Posts Tagged “Commentary”

Drawn by TMO

This spring season features the highest amount of premiering anime being streamed legally with more than a half dozen premiering series currently “simulcast” on the Internet. Most of them are on Crunchyroll – Saki, Hayate no Gotoku!!, Natsu no Arashi, Shangri-la, Mainichi Kaa-san, and Ristorante Paradiso – while FUNimation is following up Shikabane Hime with Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood except this time, they are restricting the new episodes to their video portal.

The ball got rolling in spring 2008 when Gonzo GDH placed Tower of Druaga and Blassreiter onto YouTube, BOST, and Crunchyroll (CR); Strike Witches went onto those same three services that July. October saw CR play host to premiering series Linebarrels of Iron and FUNimation push Shikabane Hime onto YouTube, Hulu, Joost, and their newly launched video portal. Crunchyroll added Shugo Chara and Skip Beat in November; in January, they took on Gintama, Natsume Yujincho and Naruto Shippuden, the latter of which Viz also streamed through Naruto.com, Hulu, and Joost. Crunchyroll added Hitman Reborn in March.

One of the things that worries content providers about putting their video portals is whether the sites will actually generate revenue. It seems that Crunchyroll has gotten off to a good start by establishing an attractive platform for foreign content owners to get their properties global reach – a Yomiuri article about TAF 2009 relays the following figures for Crunchyroll: 4.5 million visitors who were often exposed to advertising, 1.5 millions of hours viewed monthly, and almost 15,000 paying memberships at $6.95 a month ($100,000+ of regular revenue).

On its about page, Crunchyroll says “[p]roceeds from the subscription service are shared among [their] content publishers”. It’s assumed that a portion of advertising revenue also goes toward that pool of creators. The question is whether the allocated distribution is based on a uniform rate or dependent of video views. That distinction could be be important for a studio in financial troubles like GONZO, which is undergoing restructuring.
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It seems like nary a few months pass before another one of Scott’s entries into his Anime Almanac weblog spawns a multitude of partisan objection. The latest incident involves an challenge between himself and the Reverse Thieves, whom I don’t regularly read but are apparently well-known, to confront each other’s comfort boundaries. For Scott, it was yaoi manga (specifically, the two-volume Gerard & Jacques) and for the not-quite-Robin Hoods, it was Kodomo no Jikan. (I have read neither work involved in the challenge so I have no opinion subjectively on either.)

The back-and-forth between author and readers (not between the two blogs) mainly focused on Scott’s reaction to a rape scene in the second volume of his assignment – he has since written an addendum on the matter – but there remained something in his original final paragraphs which I still felt the need to formally comment on in writing.
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Chris Beveridge posted a complaint Monday about the lackluster marketing and solicitation efforts of ADV Films and FUNimation to the broader non-hardcore audience. I personally haven’t had as bad a problem with on-box descriptions but I’ve had more of an issue with minimalistic ads, such as the above from the June issue of PiQ that I got in the mail late last week.

At first, I was like “what the hell is Shattered Angels?” and the one-line copy – “Why Choose?” – wasn’t helping me understand what the hell they were trying to advertise. It took a quick search engine query to divine that Shattered Angels is actually Kyoshiro to Towa no Sora under another name. (I later noticed that the image credit mentioned the production committee in the lower left corner but tiny, grey text on a white background is not very readable to the average eye.)
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Over the next two weeks starting tomorrow the 14th up to Christmas Day, I will posting a daily reflection on a particular event in anime or manga that had a lasting effect on me in the past year. (Look for the tag ‘12daysofchristmas‘.) This effort will be part of the general ABC postings Owen mentioned in his post yesterday. I might include some of the anime I watched into the list but in recent brainstorming sessions, I’ve come up with more things I did than things I saw so I’m proceeding more down that path.
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Light Yagami is one of the more popular male characters in the anime/manga world right now (especially when paired with L in some yaoi doujin) but I wonder people should be rooting for an anti-hero that quite frankly acts like a bastard. I think that anyone who is familiar with Death Note is well aware about Light’s arrogance so I would like to write a little bit about his actions in relation to ethical theory.

I’ll start by highlighting an important part of Death Note’s premise in that there is a combination of objectivity and subjectivity. The notebook itself follows strict rules in carrying out deaths such as the person needing to be visualized by the Note user for the death to occur and the option of specifying the cause of death and details relating to it. It doesn’t care who is being targeted because it views each person as equal to the next one – a person is a person is a person. The person who writes the names and details into the notebook, however, will always be influenced in some way by their feelings, whether they be anger, fear, frustration, or greed. (Shinigami are assumed to impartial mainly because they don’t particularly care about human affairs and simply use the Death Notes for entertainment.)

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Over the next couple weeks, I am set to receive the first DVD volumes of Tsubasa Chronicle and Haruhi. One reason I preordered their initial releases was because I enjoyed both series when I watched them on fansubs and, to cite the “moral anime fan” line, I wanted to support the artists and studios involved. Another more curious reason was to hear for myself how the characters are voiced in English. Unfortunately, I almost always seem to worry that they won’t sound “right” – not in terms of faithfulness to the sounds of the original seiyuu, but rather if the new voices work with each other and appropriately and accurately convey the characters’ feelings.
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I was kicking around ifilm’s new beta site and found a trailer of PPD on there. It features dubbed voices of most of the main characters (”Becky, Himeko, et al.) and it was uploaded by ADVONLINE so it’s most likely official. It also introduces the characters similar to how the press release for the dub does (e.g. Rei is “The Heather”, Himeko “The Spaz”). This method continues for good effect up until the narrator reaches Kamineko, “the cat who lives in the soda machine who says he’s God”. Read the rest of this entry »