The first shipment was a pre-order, made during the previous RightStuf Bandai sale, for the Haruhi Limited Edition boxsets 2-4 and joins the first Haruhi LE boxset in my anime DVD collection now. The second batch was a panicked order, a few weeks later as GENEON USA announced that they were closing down, for the first season of Black Lagoon, the Kannazuki no Miko and Kamichu! boxsets (with ADV’s 801 TTS Airbats and Bandai’s Onegai Twins also in this shipment).

RightStuf had offered terrific deals via studio sales for both Bandai Entertainment and GENEON USA products. In the case of the former, there were biannual (March and August) sales of up to 40% off for DVDs. For the latter, RightStuf was offering 10 GENEON releases for USD 50 or 25 for USD 100 in June and then a 35% discount for DVDs in August.

Both offered excellent value for money. Yet I only took Bandai’s bait. The GENEON 10 for 25 offer just seemed too cumbersome, and I was mildly put off by the 5% differential with Bandai later. Somehow I imagined that they would, one day, match Bandai’s offer. And besides I was also waiting for Black Lagoon and Black Lagoon: The Second Barrage to be released as a thinpak boxset before consolidating a humungous order under a sale that never came. In the end, I ended up paying full price for the GENEON order, the blow softened by the grace of RightStuf’s GotAnime? membership discount. While Bandai got a lower profit margin from my purchase, they had succeeded in repeatedly overcoming my not inconsiderable powers of procrastination rather too easily for my wallet’s liking.

Of course, Bandai had an advantage because of how much I was caught up in the Haruhi craze. But, with a speedy release, they did not just manage to ride the craze in just a nick of time but also actively fanned it further. I absolutely loved the antics of the ASOS Brigade and the moment Patricia Lee, channelling the Divinity of Haruhi Herself, said: ‘I’m cool with fans who download the series but please buy the DVD when it comes out.’ Cute girl, with divine power, saying please oh so nicely oh melting cannot resist I obey my master! GENEON’s marketing did not quite manage to capture my attention in the same way. But at least they did send out a bunch of threatening but legally dubious letters tarring its most likely customers with U R T3H CRIMINALZ.

It’s strongly contested and still uncertain if downloaders are indeed an anime distributor’s most likely customers but, as others have pointed out, who spends extra cash to buy Limited Edition goods of series that they’ve never seen before? The LE is a necessary marketing tool for Japanese distributors since most Japanese anime makes its debut on TV or cable and can be easily recorded by its viewers. Fansubbers and BitTorrent reproduce this effect in markets outside Japan by effectively making anime ‘free to air’. The marketing question then becomes how to induce fans who have the AVIs (or increasingly MKVs) to buy The Real Thing.

LE stuff, with their special packaging and assorted undownloadable goodies like mini-pencilboards, iron-ons, physical chara song CDs, pillow cases etc., helps to reduce the substitution effect of fansubs by increasing the otaku utility of the DVD (and its assorted goodies) relative to the fansub. This is not to claim that LEs are a marketing silver bullet. In my case, I’ll probably sit out the Lucky Star LEs and wait for the thinpak boxset. Unless they are giving out the chara Nendriods with the animal ears. orz

The previous two paragraphs were predicated on the assumption that fansubs and DVDs are competing with each for market share. Generally this assumption leads to another one: that the zero marginal cost of fansubs represent a threat to the DVD market share and an existential threat to the anime DVD industry. Yet downloaders still buy DVDs. Anime distributors often dismiss this as an abnormality or aberration, arguing that their sales would be higher if they weren’t being cannibalized by fansubs. This is certainly logical, based on the assumptions above, and can be supported by empirical facts – I haven’t bought everything that I downloaded and there are fans who have never bought a single DVD at all. In the world of music, it’s been reported that only 38% of those who download Radiohead’s latest album were prepared to pay for it. But turning this argument on its head, it could be said that 38% of downloaders paid for it despite them being under absolutely no legal obligation to do so.

