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Editorials

The declining Western anime industry

The imminent bankrupsy of Central Park Media (CPM) forecasts a bleak year ahead for the US anime industry, but given there are more fans now than ever before, one would assume that the opposite should be true. The Anime Almanac has an answer, though I’m not sure whether they are right; it seems fansubs are to blame.
The internet is a great tool for sharing information and this is especially true for the anime community. People are now able to watch new series months (sometimes years) ahead of their local releases and later even share opinions with other like-minded fans (e.g. the anime blogsphere). From the fans’ perspective, this is great, though looking out from say ADV’s base in Houston, it must be frustrating.
ADV US recently licensed “This Ugly Yet Beautiful World” – a 13 episode TV series from none other than Neon Genesis Evangelion and FLCL maestro’s GAINAX. Coming from GAINAX, it should be a license to print money, but “This Ugly Yet Beautiful World” is actually a complete load of rubbish, and there-in lays the problem. Suffice to say had I not watched this show fansubbed a few years back, I would be a lot more interested in it than I am today.
For many of us newer fans, simply being anime is no longer good enough; in this rapidly maturing community, companies can not just go out and license everything under the sun because now the fans won’t have it; we now know what is good from what is bad.
The boom of the early 2000s has led to another problem too. The Japanese companies noticed how successful their anime was becoming in the international markets and decided to bump up the cost of licensing. Now we are in a situation where the US companies are less than willing to throw around their money and the Japanese are asking for too much anyway. Stalemate.
Fansubs are still at the forefront of a newer generation of fandom, while the DVD industry is stuck years behind floundering in the past. The music industry recovered from the MP3 revolution by embracing it; and if it wants to survive, sooner or later the anime industry will have to do the same thing.

Categories
Editorials

Anime Bloggers Need Excitement

The relevance (or rather, lack there of) of contemporary anime blogs has again been brought into question, this time at the core of the blogsphere itself; blogsuki.
The central theme of the discussion is an unstoppable slew of generic episode summaries, the problem being that these dozens of posts all essentially describe the same things; why recap an episode if it’s already been done elsewhere?
I’m torn between both perspectives, as pointless as it may be to reiterate the contents of an episode that has already been echoed countlessly elsewhere, blogging is and always should be a personal labour of love.
If you see an anime series that just gives you that feeling, nothing should stem the ensuing passion; you know what I mean- when you discover an anime series you love, or see an amazing episode, you’re instantly transformed from that moody old seen-it-all-before to an excited kid so full of glee and enthusiasm that you just need to tell someone…, anyone…, about what you’ve just seen. That’s basically why I’m running an anime blog, to capture and share those glimpses of euphoric emotion, and at that point I couldn’t care less whether some other bloke has already said the same things 7 days previous.
Naturally I would love to be listed on BLOGSUKI and see my readership expand. No doubt I’m one of the dozens waiting in line to be granted this “honour”, but I am not going to appease my style just to earn their favour. Writing should always be a natural exercise, free of external pressures or set formulas.
Over the past few days there has been all this talk about how bloggers can do the right things and avoiding doing wrong things, but it’s all irrelevant if you lack the passion to write about anime. That is basically all you need to succeed, for me writing here is about fulfilment. It’s great to get comments, to express and share opinions with other anime fans and that’s all there is to it. To this end, it’s disappointing to be denied entry to a website like blogsuki, but I’ll live.