America. There've been dozens of smaller companies completely dissolving recently, but seeing it happen to the old guard is a real wake-up call. It's depressing to see the boom that once was so big start falling apart. Is it because anime is losing its popularity? Has the market finally gotten too glutted by everybody trying to throw in whatever mid-grade licenses they could get for quick buck?
Honestly, I think the biggest nail in the coffin is the piracy. Ironically, it was through piracy and exploiting "legal grey areas" that anime and manga spread to begin with. I'm sure every fan past their early 20's remembers a time of passing around 5th generation VHS copies of shows, subtitled by other fans, just to spread the word about a show. Every fansubber and scanslator is Robin Hood: spreading the wealth by getting more people into the shows they love.
The nobler fans always claimed that they'd love for their favorite series to be commercially licensed so they could properly support it, but it feels like as time goes, that sentiment becomes emptier. More and more, it feels like rather than spreading love of shows and supporting their creators, fansubs and scanslations have created a community of people who expect everything to be free and are completely unwilling to pay for products. There are still "scanslations" of material that's being regularly published in America (in some cases it's published at accelerated intervals, like Naruto). There are "scanslations" of material that was in english in the first place.
It kind of feels to me like the anime and manga community has fostered a culture of theft, not only in fansubs/scanslations, but in straight-out theft. Shoplifting is out of control among fans. I've heard enough stories that when I saw Kinokuniya had moved all of its anime merchandise behind showcase glass, I had a pretty healthy guess as to why. Similarly, every so often I drop in to talk to the local youth librarian (ever since I did the class about drawing comics), and she has a huge theft problem in the teen department. The items being stolen? Shoujo manga.
The excuse everybody gives for reading these instead of the official releases is they "can't wait" for the books to come out. Have we really turned into such greedy little magpies that we'd rather steal material than wait a month for a $10 book? I know there's a LOT more to it than that (the recession is shitty, and a lot of companies are going down just out of their own mis-management), but this is what it always what discussion seems to come back to. It just amazes me that what built up the industry is also what's killing it.
So, it was just announced today (not even a few hours ago, I'd assume by the amount the story is exploding on Twitter) that Viz just had a MASSIVE layoff and restructuring. 40% of their staff (something like 60 people?), gone. This is super alarming to me, because Viz has always been the grounding point of the anime/manga industry in America. There've been dozens of smaller companies completely dissolving recently, but seeing it happen to the old guard is a real wake-up call. It's depressing to see the boom that once was so big start falling apart. Is it because anime is losing its popularity? Has the market finally gotten too glutted by everybody trying to throw in whatever mid-grade licenses they could get for quick buck?
Honestly, I think the biggest nail in the coffin is the piracy. Ironically, it was through piracy and exploiting "legal grey areas" that anime and manga spread to begin with. I'm sure every fan past their early 20's remembers a time of passing around 5th generation VHS copies of shows, subtitled by other fans, just to spread the word about a show. Every fansubber and scanslator is Robin Hood: spreading the wealth by getting more people into the shows they love.
The nobler fans always claimed that they'd love for their favorite series to be commercially licensed so they could properly support it, but it feels like as time goes, that sentiment becomes emptier. More and more, it feels like rather than spreading love of shows and supporting their creators, fansubs and scanslations have created a community of people who expect everything to be free and are completely unwilling to pay for products. There are still "scanslations" of material that's being regularly published in America (in some cases it's published at accelerated intervals, like Naruto). There are "scanslations" of material that was in english in the first place.
It kind of feels to me like the anime and manga community has fostered a culture of theft, not only in fansubs/scanslations, but in straight-out theft. Shoplifting is out of control among fans. I've heard enough stories that when I saw Kinokuniya had moved all of its anime merchandise behind showcase glass, I had a pretty healthy guess as to why. Similarly, every so often I drop in to talk to the local youth librarian (ever since I did the class about drawing comics), and she has a huge theft problem in the teen department. The items being stolen? Shoujo manga.
The excuse everybody gives for reading these instead of the official releases is they "can't wait" for the books to come out. Have we really turned into such greedy little magpies that we'd rather steal material than wait a month for a $10 book? I know there's a LOT more to it than that (the recession is shitty, and a lot of companies are going down just out of their own mis-management), but this is what it always what discussion seems to come back to. It just amazes me that what built up the industry is also what's killing it.