Here’s another stray thought that has been spending way too much time cooking inside the grey matter, and it’s related to my last post. Basically we posit a few basic premises about the average dub audience and play pat-a-cake.

During the VHS days the number is something like 1:5 when it comes to sub-versus-dub sales. While that number applied to a fanbase over 11 years ago, it is probably a ball park reference in terms of a buyer’s preference. This is just some background info for you. If you look on the net for discussion about dub versus sub in pre-DVD era forums and what not, I think that’s what you’ll find.

The cost of producing a dub is drastically more than the cost of producing a sub. How much more is beyond me, but from what I’ve heard it is somewhere in the order of one magnitude. I’m also thinking the billing methods are probably somewhat different, since for each SKU you would pay the actors and producers, where as for subbing it would be more for per-episode. There are other constraints, of course, since it’s no problem to hire different people to work on different episodes in a series, but it can be a big problem to hire different actors for the same role. Location is also a bigger problem since recording and working with the ADR person is best when everyone is in the same room, where as this is basically a non-issue for the whole subbing process.

Well, nothing you didn’t know before. But let’s make one big distinction in the average dub-over-sub person: a lot of people think dubs are a good thing (and a non-trivial number of them disagree), but just because you like dubs, it doesn’t mean you hate subs; it’s a false dichotomy that became irrelevant as multi-lingual DVDs took off as the primary format. Most people love both, and most people rationally considered the presence of additional language tracks as a boon, either Japanese or some other language. Ok so I guess a lot of people didn’t factor in ADV’s Spanish dubs back in the day as a purchase motivator, but you get the idea.

What I’m going to posit next is pretty simple, logically. After the anime bubble in R1-land busted, the fallout mostly took out on the demographic who would not buy something that is sub-only. The supporting evidence is simply that companies have been releasing sub-only releases with some success. The corollary is that the margin value of these multi-language products has fallen below the marginal value of a sub-only release, given relatively fixed prices. In reality it might be worse, as dubs may bump up to cost of production to a point where margin is negative, in some rare cases.

Are the people who whine about $30/volume the same who cry for no-dub no-sale? I have no evidence of this, but one group is probably larger than the other, as the second group basically have little clout. At least price of anime has steadily fallen since the bubble burst.

And this is where I talk about S23’s “upgrade-to-dub” business, like their KyoAni x Key titles. I think it’s a brilliant idea. You want to re-release a title? How about one that has some solid added value at a higher price point than it was before? Not only you will bag the collector types who want to upgrade, you will have some chips against fans who whine against you, while earning some good will, and open up a new “tier” of market who would now buy something because it has an English dub. Most importantly S23 just mitigated the risk of producing a dub that nobody will buy. In CLANNAD’s case, that’s a lot of anime.

Granted, I don’t think K-ON or DBZ Kai is going to have that kind of risks, but what ex-ADV is doing is pretty boss. It’s something that only works when you are close enough to the fan base, that you can master the overhead cost of this “upgrade” process, and so on. For contrast, just look at FUNi–most of their title go through this cycle of value depreciation from a normal set, to a Viridian, to a SAVE. What is FUNi getting out of that product process? More work spent on different products with probably the same or less marginal profits, where as ADV is doing the same overall amount of work and making more money off it as time passes!

I guess in the end, sub-only releases are less content for your money, but I think no-dub-no-purchase positions are ultimately logically the reason why there were no dubs in the first place. For fans who want dubs, rationally speaking, there are no good answers to the question besides learning when to wise up and give in to buying, meanwhile still talk those company reps’ ears off about how much you’d want one.

Just to riff off this piece of news, because I’ve been thinking about this for a while now. Probably ever since sometime in 2008 or 2009.

It’s kind of obvious that Funi is down 75% since 2004. Robert (of RACS) posted here and explained it better than I could. What is surprising is that anime is still doing as well as it is doing today, although I’m sure 1999 would be exaggerating. Maybe it’s like how his store’s website is still stuck in 1999.

During the one summer (or two) when Adam Sheehan was doing most of the cons (’09?), he peddled a couple slides saying how anime wasn’t dying, that FUNi was crunching out SKUs on a normal basis and how one year they put out more than the previous. What those slides didn’t say was how many of them were re-releases, either of their older titles or license rescues from ADV/Geneon. The impact of that wasn’t immediately clear to me, but I think DL ShawneK spelled it out the other day, front and center.

To draw it out a little more in this post, people who buy re-releases are people who are going to buy an old title. Who buys old titles? And we’re not talking about Beauty and the Beast on BD here–it’s your average b-rated licenses from the mid ’00s. Usually not hardcore fans (because they would have them already), and usually fans who are just easing their way into the hobby, or fans who have their fortunes improved (hopefully not a small number), such as those who have graduated in ’07-’10 and found jobs, for example.

