Bandai Entertainment to stop localisation | Japanator.com: anime news, original features, and weird stories from Japan, updated daily! Damn.
I read about this last night, totally wasn't expecting this. Hope somebody picks up the Gurren Lagann manga, because the wait between releases has been painful enough as it is.
While that certainly didn't help anime's popularity in the States pretty much plummeted after the DBZ era ended. I really hope someone else can pick up the Gundam license now*that's really the only thing Bandai has that I like to watch*
The cheap DVD's yes but the blu-ray's will continue as planned since they are being handled by the Japanese directly.
I feel so bad for Syd Mead :/ So close to the show he worked on reaching an English speaking audience, only for this to happen. I blame this on Nichijou, because it ruins everything it comes in contact with; i'm looking at you Kyoto Animation and your poor sales returns.
When your products are stupidly priced it should be expected. I love to watch anime but FUCK paying for it new. These days, if it's not on Netflix, I don't watch it.
I hate to agree but $30-50 for a single dvd?!You can get a whole season for close to that price these days.
Honestly, if it was piracy that did them in then we'd be hearing the same thing about other companies like Funimation, Aniplex, Sentai Filmworks, Yen Press, etc. I mainly blame the way they handled their licenses. While Funi and Aniplex release full or half-season sets, Bandai still sticks to the 4 episode volumes format, for prices that are much more then expected, and THEN releases it all in a set afterwards. It's hurts more because we don't get much news on the licenses they get in the first place. While I'm glad that they're going to switch to digital distribution instead of just out-right stopping everything and that they're at least going to keep producing DVDs and manga for the licenses they already have, it's still not really the fault of the consumer only.
We are. They've all gone through tough times. Hell, look what happened to ADV. Bandai might have a much more direct linked revenue stream to their products and financial backing from their parent company, but they might not be able to localize at the same scale and cost as other companies, and thus it's not cost effective for them to do so. They haven't said these projects will never see the light of day, only that they'll look to license instead of localize themselves. We could see the market for manga/anime shrink and the number of companies dwindle as the weak are consumed by larger firms or simply go out of business. In the end, I imagine we'll end up with a very niche industry more like it was 15-20 years ago.
In a recession most people can't afford $35 to$ 40 dollars a dvd. Many waited for the cheaper full collection versions that cost $10 to $20 more but had all the episodes. It was always cheaper than buying them individually for only 3 or 4 episodes per disk. But that meant the companies weren't making money on the single disk dvd's. Most anime companies were still using the tired marketing model from the late 80's and it just doesn't work anymore. Heck even funimation has gone for the cheaper series collection style versions to stay in the market. Most of their competitors have gone under from using the old price scheme. People just cant afford the $102 dollar for 12 episodes set collections like they used to charge in the 90's(Yes that was how much the old Tenchi Muyo ova collections used to go for). Not when they can get the entire series of Stargate Atlantis with several seasons worth of episodes for almost the same price on amazon. Anime also doesn't quite have the same status it once had 10 years back. It's not new and edgy any more.
I get the impression that Bandai Ent's worst enemy was its own parent. Aside from the bonkers fact that they apparently had to pay them for licences despite being part of the same company and that they were made to compete for a while with another branch, they probably coulden't tell thier overlords that thier shitty 80s business model doesen't work outside of Japan anymore in the same way that third party distributors like Funi can.
So Gundam could still be released just by Funimation or Sentai instead of Bandai? Hypothetically ofcourse.
Well this sucks. Probably a stupid question but does this mean that Bang Zoom! is also going under too?
