Amagad!
Hahaha, that thread about Slayers Revolution being too expensive has been deleted completely from the Slayers community.
I was having a debate with one of the comm-goers about why anime is so expensive. The thread was originally from someone who asked if they were the only one who thought that paying $50 for thirteen episodes was too expensive. Then almost every single person in the thread got upset and said that the poster should just be happy that they only have to pay $50, because ten years ago anime was far more expensive.
A group of people telling someone to stop complaining about the price of a thirteen-episode box set, simply because that group used to pay a lot more for anime ten years ago, is just absolutely absurd. If someone complains that paying $1000 for a laptop is expensive, no one is going to tell them to shut up because they paid $2000 for a laptop ten years ago.
My argument was simple: A series that was done locally like Lost, which costs a lot more to produce, has its DVD box sets listed at a lower price point than something like Slayers, which costs considerably less in comparison.
So one poster in particular decided to argue with me. She first assumed that I was using Lost as a direct comparison, liking it to "comparing apples to machine guns" and told me that Lost makes up for its production values via marketing and publicity. She then went on to say that the anime market here has a serious issue with piracy, which also contributes to the high cost of anime. Then her last argument was that "American companies like Funimation have to deal with costs that domestic productions do not (like licensing fees for the shows and music). They also have to get permission from the Japanese companies for a lot of their decisions (everything from disc art to dub casting to the price of the disc)."
First of all, saying that American companies don't have to worry about licensing fees is just bullshit. Any North American studio has to worry about licensing. Do we really think that the producers of CSI Miami just decided to use The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again" for their opening theme song without having to pay a hefty licensing fee? Comparatively, it's pretty rare to find an anime series that uses music that wasn't composed specifically for it, and those costs are included in the original licensing fees.
I'm not even going to start on how absurd it is to say that piracy is even an issue here. Anyone who says that the anime market has a worse problem with piracy over any other market is just kidding themselves. That has nothing to do with the argument at hand; people are just as likely to pirate local programming as they are foreign.
My biggest problem with her statement is that she's totally neglecting the fact that anime companies here don't produce anime. They have absolutely NOTHING to do with the production of anime at all. Anime is produced in Japan and those Japanese companies make back their investments via marketing, broadcasting and DVD sales. The first season of Fullmetal Alchemist cost Square Enix $5.5 million to produce and they ended up making double the cost in DVD sales alone. FUNimation's costs are limited to licensing/distribution fees, translating, dubbing, marketing and manufacturing and that's IT. Any North American studio has to actually produce the series AND pay for any licensing, TV spots, translation, marketing and manufacturing.
....Yet the retail price for a locally produced show on DVD is STILL less than the retail price for anime. Even when it comes down to obscure, cult series. Anything on HBO can be considered a cult series and those DVD releases usually cost less than any anime. The local stuff even has more in terms of special features, whereas most anime that's released here has the episodes, trailers and maybe one episode with commentary and that's it.
So yes, I DO think I'm justified in saying "paying $50 for thirteen episodes is too much," when I can get more episodes with more special features for far less.
I was having a debate with one of the comm-goers about why anime is so expensive. The thread was originally from someone who asked if they were the only one who thought that paying $50 for thirteen episodes was too expensive. Then almost every single person in the thread got upset and said that the poster should just be happy that they only have to pay $50, because ten years ago anime was far more expensive.
A group of people telling someone to stop complaining about the price of a thirteen-episode box set, simply because that group used to pay a lot more for anime ten years ago, is just absolutely absurd. If someone complains that paying $1000 for a laptop is expensive, no one is going to tell them to shut up because they paid $2000 for a laptop ten years ago.
My argument was simple: A series that was done locally like Lost, which costs a lot more to produce, has its DVD box sets listed at a lower price point than something like Slayers, which costs considerably less in comparison.
So one poster in particular decided to argue with me. She first assumed that I was using Lost as a direct comparison, liking it to "comparing apples to machine guns" and told me that Lost makes up for its production values via marketing and publicity. She then went on to say that the anime market here has a serious issue with piracy, which also contributes to the high cost of anime. Then her last argument was that "American companies like Funimation have to deal with costs that domestic productions do not (like licensing fees for the shows and music). They also have to get permission from the Japanese companies for a lot of their decisions (everything from disc art to dub casting to the price of the disc)."
First of all, saying that American companies don't have to worry about licensing fees is just bullshit. Any North American studio has to worry about licensing. Do we really think that the producers of CSI Miami just decided to use The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again" for their opening theme song without having to pay a hefty licensing fee? Comparatively, it's pretty rare to find an anime series that uses music that wasn't composed specifically for it, and those costs are included in the original licensing fees.
I'm not even going to start on how absurd it is to say that piracy is even an issue here. Anyone who says that the anime market has a worse problem with piracy over any other market is just kidding themselves. That has nothing to do with the argument at hand; people are just as likely to pirate local programming as they are foreign.
My biggest problem with her statement is that she's totally neglecting the fact that anime companies here don't produce anime. They have absolutely NOTHING to do with the production of anime at all. Anime is produced in Japan and those Japanese companies make back their investments via marketing, broadcasting and DVD sales. The first season of Fullmetal Alchemist cost Square Enix $5.5 million to produce and they ended up making double the cost in DVD sales alone. FUNimation's costs are limited to licensing/distribution fees, translating, dubbing, marketing and manufacturing and that's IT. Any North American studio has to actually produce the series AND pay for any licensing, TV spots, translation, marketing and manufacturing.
....Yet the retail price for a locally produced show on DVD is STILL less than the retail price for anime. Even when it comes down to obscure, cult series. Anything on HBO can be considered a cult series and those DVD releases usually cost less than any anime. The local stuff even has more in terms of special features, whereas most anime that's released here has the episodes, trailers and maybe one episode with commentary and that's it.
So yes, I DO think I'm justified in saying "paying $50 for thirteen episodes is too much," when I can get more episodes with more special features for far less.