In which I speculate wildly and rant without a fully justified reason. Yet.
Steven talks about one of the cuter and more enjoyable lightweight series that aired recently, Dog Days. Although his main subject is the official, and often inconsistent, romanization of names in the series, he lets drop this tidbit:
It turns out that the Japanese BD release of Dog Days includes subtitles in English, French, and Chinese. The ANK-Raws rip preserved all three.
I’m not sure, but I think this isn’t the first time this has happened, and what I’m wondering is… will this become a trend? Is this Japanese-release-with-subtitles what we’re going to see more of in the future? Without later R1 licensing? I notice that no R1 license seems to have been announced, in fact. In other words, “Buy at the same inflated prices our domestic market pays, or you don’t get it at all.” Will we have to start ordering our anime from Amazon.jp?
Incoming controversy, batten down the hatches.
If this becomes the norm, I will stop supporting the industry by purchasing (and often never watching) DVD’s of anime that I downloaded months ago when it was fresh: Akane-iro, Daimou, etc., because not only are the studios being greedy, but they’re putting our VA’s, distributors, and retailers like Robert out of business. These are people that I voluntarily support because it’s the right thing to do. I could just sit on my fansubs, but I don’t.
I also want to support the original artists, the seiyuu, and yes, even the companies that bring us this fine entertainment, because that’s also the right thing to do, and my purchases do that. I’ll download broadcast versions, but then I buy (with a few notable exceptions) at least one of the DVD’s, and often the entire series. I don’t think I’ve ever downloaded DVD rips; if it’s a DVD file, it’s on a DVD I bought. Period.
But I’m a cheap-a$$ deal-seeking Yankee. (Well, southerner, not a damnyankee, but you get the idea.) I will not let myself be gouged for the sake of principle, or put more virtuously, I won’t let myself be taken advantage of because of my principles. I can get an entire season of Firefly for what I can get one or two episodes of anime — guess which is not going to happen? You stick it to me and mine, I stick it to you and yours. If it’s a choice between not supporting the industry or letting myself pay outrageous prices, color me hypocritical. I’ll patronize Crunchyroll where I can, or simply download fansubs where I can’t.
Now, it would be a shame if anime died due to stupidity and greed. Just for the record, I’m no OWS fool baby-in-an-adult’s body; Profit is good. Profit does not equal greed. But here is the cold, fundamental truth of value: the value of a thing is what people will pay for it. And I just don’t value anime so much that I’ll let myself be gouged. I suppose you could even say, if you wanted to be harsh, that I don’t value my honor that much, since I’ve just said I’ll steal it, or at least I will as long as it’s a fairly repercussion-free act. In the long run, my personal morals will not make or break Japanese animation studios, but the similar decisions of hundreds of thousands of people like me will. Value, in the aggregate, is even colder and harsher than anything someone could say about my morals. The Japanese model of animation production and sale isn’t the first economic model that’s been undercut by new technology; it won’t be the last. Adapt or die. And if it dies, I’d miss it, but not as much as I’d miss having a roof over my head after I retire in a few years.
Those OWS hobos stink too much to join on the street.
If this is their plan (and I think it would make sense given their apparent business plan) why put Chinese and French on the BD when those are in different regions. English, Spanish, and Portuguese (or perhaps Thai, Tagalog, Khmer, Tieng Viet) subtitles would seem to be the warning flags.
First, these are BD’s, not DVD’s, something I forgot. This means that they have different region definitions, assuming that they’re encoded to be region-restricted, which is not a given regardless of BD or DVD. But the difference is that Region A includes the US, Japan, Canada, Hong Kong, etc. Australia, Europe (!), SW Asia and NZ are in Region B, C gets India, China, Russia, SE Asia and a few others. So by producing the disks region-free, adding Chinese and French allows them to cover somewhere in the region of 2/3 of the world’s population (Just guessing).
One correction: For the record, I do have some DVD rips of movies or very old series that are out of print/unavailable or hasn’t been released here yet. The Haruhi Suzamyia movie was such a case, for a while; First Squad is currently, the live action Space Battleship Yamato is also, as previously noted. Surprised no one called me on it.
I don’t read this as a threatening move, but more of a “hey, let’s experiment with this” by a company that’s not had a lot of success with licensing its shows in the US. (Mind you, Nanoha wasn’t ever going to do well here anyway, love it though I do…) Strikers ain’t coming out here, the movie ain’t coming out here. They put some English subs on the movie, and lo and behold, some people in the US bought it. So they’re trying the same thing on a TV series that, let’s be honest, ain’t likely to come out here either.
(Sorry, but it isn’t. What’s the niche for Dog Days? It’s, in essence, a children’s show. But it’s got enough nudity, even though it’s largely innocent about it, that it’s not appropriate for children here. Can you imagine it doing well in the US market?)
When we start seeing this sort of thing on titles that are very likely to come out here, then we can start worrying.
Blue ray regions are here…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Blu-ray_regions_with_key.png
Europe and China are not in Region A. So the subtitling on the BDs seems particularly odd to me.
I don’t read this as a threatening move, but more of a “hey, let’s experiment with this” by a company that’s not had a lot of success with licensing its shows in the US. (Mind you, Nanoha wasn’t ever going to do well here anyway, love it though I do…) Strikers ain’t coming out here, the movie ain’t coming out here. They put some English subs on the movie, and lo and behold, some people in the US bought it. So they’re trying the same thing on a TV series that, let’s be honest, ain’t likely to come out here either.
You’re actually talking about two different companies here, though. The Nanoha movie release was handled by King Records, but Dog Days is being released by Aniplex, who’ve had no shortage of success in marketing their properties outside of Japan lately. Even allowing that DD probably wouldn’t be very successful over here, plenty of Aniplex titles with borderline prospects have gotten barebone sub-only releases from that one company in Houston (a good example is Jigoku Shoujo… season 1 flopped for Funi, but that didn’t keep Sentai from picking up seasons 2 and 3).
When we start seeing this sort of thing on titles that are very likely to come out here, then we can start worrying.
I’d argue that the Kara no Kyoukai movies fall into that category, but instead of licensing them for a standard R1 release, Aniplex put English subs on the Japanese Blu-ray boxset and made a very limited number of them available through Right Stuf for $400 (which to be fair was a good bit less than it would have cost to import it from Japan). I’m expecting them to do the same for Fate/zero, which has already had English subs announced for its Japanese release.
Europe and China are not in Region A. So the subtitling on the BDs seems particularly odd to me.
I’ve read that almost all Japanese anime Blu-rays are region-free, and the ones I have aren’t marked as Region A on the packaging anywhere that I can see.
I didn’t say China was in A, but the way I wrote that, it’s hard to parse the sentence boundaries. Should have been two periods after the “etc.”.
Anyway, if they’re doing it on Fate/Zero, that’s exactly what Avatar seems to suggest as threatening.
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