2007: The Year in Anime

I was doing my usual perusal of the anime news sites this morning when it occurred to me that anime this last year has changed drastically. The big issue of course, is that Geneon Entertainment’s operations were shut down by their Japanese parent company back in October. Many fans who were buying Karin, Hellsing Ultimate, Black Lagoon and The Story of Saiunkoku were hung out to dry with the news. I was buying two of those shows and had completed each to volume three. It’s enough of an investment in an anime series that to be unable to complete it at this stage is by God annoying.

Not only this, but I have noticed that the good stuff that we used to be able to expect to come from Bandai Entertainment, ya know, stuff like Wolf’s Rain, or Yukikaze… that stuff completely dried up this year. Thankfully, ADV and Funimation are doing a fine job of filling in the gap with anime that I want to buy, but more and more titles lately are so… ensconced in what’s popular in the Japanese market. It was more entertaining for me to see what would happen when studios would design shows specifically around the idea of marketing them in North America. That’s how we ended up with sublimely cool things like Samurai Champloo.

Geneon’s disappearance from the anime industry isn’t the only bad news we’ve had of the year. Bandai Visual USA released a ridiculous catalog this year, filled with shows that no one would pay the new MSRP for. There are shows that are worth 50$ for two episodes, I’d gladly pay that for Hellsing Ultimate, or anything that has ever had a pen touched to it by Shirow Masamune. Bandai Visual USA though, decided it would be a great idea to start to release titles like Demon Prince Enma and ask 40$ for two episodes. This is only a small portion of its mistakes for the year. When Geneon stopped its distribution, Bandai Visual USA also lost its point of distro, and so began releasing things from its website only, and eventually they found other means of distro, but the retailers that carry their titles are still limited, and didn’t include Amazon.com for quite some time.

Funimation and ADV films have had a decent year from my perspective on things. Funimation has released most of the titles I’ve purchased this year, including Mushishi, Beck and Tsubasa, just to name a few. I’ve also been on a hiatus from purchasing titles from ADV Films for a while, while their releases have always been decent, they had a bad year in 2005 with several sound glitches on their DVDs and that made it hard to convince me to purchase ADV titles, also ADV just wasn’t releasing things I was interested in until this year came around and they announced that they had licensed Red Garden and had acquired the license for the second season of Ah My Goddess.

Every release from both Funimation and ADV this year made me happy, both as an anime fan, and as a collector.

Anyone else that released anything in terms of anime this year… well I’m sorry, but I didn’t buy your titles. I suppose that says something in itself, doesn’t it? I did take a look at a couple of media blaster’s releases from 2006, Otogi Zoshi and Genshiken. I will definitely be purchasing Genshiken and Genshiken 2 when it’s released. Otogi Zoshi… I’m still undecided on, but it has been worth renting from Netflix so far. The point is though, no one else released much of interest this year. I would love to see this change for 2008 because, now that Geneon is gone, the other studios have big shoes to fill. I hope that 2008 is the year that the anime industry will re-examine the North American market, because it is so very different from the Japanese market. What sells in Japan will not sell to the anime fandom here, and none of us are so sick that we’ll pay Akihabara prices for a DVD. It just won’t happen. I hope the anime importers at least learn this much and keep the hobby from dying a slow, horrible death.

Geneon and the North American Anime Industry.

It’s so sad.

Geneon Entertainment is no longer shipping new anime titles as of last Tuesday. Amazon gave me a brief ray of hope that I would be able to acquire volume four of Karin, a series I started purchasing because my kids think it’s hilarious. But alas, my hopes were dashed. I’m disappointed that I won’t be able to finish buying the series, but I suppose that’s the way of things.

According to more recent reports, many of the major North American distributors of anime are showing a profit loss this year. Anime seems to be on a down turn. As it stands, there are only three companies remaining that will buy licenses for shows that they did not produce in Japan themselves, and one of those three companies is still clawing its way kicking and screaming from the loss it took on what was a really successful series for them. Unfortunately, sales did not cover what they paid to license the series, in spite of the fact that the show was one of the more popular releases of the year.

What it seems to mean is that anime isn’t as popular as it once was. It always has been a niche market, and I love my anime collection. I will probably keep collecting anime until I can no longer get my hands on DVD’s of shows that I like. But, it seems like that day is coming sooner than I expected.

With Geneon, in particular, I have always loved their releases. The quality of their releases always made it worth spending the extra money to buy a Geneon title, but unfortunately there have only been three series out of the piles of anime that I buy that Geneon released in the last year. One of those was Karin, the other is Hellsing Ultimate. Fortunately for me, Hellsing is a popular franchise, even outside of the pure otaku fandom, and there are rumors that Funimation will be picking up the license to that property. If there’s a Funimation rep reading this, let me just say to you: Please do! I will run out and buy the rest of Hellsing Ultimate, even if it is only one hour long episode a disc, because that series is worth every penny. Among my friends, I can guarantee at least three buying customers. I know that doesn’t help much, but I will keep my fingers crossed that the rest of Hellsing Ultimate will be released in North America.

