06-12-2004, 04:11 PM
Despite the percieved popularity of anime it is still a somewhat "cult" market status in that it is only really popular amongst a small demographic. This has been slowly changing over the years (for those that remember how hard it was to get decent anime in UK/US in the 80's early 90's) but from a business standpoint it can still be quite expensive.
The high prices for some R1 dvd's are still quite high but that is mainly because the OAV's Films will sell more units and thus the series dvd's will have a higher markup as they will obviously entail higher costs for printing and distirbuting. Ah yes OAV's and Films. These are standard prices so it's not all bad.
From a moral/ethical standpoint i will buy series on HK's. Not OAV's, because i can buy R2 OAV's and films at pretty much the same prices, but I don't really have the money to feed my addiction for series. But i would pay for full price R1/R2's if i could afford it.
But looking around there are quite a few low priced series coming out. I won't mention the site where i quoted this price from but let's for instance say you wanted to "Play" a dvd of martian succesor you could pick it up on R1 for £45 (about $65-70) that's the whole series boxset! Now this is the same price you can pick up the 24 boxset for at some places so it is hardly an across the board monopoly, but it still IS a small demographic of buyers and not long term ones either. Apart from the few die hard fans of this stuff the large market is with a 2 year span for teenagers around 15 years of age. There is no continuation of sales. This is not an ego bruising thing here. I'm 22 and i love it but i'm not the majority.
I see a lot of youngn's complaining about the prices but you have no idea how far the availability of anime has come along in recent years. You'd be lucky to be able to get a hold of a legit anime VHS that wasn't hideously dubbed some 5-10 years ago. There were some 40,000 titles of ninja croll/ghost in the shell sold between when it came out and 1998.
Any business men would have to be plyed with a whole LOAD of drink and strippers to agree to invest in such a market at that time. Akira was the only one to break decent figures at some 75,000 but that really was the exception.
ADV have got a right to protect their business. You're arguing on very tenuous legal ground when it comes to HK imports. The few arguements being that you have access to anime that never gets released in the west and that the japanese market is in itself almost fully enclosed and so will not be as harmed as western sales. But then we aren't in japan we're in the west and if HK importing gets out of hand we go back to square one and you get to enjoy your anime as "amazing" quality realmedia 5meg files that are badly subbed.
I really think the good to honest compromise here would be for Anime distrubutors to invest in more boxsets like the nadesico one. At least then you can reach a market that isn't willing/able to fork out for the whole series individually. For example releasing the boxset a month or so after all the volumes have come out. That way the people who want their anime NOW and are willing to pay get it. And those that cant afford it aren't completely left out in the cold and aren't taken in by the allure of HK's so much
Sorry for the long post. I know it's my first one and i've tried not to step on too many toes to avoid getting flamed back into the stone age but there you go
The high prices for some R1 dvd's are still quite high but that is mainly because the OAV's Films will sell more units and thus the series dvd's will have a higher markup as they will obviously entail higher costs for printing and distirbuting. Ah yes OAV's and Films. These are standard prices so it's not all bad.
From a moral/ethical standpoint i will buy series on HK's. Not OAV's, because i can buy R2 OAV's and films at pretty much the same prices, but I don't really have the money to feed my addiction for series. But i would pay for full price R1/R2's if i could afford it.
But looking around there are quite a few low priced series coming out. I won't mention the site where i quoted this price from but let's for instance say you wanted to "Play" a dvd of martian succesor you could pick it up on R1 for £45 (about $65-70) that's the whole series boxset! Now this is the same price you can pick up the 24 boxset for at some places so it is hardly an across the board monopoly, but it still IS a small demographic of buyers and not long term ones either. Apart from the few die hard fans of this stuff the large market is with a 2 year span for teenagers around 15 years of age. There is no continuation of sales. This is not an ego bruising thing here. I'm 22 and i love it but i'm not the majority.
I see a lot of youngn's complaining about the prices but you have no idea how far the availability of anime has come along in recent years. You'd be lucky to be able to get a hold of a legit anime VHS that wasn't hideously dubbed some 5-10 years ago. There were some 40,000 titles of ninja croll/ghost in the shell sold between when it came out and 1998.
Any business men would have to be plyed with a whole LOAD of drink and strippers to agree to invest in such a market at that time. Akira was the only one to break decent figures at some 75,000 but that really was the exception.
ADV have got a right to protect their business. You're arguing on very tenuous legal ground when it comes to HK imports. The few arguements being that you have access to anime that never gets released in the west and that the japanese market is in itself almost fully enclosed and so will not be as harmed as western sales. But then we aren't in japan we're in the west and if HK importing gets out of hand we go back to square one and you get to enjoy your anime as "amazing" quality realmedia 5meg files that are badly subbed.
I really think the good to honest compromise here would be for Anime distrubutors to invest in more boxsets like the nadesico one. At least then you can reach a market that isn't willing/able to fork out for the whole series individually. For example releasing the boxset a month or so after all the volumes have come out. That way the people who want their anime NOW and are willing to pay get it. And those that cant afford it aren't completely left out in the cold and aren't taken in by the allure of HK's so much
Sorry for the long post. I know it's my first one and i've tried not to step on too many toes to avoid getting flamed back into the stone age but there you go
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