http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/convention/2007/icv2-conference-on-anime-and-manga-marketing-to-the-otaku-generation

(Sorry for a double post).

ANN’s MacDonald makes a lot of good points in there, including the interesting story about the license holder who is not chasing down fansubbers because they view merchandise sales to be more important than the DVD sales.

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/convention/2007/nyaf-icv2/icv2/whitepaper

In the Peoples’ Island Republic, however, there are animé shows that are getting here with less lead times. I have to admit, however, that following Animax-Asia’s priority scheduling, more good shows are seemed to aimed at the Philippine market to compete with their own local animé TV fixtures, which featured top Filipino actors/actresses to voice-dub some of the animé shows. Nonetheless, animé has pervaded into becoming a second youth subculture in Singapore.

I think at the end of the day, however disparaging the differences between animé marketability in the States and Southeast Asia, is that fansubs have become some sort of a necessary evil (this phrase has been oft-repeated in many blogs and forums of late), something that the industry have to deal with. With the DVD format wars going on, it’s impossible to chart the growth of animé in the short-term. Since DVD video are slightly inferior than HD-quality fansubs (I have to digress when it comes to what encodes those videos are in), people seemed to harp on the future of video/content distribution is with Internet downloads.

For my take, however, I feel that there should be more democratization for anime studios to take control of their products’ (a.k.a. anime shows) method of distribution. I have long since killed off any love for distributors, big exclusive licensee companies and middlemen. I prefer a direct relationship between the seller and the buyer (that is, between the anime-producing companies and the audience).

With respect to your discussion of the gradations of legality, anothe way to think about it, is, “how long would the law last in this form, if it were to be strictly and rigorously enforced?” Strict enforcement of copyright law, as written, would probably lead to a quick change in the law to make it more consumer-friendly. The content cartels may have the well-paid lobbyists and the campaign-finance muscle, but the consumers still have the votes.

I hope the industry can come up with a solution that competes with fansubs. “You can’t compete with free” doesn’t seem to have stopped Perrier’s sales, after all (perhaps this is not so far from the Bandai Boss’s “if the quality is there, you’ll pay for it, no?”).

Do we know the state of the American anime fan? I think think the problem is there isn’t a real consensus, even when looking at DVD sales of shows: who are the majority of people who pay for anime? The people who watch what’s on Adult Swim and the like? The fans who know more about what comes out in Japan? And when you get to the majority, do we know what types of shows they prefer? Could
they be interested in shows that are atypical in genre or approach? Does it really even matter? :/