It is an entirely different beast than new licenses. New license generates hype and continuing interests, as people are always interested in it. I think American fans are Pavlov’s doggies when it comes to industry and license announcements. (As an aside, I :sadface: when guys like Chris and whoever at ANN botched the Coffee Samurai PR, but anyways.) It’s party time, man! FUNi’s re-release-passing-as-progress? That’s sadface posing as party cat, in your house imitate Kanye trying to let you finish.

I think FUNi needs to get more nimble. A title like Summer Wars, for example, potentially can make them good money. They’re giving it full treatment, but I get the feeling they’re not really striking when the iron is hot. It’s finally released this week. What does that mean? It means it wasn’t out last holiday season, the last fiscal quarter, or the last time Navarre was trying to sell them.

On the other hand, I see that what FUNi is doing is somewhat hard to fault. They’re taking cautious steps into new media and sticking to what worked in old medida. Their transit strategy from a company that made its money from a handful of big titles so they can turn around and produce dubs for every other show they had to license (when it wasn’t really worth it) was, to be honest, what I would’ve done. The stream of re-releases wasn’t a bad idea, probably, given what they had to deal with as the licensing mechanism shriveled, regardless of its unavoidably negative consequences. It’s just right now they’re stuck between a rock and a hard place. I mean yeah, dubs sell, but wouldn’t it be a better way to phrase thing to say “nothing sells that much anymore”? It seems that from a business forecast perspective, as long as new players like NISA or Aniplex are prodding the market by building up a new business strategy from scratch, FUNi will be left behind to play catch up in terms of making their methods more profitable (ie., by cutting costs but not by shifting gears). Well, that is assuming these companies make it in the long run at all. NISA is walking through its first full year as an anime localizer and distributor; I’m sure they’re already reeling from how some titles just don’t sell, as moe as they may be.

The North American market has been waiting for the next Yugioh/Pokemon for about a decade now. I don’t see that wait to ever end; or rather, it’s probably already sort of late to examine the flaws of that particular business strategy. Maybe we will go back to 1999 for reals!

There are more than just a few industry pundit, insiders and academians touting this notion, that there are only so many “core otaku” out there. I put quotes on those terms because I mean something specific: In Japan, there are only so many people who are going to buy limited edition Blu-ray of some moe/mecha/gag/retro/battle/One Piece anime every single season, and this group is what I’m referring to by the term “core otaku.” There are roughly anywhere from 10 to 200 thousand (that’s the highest I’ve seen stated by someone else) of these people, give or take some vague volume of margin. I haven’t really analyzed the numbers but I think you can get a good idea just by seeing what sells out and where it happens. Just look at some sales charts.

Now I think the term can include a certain fixed number of non-Japanese otaku. Especially for English-speaking oversea group.

That’s the approach I use to tackle this analytical work (GJ RP) that describes the rise and fall of anime blogs in the total. In essence, I’m holding the novelty of blogging as a constant, in that it too has reached a point in which it is no different than any other medium of expression when we choose to express ourselves, as a way to represent the size of a population. This is particularly true when RP noted that the 2010 trend is “the real normal” as the core otaku demographics is one that is not entirely constant–some people cease to participate and withdraw, and new people participate for the first time–but at the center there’s a consistent, core group of bloggers who’ve been doing it for a long time.

In other words, we’ve hit a plateau in that group of core bloggers, probably somewhere in 2007-2008. This is particularly convincing because I think by 2008 we’ve already gotten over the whole “woah so this is social networking” thing or the “woah this is a blog” thing, so what’s left is people getting to a point in their lives that they want to blog about anime.

If I had any critiques, it would be that Anime Nano is probably slowly losing relevance as a tracker of blogs. There must be a lot more blogs not tracked by it today than ever before. I know I’ve seen more anime blogs on twitter not listed on Nano than ever before. It would be nice to see the same work RP has done but in a way that captures that potential difference.

As English-language anime fans from the 90s and early 00s age and move up in their position in life over time, I think we will probably see a shrinking demographic similar to Japan’s economically-empowered, otaku buyer market. Big ticket BD box sets may become a viable way to make a pretty penny. It’s not a recommended kind of approach (since it’s a finicky market and too much of an all-egg-in-one-basket approach IMO), but it isn’t one that we can count out.

PS. I was playing Cathrine demo over the weekend. Wow did that game hits home LOL. Now that’s a very smart little game, daringly so. Targeting exactly the right demographic, so to speak.