Future of US Anime / Manga Industry…?
With the recent changes that have come about, it's gotten me wondering about the future of the US anime / manga industry. No more releases will be coming from Bandai - some of their anime series may be available through other carrier or directly on the Japanese BDs with English subtitles, but it's going to be very hit-or-miss. Their manga is currently dead in the water. Tokyopop (may it rest in peace) is gone and, while some licenses were picked up by Dark Horse (among others), several have dissipated into the ether (hope you didn't miss those volumes of Hetalia if you wanted them - pretty bad when even abebooks.com doesn't even have the ISBN for the third volume in their database!).
Even tried-and-true favorites like One Piece are suffering - instead of attempting to obtain additional material under license from TOEI, the old releases are just being recycled into cheaper sets with more episodes each, almost like some kind of "stop-gap" to help bolster funds until they absolutely HAVE to either pick up more episodes or drop the series. Their Hi-Def BD release of the 8th movie didn't lead to any other HD BD releases of other movies or even the latter parts of the show (which were filmed in HD), despite the fact that they proved they could manufacture the discs at a reasonable price.
Other companies are relying on more Japanese-market-based strategies, such as charging (by US-standards) exorbitant prices on sets with very few episodes, or astronomical prices on full-series sets (see Aniplex USA's releases of Madoka Magica, the Rurouni Kenshin OAVs & movie, Kara no Kyoukai: The Garden of Sinners, and Fate/Zero Part 1 as examples). Their attempts at affordable full-set releases were good (like Oreimo) but, due to limited production runs based on their license, if you didn't grab that one when it first came up, you're in for a rude awakening when you try to buy it now (that $55~65 price for the full series doesn't look so bad anymore compared to the $200~2,000 people are asking online now for it!). Of course, with that one, the US market still only got the 480p DVD release despite its being created in HD (and, even if you were willing to pay the Japanese prices on the BDs, there are no subtitles on them!). In all fairness, the extras included with some of their sets have been amazing, but the prices are still just a LITTLE on the steep side.
Still others are abandoning series altogether except for digital streaming (Viz's release of Monster, for example - one boxed set of a handful of episodes available, and then the rest stream-only - and sub-only for that matter, for those who prefer dubs). Also, despite FUNimation's picking up Geneon titles for rerelease and continued distribution, we've yet to see much-needed sequel series, such as Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai or Kyou Kara Maoh! Season 3 (okay, so that second one is more fluff than "needed," but you get my point).
So, what about manga series? There are still tons of new series coming out all the time - but then there are also a healthy number of "best-sellers" that keep getting repress after repress, sometimes in new "omnibus" formats, in an attempt to get more money out of something that's already had the majority of the money required to produce it expended (translating / formatting, etc.). The things dropped by Bandai and Tokyopop that were midstream? Who knows - fans of Genjuu no Seiza or Pet Shop of Horrors: Tokyo from the latter and of Gurren Lagann from the former (just to name a few) may find themselves desperately hunting online for questionably translated fan versions if they want to read the end and can't read Japanese.
While I know it's not directly related, the video game industry is also being affected by this - specifically the companies that cater to more hardcore fans of series that just wouldn't appeal to the majority of the US people. Companies like Aksys, NISA, and Atlus are still struggling to get by compared to how they used to operate (NISA seemed to have gotten hit the worst after almost going under, but they're also one of the only companies that will include the original Japanese audio in their games!). Yes, games still come out, but the quantities are drastically lower than they used to be, and the additional merchandise released by the companies for their products has dwindled.
So, for those of you who are happy to pay a monthly subscription fee to a website (or not, depending on the person and the site) to see episodes of new shows or chapters of new manga released with dodgy translations and never get to actually own them with quality work done on them and nice packaging, I guess it's rather irrelevant. For the rest of us, I guess we'll just have to wait and see. Unless, that is, we want to become fluent in Japanese, and probably also win the lottery to boot so we could afford to import shows at Japanese-market prices!
Even tried-and-true favorites like One Piece are suffering - instead of attempting to obtain additional material under license from TOEI, the old releases are just being recycled into cheaper sets with more episodes each, almost like some kind of "stop-gap" to help bolster funds until they absolutely HAVE to either pick up more episodes or drop the series. Their Hi-Def BD release of the 8th movie didn't lead to any other HD BD releases of other movies or even the latter parts of the show (which were filmed in HD), despite the fact that they proved they could manufacture the discs at a reasonable price.
Other companies are relying on more Japanese-market-based strategies, such as charging (by US-standards) exorbitant prices on sets with very few episodes, or astronomical prices on full-series sets (see Aniplex USA's releases of Madoka Magica, the Rurouni Kenshin OAVs & movie, Kara no Kyoukai: The Garden of Sinners, and Fate/Zero Part 1 as examples). Their attempts at affordable full-set releases were good (like Oreimo) but, due to limited production runs based on their license, if you didn't grab that one when it first came up, you're in for a rude awakening when you try to buy it now (that $55~65 price for the full series doesn't look so bad anymore compared to the $200~2,000 people are asking online now for it!). Of course, with that one, the US market still only got the 480p DVD release despite its being created in HD (and, even if you were willing to pay the Japanese prices on the BDs, there are no subtitles on them!). In all fairness, the extras included with some of their sets have been amazing, but the prices are still just a LITTLE on the steep side.
Still others are abandoning series altogether except for digital streaming (Viz's release of Monster, for example - one boxed set of a handful of episodes available, and then the rest stream-only - and sub-only for that matter, for those who prefer dubs). Also, despite FUNimation's picking up Geneon titles for rerelease and continued distribution, we've yet to see much-needed sequel series, such as Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai or Kyou Kara Maoh! Season 3 (okay, so that second one is more fluff than "needed," but you get my point).
So, what about manga series? There are still tons of new series coming out all the time - but then there are also a healthy number of "best-sellers" that keep getting repress after repress, sometimes in new "omnibus" formats, in an attempt to get more money out of something that's already had the majority of the money required to produce it expended (translating / formatting, etc.). The things dropped by Bandai and Tokyopop that were midstream? Who knows - fans of Genjuu no Seiza or Pet Shop of Horrors: Tokyo from the latter and of Gurren Lagann from the former (just to name a few) may find themselves desperately hunting online for questionably translated fan versions if they want to read the end and can't read Japanese.
While I know it's not directly related, the video game industry is also being affected by this - specifically the companies that cater to more hardcore fans of series that just wouldn't appeal to the majority of the US people. Companies like Aksys, NISA, and Atlus are still struggling to get by compared to how they used to operate (NISA seemed to have gotten hit the worst after almost going under, but they're also one of the only companies that will include the original Japanese audio in their games!). Yes, games still come out, but the quantities are drastically lower than they used to be, and the additional merchandise released by the companies for their products has dwindled.
So, for those of you who are happy to pay a monthly subscription fee to a website (or not, depending on the person and the site) to see episodes of new shows or chapters of new manga released with dodgy translations and never get to actually own them with quality work done on them and nice packaging, I guess it's rather irrelevant. For the rest of us, I guess we'll just have to wait and see. Unless, that is, we want to become fluent in Japanese, and probably also win the lottery to boot so we could afford to import shows at Japanese-market prices!