Then there is the argument that downloading can have (but not always so) market creating effects, i.e. people becoming customers because they downloaded a product, as reported by this piece of research by the Canadian Intellectual Property Policy Directorate.

Leaving aside the moral economy of fandom (which I believe can be a powerful marketing tool if correctly tapped into), my top reasons for buying DVDs include (1) rewatching in higher quality, (2) backup against disastrous HDD failure, (3) improving my fair use defence for retaining fansubs on HDD. Certainly I can’t think of an anime DVD that I’ve bought where I haven’t seen the fansub first. It’s quite likely that if the noose grows too tight and I give up on downloading fansubs, my purchases of anime DVDs will stop too.

But one little animeblogger isn’t really much evidence of the market creation effects of fansubs (N=1 is waaay below any N-size confidence level). However if we can market ourselves to the anime distributors as well as Bandai has marketed to me, perhaps the relationship can become somewhat less confrontational and the discourse less shrill. I feel (and hope that) it will be helpful for fandom’s image if animebloggers like ourselves post more about our purchases, particularly of DVDs. I realize that some animebloggers see this as the swaggering of ‘epenis’, bragging, boasting etc. Certainly sometimes it is true, but posting about purchases is not intrinsically an obnoxious act – after all, tjhan claims that most animebloggers are docile grazers, generally a nice, genial lot.

Anime distributors may not like us much, but they will certainly like our spending dollars and evidence of our dollars being spent on their goodies. Lo and behold, the otaku yen has even induced the townsfolk of Washinomiya to, at least, hide their misgivings and roll out the welcome mat to the A(kihabara)-Boys.

One day, by the AWESOME power of the Church of Moyism, we will not have live in fear of yet another witch hunt. In the meantime, RightStuf is having a 30% sale until 2 Dec!

©2012 hontou ni sou omou?. All Rights Reserved.

I decided to pick up this series after it was mentioned by Omni but has Matthew has blogged it (there are still four DVD-only eps that weren’t covered though) and I don’t have a real character focus, I’m just going to go fanboy over one of the series’ supporting characters – the gorgeous and foxy Benten-sama.

Really beautiful design elements – the green hair, tail and foxy ears were unexpectedly cute and matched well with her abalaster skin, framed by her provocative white top (of almost lack of it) that floats behind her too in a traditional reference that is common in Chinese art as well. The long wide sleeves of black and orange match her bell-bottom trousers and miniskirt – the latter reveals just a peek of her upper thighs, making the outfit all the more sensuous. She’s barefoot – so that solves the eternal female problem of “What shoes should I wear with this?” Love her accessories as well – the multiple rings and ear-rings give her a grungey rocker chick feel while the latter are referential objects to the other members of her ‘band’ – the Seven Lucky gods.

This is a reminder of how an earlier episode was centred on Matsuri and Miko searching for their runaway shrine god, Yashima-sama who had a bit of godly mid-life crisis and who fanboyism of Benten-sama inspired him to try and start his own band.

This seat taken?

I thought it was lovely of her to tease Yurie-sama a bit to get her out of her funk. Yurie-sama’s little moods are also part of her charm – it shows the good and bad sides of her middle schooler that we’ve probably displayed ourselves when we were that age.

Staying cheerful for the sake of those who believe in the kami.

Since the kami can’t pray to kami, they rely on ourselves and our friends.

See ya!

Fanboy!

This was a lovely concert, it was a relatively slow ballad and I would have loved to see Benten-sama play her zither, rock-guitar style. Oh, I’d dearly love to see her jam with Yuki! Speaking of St Nagato-chi, every concert snippet that I’ve seen in anime after having seen Live Alive simply pales in comparison to Haruhi’s ENOZ. They could just have a DVD of music videos in various MV styles and I’d still lap it all up!

Speaking of lapping merchandise up, it’s great that Kamichu! has been licensed – looking forward to picking up a boxed set (please have a boxed set!!) sometime in the future. Currently sitting at no.2 on my DVD purchase list after the forthcoming GITS: SAC 2nd Gig boxed set.

©2012 hontou ni sou omou?. All Rights Reserved.