As for Karin, Karin is an extremely niche title. I love the series, my kids love it, but it’s not something that has mass appeal like Hellsing, and I know it. I doubt that anyone will pick it up, and that makes me sort of sad. Geneon was there for us to depend on for titles like this and given that all pending releases from Geneon USA have been put on indefinite hiatus, I suspect that we will not be seeing any more shows like this any time soon.

It’s just as well. Markets change with the times. Geneon took a gamble and lost. It’s what happens in the business world.

Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad North American Release!

I got my hands on a copy of Beck today! I’m so excited I can’t tell you! I couldn’t wait to grab my pocket knife and carefully slice open the plastic covering the disc. Inside is a black guitar pick with the Beck logo inscribed on the front, on the back it says “Music is life!” Which, as any fan of this series knows is the key premise of the show.

The big worry I had was that the opening and closing credits would not be in tact. I checked those out real fast, then sat down to watch a little bit before dinner. So just so everyone knows, I have NOT spent much time with this DVD. What I can tell you is as follows:

The opening credits are in tact! I am very pleased that the music for Beck is still “Hit in America”. I hadn’t seen confirmation of this in any articles on the release of this series so far, so for any readers who’ve happened upon this and were wondering… yes, the Beat Crusaders are still a part of the show.

The closing credits appear to have been modified ever so slightly. There is a glitch at the end of the opening credits on the first episode. You can hear where the sound has been edited to make the closing credits shorter and the visual of Kurt Cobain at the end of the episode doesn’t stay on screen as long as it did in the Japanese release, but Miester’s awesomely cool song, “My World Down” is still in place at the end of the show.

Other than that, I picked through a few scenes in the first episode and felt that the voice casting that I heard was appropriately chosen. More later as I get the opportunity to spend time with this awesome DVD!

The photo is of the DVD sitting on my dining room table

Update: 7-10-07

Sorry this took so long. This is probably frustrating as today is the official release date for this DVD. I did finally get to sit down and watch it though and I am very, very pleased with Funimation’s treatment of Beck. I pray that they will do an equally excellent job with Mushishi. This series is simply outstanding, and one that belongs in the collection of every anime hobbyist, otaku or dabbler.

Densha Otoko

In my Japanese class this quarter, I was introduced to a Japanese television series called Densha Otoko, or Train Man. The story is sweet and wonderful. The main character is an Otaku. Otaku in Japan are loosely what we might think of as a geek, the primary difference between geeks and otaku is that otaku are more socially outcast than geeks are here in America, and they’re geeky to a level that is almost disturbing.

Unfortunately, we weren’t able to finish watching Densha Otoko in class, so I got a copy of the series and finished watching the rest of it today as a way to celebrate the end of my quarter and the completion of finals.

They don’t make television shows like this in North America anymore. It’s a truly wonderful story, sweet, romantic and so purely innocent and beautiful that you find yourself falling in love with the characters. It’s the kind of thing you could actually sit down and watch with the kids, and have your whole family enjoy.

I spent the whole show rooting for Densha along with his pals on the forum in the show. It was a great ride. Probably the best live action, non-anime title I’ve seen come out of Japan. So good, in fact, that I want more.

Man that was good.

We’ve been busy!

It’s been a busy few weeks for me. I got sucked into reading Plato’s Republic for my philosophy class and now I’m reading Descartes. Or at least… I’m ditching the reading of Descartes that I am supposed to be doing, in order to bring you this post!

The democrats won many seats in congress on November 7th. That was sad. Most disappointing for me is that Maria Cantwell won again, and no matter how hard I try I can’t seem to vote that woman out of office. Even though she is almost single handedly responsible for the increase that we are about to receive in our power bill that may drive several Washingtonians out of their current lifestyles due to their inability to be able to afford expensive wind-power, which power companies are now required by law to use here in our state. I mean… forget the fact that Washington doesn’t get all that much wind in areas where that power would be most useful… forget the fact that we already have hydro out the wahzoo. No no, we need a more expensive form of “renewable” power sources. Sure it’s renewable, as long as you can figure out how to make the wind blow hard enough to turn the windmills… We can also forget the fact that the RIAA has her in their pocket. Let’s just forget all of it.

In addition to all of the world wide weirdness, such as K. Fed and Britney Spears getting divorced over text meassaging, I’ve also been spending more money on my anime collection. I updated the anime collection page today so you can see what new things I’ve blown money on this month. I’ve also started my xmas shopping and have yet to finish my birthday shopping (even though many of those birthdays have long since passed… ) and really… that’s about it.

