Ask John Editorial: On AnimeSols
Interesting to me to notice that the three-year-old and ultra-modern looking (and excellent) Eve no Jikan movie Kickstarter effort has garnered over 1,700 financial supporters and raised an amazing $106,000. Similarly, the just completed 15-minute long Kick Heart short film generated over $200,000 from over 3,200 contributors despite the fact that Masaaki Yuasa’s Kemonozume and Kaiba television series were ignored by the majority of international anime fans, and his Mind Game and Genius Party features remain largely unwatched by international otaku. Even Kansai Club Publishing’s recent crowdfunding campaign to publish a hardcover collection of Osamu Tezuka’s lesser known manga short stories drummed up over $45,000 from just over a thousand contributors. Yet AnimeSols evidently has, I’m guessing, a number of supporters in-between that of Kansai Club Publishing and the Time of Eve movie, yet as of this writing AnimeSols has collected only $17,530 in pledges for all eight of its titles combined, an amount that’s not even enough to hit the funding goal for its single most popular title by a wide margin, Creamy Mami. The tremendous support for a print publication of Tezuka manga may benefit from the intangible perception that the work is “literary” and “classic,” and therefore deserving of financial support. Comparison of AnimeSols to Time of Eve and Kick Heart seems to clearly illustrate the long-speculated belief that American fans just aren’t particularly interested in vintage anime. Average American otaku may not even like the majority of Masaaki Yuasa’s animation, but it still gets more fiscal support, despite being much shorter and far more esoteric than the much longer and very mainstream-oriented anime offered by AnimeSols, because it’s new; it’s not thirty-years-old or a ten-year-old revival of a thirty-year-old title.
There’s been justified discussion elsewhere about anxiety from potential AnimeSols contributors over getting stuck with incomplete DVD sets as a result of subsequent offerings not reaching their minimum funding goals. Unceremoniously uncompleted American DVD releases of titles including Fortune Quest L, Corrector Yui, Soar High Isami, Tenshi ni Narumon, and Monster are seemingly difficult to give away. Not only do American otaku typically dislike vintage anime, regardless of how much they may vocally claim otherwise, they like supporting incomplete releases even less. Personally, I’ve already promised $30 to $40 for each of the eight titles AnimeSols currently offers. I do appreciate vintage anime, and I am stepping up to put my money behind my claims. I’m honestly a little bit worried about expending so much to purchase vintage anime DVD sets. I’m equally if not more so worried that I won’t be charged because, at this time, with about a month to go, none of AnimeSols’ initial 8 titles look likely to hit their target financial support goals. I am curious why the DVD replication monetary goals are so seemingly high. I’ve personally been involved in anime licensing and DVD production, and that was during the height of the American anime licensing boom, so I’m not sure why these particular titles cost so much to release on domestic DVD when they theoretically aren’t encumbered by royalty minimums and licensing fees since they’re not being sub-licensed to any domestic distributor. But that’s a very cynical and alternate inquiry that I’m not presently interested in examining.
I’m more concerned with the future of AnimeSols and its crowd support. AnimeSols is presently hosting a poll inquiring, among other things, which other titles fans would like to see available on the site and potentially contribute money toward. While the lengthy list includes 49 specific titles, very few of them are ones that most American otaku have even a vague awareness of. While many American otaku may be at least aware of what Dear Brother (Oniisama e), Urusei Yatsura, Esteban – a Boy from the Sun, Kimagure Orange Road, and Hurricane Polymar are, I imagine that the overwhelming majority of American otaku haven’t the faintest clue what Maicchingu Machiko-sensei, Chikkun Takkun, Atsuhime, Norakuro-kun, Moeru Oniisan, Space Ace, Demetan Croaker, Doterman, Osomatsu-kun, and Spoon Obasan actually are. [I said I like vintage anime. I’ve watched episodes of all of those aforementioned shows.] I’m personally thrilled by the possibility of officially licensed American DVD releases of titles including Moeru Oniisan and Atsuhime, and to a slightly lesser degree Maicchingu Machiko-sensei. But if roughly the most widely recognized and beloved titles in AnimeSols’ pocket are all failing to reach their funding targets, the possibility of much lesser-known future offerings gaining any significant degree of support from the American fan community seems very remote.
