Ask John: Why Does America Only Get Parts of Some Series?

Question:
Why do US companies sometimes pick up short OVAs and movies, for example, VS Knight Lamune & 40 Fresh (Knights of Ramune) and the Poltergeist Report/Yu Yu Hashuko movies, that are not retellings of the original story, but still based on a TV series? Is this because they assume most fans have seen the TV series through fansubs or because they don’t want to commit to a longer TV series?

Answer:
It’s because most American translating companies don’t want to commit to translating long series. As CPM’s dealings regarding Slayers (particularly the first season) and Utena have proven, it’s very difficult to license only part of a series then, later on, license more of it. Licensing only part of a series then, later on, trying to license more of it, can also be an expensive proposition, as AD Vision discovered with Evangelion, for example. (The Eva movies cost many times more to license than the television series did.) If a show becomes very popular, its Japanese license holder may decide to ask for more money to license more of the show after the initial agreement is settled upon. It’s simply much more convenient to agree on a single deal for an entire show at once than it is to license a series piecemeal.

Translating companies do take into account how common fansubbed copies are among die-hard anime fans, but the die-hard, fansub sharing anime community is a relatively small percentage of the total American anime consumer market. If titles that were widely available as fansubs never came to America, we would never have seen Rayearth, Fushigi Yuugi or Rurouni Kenshin come to the US, for example. Yet each of these titles, non withstanding their common proliferation in the fansub community, have proven to be very popular and successful series in the US market. So while anime companies do consider how common an anime title is in America before licensing it, a more prominent concern is marketability to mainstream consumers. It’s generally accepted as precedent that long series, especially long numbered series, simply don’t sell. Examples will prove that average consumers simply don’t like to buy tapes numbered “volume 17” or “volume 23.” There are certainly some exceptions, such as Viz Communication’s wildly successful Ranma 1/2, Pioneer’s Pokemon, and Pioneer/Funimation’s Dragonball Z. But notice that after volume 9, Viz stopped numbering the Ranma tapes, instead moving to volume titles instead of numbers. If you look at the current anime offerings, you’ll see that it’s really only AnimEigo that numbers their tapes. Urusei Yatsura and Kimagure Orange Road both continue to use volume numbers, but neither series is really target at the average, mainstream consumer. Consider Anime Village. They print volume numbers very obviously on their subtitled VHS releases for die-hard anime fans, but do not print volume numbers on the dub VHS counterparts intended for mass mainstream consumption. Anime translating companies don’t license and translate very long series because, statistically, series that are more than especially 50 episodes long just don’t maintain a large enough consumer base to remain profitable.

We may see this trend change with time, though. In fact, the trend may already be changing. Dragonball Z has maintained its popularity, as have Ranma, Pokemon and Urusei Yatsura- all series that have over 100 episodes. AD Vision has committed themselves to translating City Hunter, which has over 200 episodes. There are also fan petitions on-line to convince American translating companies to bring other very long anime series, including Yawara, Kodomo no Omocha and Legend of the Galactic Heroes.