Anime Night

It’s anime night again! Tonight’s features are as follows:

Macross 7
Ah My Goddess
Paranoia Agent
Bleach
Death Note

And.. whatever other random things we decide to watch out of boredom.

Anime Night.

Just for the sake of random weirdness, I figured I’d post tonight’s anime night lineup. For those who are unfamiliar with this tradition, I head down to the basement to watch anime with the kids on our 100″ home theater screen. Anime night is only in Japanese with subtitles. This was done to give my children no options about reading over the course of the week. Since I began this tradition my children’s reading grades have improved astronomically, I encourage all parents with children that are anime fans to start just such a tradition in their home, though probably not with my choices of titles because my kids are older and are better equipped to handle blood and guts.

1. Trinity Blood episodes 3 and 4
2. Macross 7 episodes 1 and 2.
3. Trigun episodes 9 and 10
4. Gun X Sword episodes 9 and 10.
5. Ah My Goddess episodes… um… I forget *chuckle*

Trigun Remix Volume 2

Geneon’s releases of Trigun Remix are coming out so fast that I can scarcely keep up with them. I purchased this volume at the end of September and volume 3 of this series is already out!

This will be a short review because I think I covered this release fairly well in my original review of the first volume. If you’re buying this release, it’s because you’ve already seen Trigun and loved it. The 5.1 dub track is nice, but this series really could have benefitted from some video clean up. The only news about this volume really was that there was a slight hiccup with the release that didn’t cause any delays because several shipments that were sent out early had the wrong cover art in the packaging.

Trinity Blood Volume 1

Funimation has finally issued the first DVD of a series that I caught when it was being fansubbed and I am so glad! Trinity Blood is a post-apocalyptic story that follows Father Abel Nightroad as he tries to save the world from an invasion of vampires.

Visuals: This is a Gonzo title, I have nothing but wonderful things to say about Gonzo’s visuals and I tend to buy anime simply because they were produced by Gonzo. The only real exception to that has been Speed Grapher. I’m only avoiding Speed Grapher because it’s not a series that I can sit down and watch with the kids. Trinity Blood is a bit graphic in the violence category so I wouldn’t recommend that you let young children watch this series, but it’s great fun with older kids because the violence is just graphic enough for you to realize that something really bad has happened without going over the top.

Sound: No 5.1 Japanese track! I’m so bummed about this! Maybe there is a 5.1 Japanese track on the limited edition release, but the standard single disc release does not have it. It does, however have a 5.1 English track which I haven’t listened to at all. Still, the stereo track of Trinity Blood is great, even if its not a technological show off.

Story: Very engaging. Father Nightroad has many secrets under that Vatican issued trenchcoat of his, I hope that the series continues to keep you guessing about him and about the political drama that’s going on in the Vatican while Father Nightroad is traipsing about the globe.

Summary: Trinity Blood is a welcome addition to my anime library. It blends the world of darkness with light so well that it makes it a great title for anyone who is looking to introduce their kids to the horror genre without diving straight into creepy things like Alien or gory things like Gantz.

X Remix Box Set

X (TV) is based on a manga written by CLAMP. X tells the story of the end of the world and the fight to save the Earth from apocalypse between the Dragons of Heaven and the Dragons of Earth. It primarily follows young Kamui as he tries to find his way through his destiny to become a dragon of heaven or a dragon of earth and the conflict that ensues after he makes his choice.

Visuals: Absolutely gorgeous. The artwork for this series stays very true to CLAMP’s characteristic style and flows beautifully. If there is use of CG in this series, it does not stick out like a sore thumb as it tends to do in other anime.

Sound: I tend to skip the English dub for most releases, but I gave the English dub a listen for an episode and found that I wasn’t too disturbed by it. The voice casting fits with the characters well enough that it was enjoyable to watch in English, but I do prefer the Japanese voice work. Musically, the show has theme that blends perfectly to the story and the action that is currently happening on screen, overall not too distracting. The 5.1 surround is a rather nice addition for this particular release, which was not available on the earlier release of this series.

Packaging: This is my major complaint with this box set. If you’re going to pay over 100$ for a series, the box should be able to withstand a bit of use and I worry that this one won’t. The box is designed to look like the CLAMP artbook that was released for X, and while it is very appropriate the binding feels like its held together with tape. The DVDs lay in trays inside the cover of the “book” which hold the discs very well, but the mechanism that holds the trays together so that they fold out like pages seems questionable to me. If this box holds up for a couple of years of my watching the show I’ll be very happy with it, but we won’t know until that time comes.

I’m going to avoid talking about the story here other than to say that I think this series is great. I had to force myself to take it out of the DVD player and not put the next disc in so that I could get my homework done. Wonderful series, and I highly recommend it to anyone who is looking for some action and drama in their anime.