Le Roi Est Mort, Vive le Roi
Wow. What a way to start off September. And no, I'm not talking about Disney/Marvel. I think that's overblown, and DC has done fine for years under Time Warner's ownership, so why worry? No, if anything, I'm talking about the collapse of one of the biggies of the anime industry. Ladies and gentlemen, AD Vision is no more.
Expect war. I agree with Roger Morse's statement made on the ACML about the death of ADV, that "I'm thinking this is part-economy and part-anime bubble. Fansubbing and for-profit piracy has definitely hurt the anime industry, but I don't think it was quite enough to bring it to it's knees like this. If anything, the economy weakened it severely and things like fansubbing and for-profit piracy sapped any money they could have made from the "hardcore fans". In visual terms, the economy sunk the boat, fansubs removed the life-preservers", but I don't think that the remaining anime companies (Viz, Funimation, Bandai, and especially ADV's successor company Sxion 23) will see it as that way. Expect war, RIAA style, to be declared against fansubbers from this point on.
And don't give me any spiel about how "information wants to be free!" or crap like that, or how "greedy moneybarons want to squeeze everyone dry." Yes, I think a lot of times that fansubbers cue the rights of what is to come next. But I also think that in doing so, they've also destroyed the market for anyone wanting to watch the show, so that it's impossible to recoup the license fee once the show hits outside of Japan. Yes, I know there are ethical fansubbers out there, and those aren't the ones I'm complaining about - God knows there are quite a few series I would have never have been exposed to if they didn't exist, and quite a few that I wish I'd had been warned via fansubbing. But the Naruto/Bleach "at any cost" fansubbers and pirates trying to make a buck off the companies have gone too far. We're now seeing people's lives disrupted by this (while there are reports of virtually everyone at ADV being hired by Sxion 23, there's no hard proof, and even so, what about those who worked at CPM?) Whether you cared for him or not, John Ledford turned a small store into an empire, and watched that empire crumble, not entirely of his making. Part of it had to do with pirates.
That being said, it's also not entirely the fault of the pirates. There have been too many shovelware series coming stateside. Physical media, so beloved by anime companies, is being greatly shoved aside in favor of digital downloads. And with a few exceptions, the handling of anime as a television medium has been bad at best and laughable at worst - remember when the Anime Network was supposed to be the 24-hour anime on cable destination? That worked out rather well, not. The surviving companies are currently battened down and have to really rethink their strategies of how to operate in a day and age where anime is no longer the "next hip thing" but just now another mainstream entertainment function.
But I don't expect any of the current companies to see that anytime soon. Instead, I expect a Sherman's March through whatever websites hold fansubs, followed by wholesale boycott wars against said companies. The ultimate victor will be the one that finally figures it all out. So far, that looks to be Funi, but that's no guarantee; it was only a few years ago that people were saying that about ADV and look what happened.
Expect war. I agree with Roger Morse's statement made on the ACML about the death of ADV, that "I'm thinking this is part-economy and part-anime bubble. Fansubbing and for-profit piracy has definitely hurt the anime industry, but I don't think it was quite enough to bring it to it's knees like this. If anything, the economy weakened it severely and things like fansubbing and for-profit piracy sapped any money they could have made from the "hardcore fans". In visual terms, the economy sunk the boat, fansubs removed the life-preservers", but I don't think that the remaining anime companies (Viz, Funimation, Bandai, and especially ADV's successor company Sxion 23) will see it as that way. Expect war, RIAA style, to be declared against fansubbers from this point on.
And don't give me any spiel about how "information wants to be free!" or crap like that, or how "greedy moneybarons want to squeeze everyone dry." Yes, I think a lot of times that fansubbers cue the rights of what is to come next. But I also think that in doing so, they've also destroyed the market for anyone wanting to watch the show, so that it's impossible to recoup the license fee once the show hits outside of Japan. Yes, I know there are ethical fansubbers out there, and those aren't the ones I'm complaining about - God knows there are quite a few series I would have never have been exposed to if they didn't exist, and quite a few that I wish I'd had been warned via fansubbing. But the Naruto/Bleach "at any cost" fansubbers and pirates trying to make a buck off the companies have gone too far. We're now seeing people's lives disrupted by this (while there are reports of virtually everyone at ADV being hired by Sxion 23, there's no hard proof, and even so, what about those who worked at CPM?) Whether you cared for him or not, John Ledford turned a small store into an empire, and watched that empire crumble, not entirely of his making. Part of it had to do with pirates.
That being said, it's also not entirely the fault of the pirates. There have been too many shovelware series coming stateside. Physical media, so beloved by anime companies, is being greatly shoved aside in favor of digital downloads. And with a few exceptions, the handling of anime as a television medium has been bad at best and laughable at worst - remember when the Anime Network was supposed to be the 24-hour anime on cable destination? That worked out rather well, not. The surviving companies are currently battened down and have to really rethink their strategies of how to operate in a day and age where anime is no longer the "next hip thing" but just now another mainstream entertainment function.
But I don't expect any of the current companies to see that anytime soon. Instead, I expect a Sherman's March through whatever websites hold fansubs, followed by wholesale boycott wars against said companies. The ultimate victor will be the one that finally figures it all out. So far, that looks to be Funi, but that's no guarantee; it was only a few years ago that people were saying that about ADV and look what happened.