I don’t want to proclaim doom and gloom. I’m actually encouraged to see off-beat and independent anime productions Kick Heart and Eve no Jikan get as much support as they’ve received, even if the most widely supported campaign only received contributions from roughly 3,000 people from all around the globe. 3,000 may not be an especially large number of anime fans, especially when last year’s Anime Expo drew 130,000 fans. But 3,000 is still an exponentially larger support base than the mere 20 people who have pledged any degree of monetary support at all for the official American home video release of Osamu Tezuka’s Blue Blink television series. Aggressive support for vintage Tezuka manga and support for esoteric anime like Kick Heart suggest to me that America does have fans with an interest in anime more diverse than the currently airing shounen adventure blockbusters and this season’s fan-service shows. The domestic acquisition and release of vintage anime series including Cobra, Rose of Versailles, Dirty Pair, Kyatto-Ninden Teyandee, Unico, Lupin the Third, St. Seiya, Mazinger Z, and Captain Harlock suggest that an American audience for 70’s and 80’s anime does exist and will collect DVD releases. So I want to encourage the American otaku community to open its collective wallet and expand its horizons to embrace more anime that’s older than rubber pirates and orange-clad ninja. Traditionally Japanese distributors attempting to self-distribute in America have not succeeded. Toei has tried twice. There’s Studio A.P.P.P.’s Super Techno Arts, Bandai’s Honneamise effort, Gamers’ Synch-Point. But AnimeSols’ effort to literally bring its offerings directly to the rank & file fan and invite support, suggestion, and criticism directly from the American end-use consumer is a revolutionary effort that I’d hate to see American fans snub. I personally, and admittedly a little bit selfishly, encourage every one of America’s anime otaku to seriously consider contributing to AnimeSols or, in lieu, use the site’s survey to tell Yomiuri TV, Tezuka Productions, Tatsunoko, and Studio Pierrot why you’ve chosen not to contribute, so at least these Japanese studios can gain a better, more responsive understanding of exactly what it is that American otaku want.
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One perspective that’s missing is the fact that Kick-Heart and Eve no Jikan aren’t just new, it’s the creators themselves, still active in the industry, who are asking for direct support from the international fandom to do what they do. For Anime Sols it simply comes down to whether you want some historical anime on disc or not, long past the point of the creators or studios being relevant to the future of the industry.
While I like Masaaki Yuasa’s anime and the Eve no Jikan movie, a big part of my pledges were for the connections it establishes between active Japanese creators and their international audiences.
“The tremendous support for a print publication of Tezuka manga may benefit from the intangible perception that the work is “literary” and “classic,” and therefore deserving of financial support…seems to clearly illustrate the long-speculated belief that American fans just aren’t particularly interested in vintage anime..”
If it were about age, I’ve been trying to get KodanshaUSA to set up a Kickstarter for the rest of Cromartie, and they declined, even though I cited the Tezuka thing. Their response was that Tezuka fans were a unique bunch, and yet, they can’t get funding for the AnimeSol shows. So my theory is that fandom’s gotten spoiled, and expects an entire show to be uploaded before considering buying it. Plus, we’re still stuck with the https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0EKCQnUVMs&list=PL466F968575CC5E73&index=26 demo. And so unless Mami starts getting dark like Madoka, this generation is just not able to accept the former show’s light-hearted antics for what they are. That’s why we’re still perpetually stuck with series which rip off hentai tropes, but without the actual hentai. [*Cough* Aku no Hana *Cough*]
Also, the price for a lot of those sets isn’t any higher than what they were willing to pay for Urusei Yatsura and KOR pre-orders back in the early 2000s. And they’re still a steal compared to what Aniplex thinks it can charge for Gurren Lagaan on Blu-Ray. Anyway, they appear to be aware of the possibility that it might not work out for them, which is why they had back-up suggestions in their survey. So we shall see what Anime Sols’ next plan of action is pretty soon. Anyway, I hope at least AniPipo is luckier, since its goals are smaller.
Sam here, let me answer one of your questions about the goal costs: Just because we don’t have to pay “MG” doesn’t mean that there aren’t royalties that must be paid. Basically it works like domestic sales instead of international ones since we’re going straight to the rights holders. ~30% of the support goal is to run the site, and the other 70% is split between the actual production costs (printing, shipping, preparing the extras), royalties for the writer, director, music composer (or music production company), JASRAC fees if applicable, and profit for the rights holding company that’s usually about 50% of the overall supporter money.
The main reason that it might be higher than you’d think is that the royalties need to be paid for the entire manufactured print run of 1000 discs, not just the number that are pre-ordered. We could theoretically make the goals about ~20% smaller if we only planned on making 500 pieces, but then the profit margin shrinks and it’d require more DVD releases to be profitable as a business, plus the theoretical upside of selling the extra discs nearly vanishes.
You can’t compare the values of traditional licensing with this model directly, since the “Goal” money is closer to total sales receipts than an MG paid to a licensor. A better number to compare the goal amount to would be “What would be the total receipts of disc sales we would need to get to justify paying an MG of XXX” where XXX is the number you’re probably thinking of for MG.
In short, the goal amount is not an MG, it covers a lot of extra costs as well.
Thanks for the explanation. Hope I didn’t come across too antagonistically, as that wasn’t my intention.
I think a very large part of AnimeSol’s low participation is a nearly complete lack of knowledge. Their effort is not widely publicized and when I visited their website a couple of weeks ago I had to DEDUCE what the heck their objective was. The site did not SAY what they planning to do. Poor communication. Poor marketing.
I don’t believe it’s fair to pin this one on “American fans just aren’t interested.” You’ve got to cross the “American fans have even heard about the effort” milestone before you can conclude anything about interest levels.