Monday, 09-Nov-2009 03:55:46 CST
Global
History of Anime
The US Anime Licensers
The US Anime licensers, naturally, hadn't
taken the failure of Minna Agechau to heart, nor had they been sitting
on their rear ends during this time. US Renditions, Streamline and
The Right Stuf International are quickly joined by Central Park
Media, AnimEigo, AD Vision and a handful of others. Over time, the
US market became moderately anime-aware as each month the back catalog
got noticeably fatter. Slowly, "big" titles are brought over ...
that is, slowly at first and then faster as time went on. For years,
it looked to some that the Japanese backlog was a bottomless pit
where shows could be had for a song if you just had the right approach.
Shows that you could release and make a significant return on your
investment. Of course, with the benefit of hindsight it's plain
that this was not to be the case forever.
While there are still some conspicuous holdout titles on the Japanese
side, much of the product worth releasing has already been either
released or is scheduled for release. And, what used to be a bargain
has now turned expensive. Very expensive. Surely, some of this was
due to the US currency as it dropped in value to about half of its
1980 levels, but as the raw supply shrank, bidding for the remaining
product went up. Some companies who decided they wanted it all didn't
help, either. At the same time, sales for released titles began
to drop. It is a case of a saturated market that we're just beginning
to feel now. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that the way that
US companies work started to be questioned. Some of the US anime
innovators are shifting their focus (like AnimEigo, who is now working
on Live Action product like the Lone Wolf and Cub series and US
Renditions, who is experimenting with licensing anime CD's) in an
effort to maintain market share.
 Central
Park Media is changing their focus in another way: a great deal
of effort appears to be going into dubbing most of their back catalog
(AnimEigo has been doing this for some time), but for the first
time there are titles appearing from them that are being released
dubbed only. In fact, Central Park Media and Manga Entertainment
have undertaken what might be the next logical step in the marketplace:
US-Japanese co-productions. The early results have been quite interesting:
CPM's "MD Geist II" has nice character design as well as color design,
and Manga Entertainment's "Ghost in the Shell" is selling like crazy
all over the US (For the record, it debuted on Billboard's Top Ten,
something unheard of for this small a market, good advertising or
not!
 As
of this writing, it's alleged to have actually hit number one, and
is certainly closing on the biggest selling anime title thus far:
Akira). The US anime industry could turn around easily with a big
hit and a new flood of interest ... or it could drop and take all
but the biggest anime companies with it. Streamline Pictures, for
example, signed a deal with Orion Home Video in 1995. By the middle
of 1996, Carl Macek was out of the loop with Orion. There's still
a Streamline, but it isn't doing anything new with anime anymore.
And, the Castle Cagliostro film has been acquired by Manga Entertainment
... one has to wonder if there are any more films that are going
this way. Manga Entertainment itself went through a period early
this year where a significantly reduced amount of product shipped
(they're back to full strength now). They have, however, announced
their intentions of bringing out a subtitled version of Giant Robo
shortly, and their release schedule is rapidly filling up. A part
of the problem is certainly the implosion of the US comic book market,
a problem which has gotten worse recently with Diamond buying Capital
City Distribution. Comic shops all over the country closed and continue
to close as the back issue market evaporated. While it isn't the
end, things could get very bad indeed.
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