Archive for the “Polls” Category

Earlier this week, RightStuf announced they would begin taking pre-orders for “Otaku Collegiate” t-shirts and hooded sweatshirts that would become available at the end of July and feature an unlabeled box of Pocky. That news combined with Aardvark Tees following me on Twitter jogged my mind about anime- and Japanese-related apparel. Anyone who has attended a convention in recent years has probably seen someone wearing a “looking for a Japanese girlfriend” or another cheesy phrase shirt.

Personally I would almost never buy such a shirt because (a) I already have a bunch of shirts, many of them from events I have partaken in, and (b) most of them are crap or have pithy phrases on them. I believe the only anime-related shirt I own, aside from a couple club ones, is the monochrome Eva shirt I got from an issue of Shonen Ace. Anyway, I felt this was a good subject for a new poll so feel free to vote in the sidebar.

For months, various industry commentators have said Japanese publishers had to change their strategies to combat wide fansub profileration and GDH has stepped up to the plate by announcing that two GONZO titles, The Tower of Druaga and Blassreiter, will be put on three different streaming video sites (Crunchyroll, YouTube, and BOST TV) at the same time as their premieres next month. In my 2008 predictions post, I posited that a Japanese studio would release English-subbed episodes near simultaneously with its original airing  – a statement I qualified at the time as a possible “crazy failure” but I’ll take wins however I can get ‘em.

The question now is how this will be implemented on each service. The highest free quality out of the three websites would seem to come from BOST but YouTube has a boatload more traffic and reach than the other two, mainly due to its embedding option. Crunchyroll is buddy-buddy with select publishers but pretty much everyone else hates them. I’m pretty sure the subtitle text will be the same across the uploads and hopefully someone fluent in Japanese (i.e. not me) will critique its accuracy compared to fansubbed efforts. I will likely check out episodes on each service when this rolls out in a couple weeks but you can react to this right now in my first poll in a while. Anyway, this is a great step in trying to get more official eyeballs that will hopefully convert into sales and I hope that it succeeds so other studios will do something similar.

I just got this month’s issue of Newtype USA in the mail today and was a bit surprised when I began flipping through it. Among their regular two-page series spreads were eight consecutive vertical spreads (16 pages in total) that composed the Japanese half of their Anime Invasion ‘08 theme. This caught me off guard since I don’t remember them doing this in the past. When I read a magazine I might be fine turning it sideways to read it maybe once or even twice but it gets to be uncomfortable if it happens on a regular basis. I might get used to it but it’s bugging me right now.

On a positive note, I was glad that many of the “new style” layouts involve currently airing anime such as Bamboo Blade, Ghost Hound, Dragonaut, and Rental Magica. I’m also making a poll about this topic so let your voice be heard there as well as in the comments about whether you prefer vertical or horizontal photo spreads or simply don’t care.

After the jump: some more vertical spread pics and, for comparison, the two horizontal layouts that bookend them in the volume.
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The poll about Newtype USA and pricing has been growing old in the sidebar so I felt a new question was well overdue. I wanted to see the method of behavior in which people typically watch anime series so the question is “Which of the following best describes your anime watching behavior?” The options are watching week-to-week, marathoning or multi-batching the series on fansubs, buying the DVDs as they come out, waiting for the box set, or just watching it on TV.
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When I was over in Germany I saw two different versions of AnimaniA, the rough equivalent to Newtype USA, for sale: a DVD-edition for 8.50 Euro (~$11.88) and a DVD-less version for 4.80 Euro (~$6.71). One can also subscribe to DVD and DVD-less versions of the magazine. This made me think about Newtype USA, its current $12.98 newsstand price, and the possibility of a similar thing being implemented.
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While in Germany, I have looked for cheap anime DVDs that I also had at home so I could compare technical details such as compression rates as well as more thing like dub voices. So far I have grabbed volume 3 of .hack//SIGN and School Rumble Vol. 1 (should get the R1 version by the time I get home) as well as one disc each of Inuyasha, Shaman King, Tenchi Muyo, and King of the Hill. I can’t wait to hear the German version of Boomhauer.

Also on the manga front, I bought the first volumes of Honey and Clover and Love Hina to accompany the Japanese copies I have. This brings me to the new poll question: Do you own multiple physical versions of any anime or manga? This is meant to exclude fansubs or scanlations. After the jump: final results from the month-long “classic in 10 years” poll that I should have ended a while ago.
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The back-and-forth between Hidoshi of That’s Not Kanon and the anonymous author of Ani-Nouto about classic anime made me think about not exactly what should be consider a classic, but rather how old must be something be before becoming a candidate in the first place. The argument over what is and is not a classic is a subjective one while devising a method for making something a candidate for classification is a step toward objectivity. So the following is my suggested method of qualifying anime for consideration of classifying them as classics.
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Look at the first volume covers of Noein for Japan (left) and the US (right). Assuming you know nothing about the plot or characters, what impressions do you get about the series just from looking at the front of the box? This anime is different from a majority of licensed series in that its box art greatly differs from depending on whether it’s from region 1 or region 2 instead just sharing the same art and putting an English title and description over it.
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All right, I came up a better poll question than the boring name one that I started out with. The question is: do you buy used anime at all (B&M and/or online)? “Used”, or “pre-viewed”, means that the case has been opened and the disc has been viewed at least once so unopened DVDs from eBay do not count. The inspiration for this particular question was my visit to a Suncoast store this week; comparisons between it and other B&M used sellers are after the jump.
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