Ask John: Why Doesn’t Bandai Care About American Anime Fans?

Question:
Why doesn’t Bandai Entertainment care about the Western fans? It seems like all of the DVDs they’re putting out are in subtitle form, and not the dubbed version which 80% of the fans like. Aren’t they aware by doing that there’s a greater chance people will just go and download fansubs instead of paying 40 dollars for the DVD? I think they don’t realize that most people would just sooner have the show, but even then, would people still want to pay (any) money for subtitle DVDs? I know they might think there isn’t a demand but if you don’t make one then of course there’s not gonna be any.

Answer:
I mean no offense, but I think you’re over-reacting a bit. I also suspect that you’re mistakenly confused Bandai Entertainment and Bandai Visual. I’d like to address your concerns because I suspect that you’re not the only American anime consumer to harbor a similar belief, and because this topic allows for discussion of a larger concern.

At least for the next several weeks there are two separate subsidiaries of Japan’s Namco Bandai Group active in America’s anime distribution industry. Bandai Visual USA is, practically, a Japanese company that distributes Japanese DVDs tailored to a very small audience of ultra-hardcore American collectors. Bandai Entertainment is the better known American distributor of anime series including Gundam and Cowboy Bebop. Bandai Visual USA is soon to be dismantled and absorbed by Bandai Entertainment.

Since its launch in mid 2006, Bandai Visual USA has attempted to sell imported Japanese DVDs to the very small niche of collectors within America’s already small anime consumer market who are willing to pay near Japanese market prices for high end Japanese style anime DVD releases localized for Americans. Domestic releases like Demon Prince Enma, Wings of Rean, Super Robot Wars Original Generation, and Tokyo Metro Explorers have never been intended for the same mass market consumer audience that ravenously consumes Death Note, Naruto, Bleach, Dragon Ball, and other mainstream franchises. Bandai Visual’s titles were intended for hardcore American anime fans interested in authentic Japanese anime presentations. Unfortunately, the number of such fans in America is so small that it can’t even sustain a “boutique” style niche market distributor.

Bandai Entertainment hasn’t released any Japanese language exclusive anime DVDs since the 2000 releases of Don’t Leave Me Alone, Daisy and Haunted Junction. There has been some unease in America’s fan community regarding next month’s American DVD debut of Gurren Lagann in subtitled only form, but Bandai Entertainment has already announced plans to re-release the series in a bilingual edition just a few months after the conclusion of the subtitled-only release. That leaves the upcoming domestic release of the Rocket Girls anime series as Bandai Entertainment’s only planned subtitled exclusive title. And the argument may be made that Bandai is balancing the scales by releasing Rocket Girls subtitled only while acquiring and re-releasing Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence with an English dub for the first time in America.

The theory that offering an optional English dub makes anime more appealing to a larger number of consumers and thereby generates increased sales is sound in principle, but regrettably untrue in practice. Bandai Entertainment’s upcoming subtitled only release of Rocket Girls, even at a discounted price for the complete series, is unfortunately never likely to generate enough sales to recover the production cost of an English dub. Disregarding the age-old debate over the artistic integrity of dubbing, the simple fact is that a large percentage of America’s anime viewers are increasingly uninterested in paying for anime, which is forcing domestic distributors to make compromises like excluding optional English audio in order to reduce localization costs.

Bandai Visual USA approached the American consumer market with the assumption that there was a community of American anime fans that perceived anime the way Japanese fans do, which turned out to be not the case. Contemporary American anime consumers have adopted a strict perception that anime is merely an entertainment commodity. American consumers, by and large, have discarded all sense of the intangible value of anime. Japanese specialty stores in Akihabara are able to exclusively deal in fan created art, comics, and computer games because Japanese otaku consumers understand that the price they pay for anime goods reflects the value of the intellectual and artistic content contained within the packaging. Japanese consumers are willing to pay for an anime DVD because they know that they’re partially paying to own and support the anime itself. American consumers, on the other hand, seem to predominantly feel that anime has little or no intangible value and the worth of an anime DVD is measured by the physical properties of its packaging and the amount of entertainment the anime provides. But the creativity and the effort to hand draw all of the animation within the anime doesn’t have any intrinsic monetary value to most contemporary American consumers.

The point of this rant is to establish the fact that Bandai hasn’t been trying to intentionally annoy American anime consumers or turn its back on viewers that prefer English dubbed anime. Bandai Visual simply approached the American market without understanding the value system that average American anime consumers use to determine the worth of anime DVDs. And Bandai Entertainment is resorting to subtitled only releases only in extreme circumstances. Domestic anime distribution is a two-way street, just as all capitalism is based on the exchange of supply and demand. Bilingual releases do encourage increased sales, but consumers that want bilingual releases have to demonstrate a willingness to purchase anime in order to justify the added expense of dubbing.