Can This Industry Be Saved?
Nov. 27th, 2007 06:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerIn the last little while, I've started daydreaming about what to write in a post reflecting on anime watched in the last four months of this year. One thing that's come to mind is to say yet again that I still haven't "burned out" on Japanese animation and become just like the people who are always complaining about that, who I stopped paying attention to for just that reason... although I'm starting to get the feeling that I've said that often enough that it's no longer "surprising," but more just self-congratulatory and kind of obvious. However, as if to prove that I need something "small" to worry about to keep from worrying that the world is going to come to a slow and unpleasant end starting the day after tomorrow, a new thought is scratching at my mind: is it possible that one day, for all that I'll still be interested in anime on that day, there won't be any more of it to watch?
It would seem obvious enough that being able to download a computer-encoded fan translation or "fansub" of a new episode of anime days after it airs in Japan, yet long months ahead of its licensing and North American DVD release, and not pay one thin dime for that utopian privilege, has definite consequences for how many anime DVDs sell over here. I've seen some people expound on what seems aesthetic reasons for why they never buy any DVDs of the shows they calmly admit to having watched via fansubs they've developed a taste for the quirks of, and some people just don't seem troubled by their conscience. Then, mixed in with the sudden shock of mere North American translation-and-release companies going out of business, there are warnings that the Japanese production companies don't see the licensing fees from this side of the Pacific as just "gravy," but as something that's become, without their ever quite realising it until it was too late, an essential part of what they need to stay alive...
With a score of series sitting around waiting to be opened, matching my frustration at that "backlog" with at least the hope that I'm not "burnt out" and complaining "Everything for sale these days is garbage," I can suppose that my own conscience on the matter is assuaged for all that I can become interested in new series by listening to the interest of other people who've watched them as fansubs... If there's any way to keep the industry working short of locking down the entire electronic world by international treaty and fiat, though, I'd be glad to see it. No doubt I could find something else to become interested in, perhaps even reading more manga by working past the lazy, contemptuous assumption that it's all drawn over to eliminate any offensive content, but... In any case, one recent suggestion by Justin Sevakis, who's worked on the translation-and-release side himself (and commented on the issue in a "simpler time"), seems to have attracted a lot of attention possibly in part because he didn't just blame greedy fans and demand greater effort in shaming and slapping them down, but declared that fansubs have grown to meet and create a need for speedy, "buzz"-responsive fulfilment, and that it might yet be possible to make money from filling that very need without letting fans dismiss it as an obvious attempt to gouge them. That thought does interest me. In noticing other responses to it, though, I happened to run back into one of the "burnout cases" I grew in the end too familiar with, complaining that the industry should have kept making stuff like the stuff he watched starting two decades ago, and reacted with a sort of "Oh boy, that's why I stopped reading what he had to say," ...although I suppose there was a grain of truth in his commenting that anime production should be pitched to a "wider demographic." (A commentator to his post did suggest some recent series that could very well amount to that, but it seemed to roll right over him.) Selling to responsible adults is no doubt a bit easier than selling to people young enough to not quite get the point of "You want to see stuff without paying for it? Fine, then you won't mind working for nothing." Still, for all I know that'll only delay the evil day to until those young people come of age if not grow up...
It would seem obvious enough that being able to download a computer-encoded fan translation or "fansub" of a new episode of anime days after it airs in Japan, yet long months ahead of its licensing and North American DVD release, and not pay one thin dime for that utopian privilege, has definite consequences for how many anime DVDs sell over here. I've seen some people expound on what seems aesthetic reasons for why they never buy any DVDs of the shows they calmly admit to having watched via fansubs they've developed a taste for the quirks of, and some people just don't seem troubled by their conscience. Then, mixed in with the sudden shock of mere North American translation-and-release companies going out of business, there are warnings that the Japanese production companies don't see the licensing fees from this side of the Pacific as just "gravy," but as something that's become, without their ever quite realising it until it was too late, an essential part of what they need to stay alive...
With a score of series sitting around waiting to be opened, matching my frustration at that "backlog" with at least the hope that I'm not "burnt out" and complaining "Everything for sale these days is garbage," I can suppose that my own conscience on the matter is assuaged for all that I can become interested in new series by listening to the interest of other people who've watched them as fansubs... If there's any way to keep the industry working short of locking down the entire electronic world by international treaty and fiat, though, I'd be glad to see it. No doubt I could find something else to become interested in, perhaps even reading more manga by working past the lazy, contemptuous assumption that it's all drawn over to eliminate any offensive content, but... In any case, one recent suggestion by Justin Sevakis, who's worked on the translation-and-release side himself (and commented on the issue in a "simpler time"), seems to have attracted a lot of attention possibly in part because he didn't just blame greedy fans and demand greater effort in shaming and slapping them down, but declared that fansubs have grown to meet and create a need for speedy, "buzz"-responsive fulfilment, and that it might yet be possible to make money from filling that very need without letting fans dismiss it as an obvious attempt to gouge them. That thought does interest me. In noticing other responses to it, though, I happened to run back into one of the "burnout cases" I grew in the end too familiar with, complaining that the industry should have kept making stuff like the stuff he watched starting two decades ago, and reacted with a sort of "Oh boy, that's why I stopped reading what he had to say," ...although I suppose there was a grain of truth in his commenting that anime production should be pitched to a "wider demographic." (A commentator to his post did suggest some recent series that could very well amount to that, but it seemed to roll right over him.) Selling to responsible adults is no doubt a bit easier than selling to people young enough to not quite get the point of "You want to see stuff without paying for it? Fine, then you won't mind working for nothing." Still, for all I know that'll only delay the evil day to until those young people come of age if not grow up...