Funimation Catches on; Acquired new Gainax series
Tuesday 21 October 2008 @ 3:44 am | By Ben 'FBINinja' Schmidt 12 Comments
In a move that i can only say to as "This should have started ages ago". Funimation has signed a deal and is now offering Shikabane Hime online with official subtitles on their Website, Youtube, Joost.com, and Hulu.com. They are also offering a download to own option at $1.99 an ep.
Now the reason I say that this should have started happening ages ago was, well just look at the past poll results. 67% of YOU, the reader download anime through "illegal" means, which, I’m not judging you or anything, hurts the American anime business, which may in turn hurt the source, Japan. Even though I know for a fact that anime was going just fine without our help for years. With dubbing and productions companies going under the past year, you can’t cover that up with the financial crisis, I personally blame it on terrible business strategies; expensive dvds, releases MONTHS after the original series came out, horrible choices for releases. Its only natural to lick your wounds and start fixing things. Funimation came up with a good move on this one, even though it probably won’t stop majority of the downloaders who enjoy anime for free, its still a step in the correct direction in my humble opinion.
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Abraham 'Velcor' Duarte
David 'KidKobun' Bruno
Ivan 'Nahu' Lozano
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Sol
i agree, the whole situation is a downward spiral. licensing companies delay releases and sometimes release shoddy material at high prices, so people turn to downloading. downloading doesn’t turn a profit, so prices go up and releases become less frequent, or the company tanks altogether. moves like this could be the start of breaking that cycle.
This is good. Funi is one of the biggest and they have been doing more to expand. I agree that download b/c I can’t find it in a brick and mortar store, but if it isn’t released yet in my zone, I don’t thing it should be considered illegal.
I have to agree. This should have started so long ago. Funimation isnt the first company to try this. The interesting thing is the Japanese studios themselves have started trying to reach the american consumer directly. If that’s not a call to action for american publishers, then nothing else will be.
Good on funimation!
Yay! Official subs! I hope they’re free. I wouldn’t mind sitting through a few ads to watch.
>Official subs
OH MAI GAH
If you are looking for someone to blame, blame Japan. The buisness decisions must be approved by them, qualty material is withheld for fears of their domestic product will be hurt from imports (yes, your 4 episode dvd at $24.99 is a bargin for Japanese). Its a crying shame for the US distribution companies because they end up getting the shaft at both ends. Their sales suck, their product is low quality, and ultimately Japan has no idea what they are doing in our markets.
Nice to hear a different perspective, Sorin, do you happen to work in the industry?
In any case, Japan’s anime industry needs to learn a bit about economies of scale. They could lower the price of DVD’s in Japan, release at the same time as in the west and offer free streams and paid downloads for their subtitled episodes. Thats how you grow the market.
Well if it’s subs, it might be worth watching with ads, but since it is funimation, I feel they’ll find some way to screw it up.
At one time I did, thankfully no longer. If I remember correctly, the digital downloads were suggested 4 years ago… Japanese producers didn’t know much about them and inherently feared giving up digital distribution rights even to their US subsidiaries… The whole thing was ridiculous…
This whole situation is really freaky. I looked to anime as a means to get out of this bizarre world, but it’s just being used against us! T^T
And, yeah, I wouldn’t mind watching ONE or TWO ads for my anime. As long as they’re good ads, like some nice video game or anime ads. Yeah, those would be nice… I’m asking for too much, aren’t I?
I dont think its an unreasonable demand.
Interesting.