Why Anime Eats Hollywood'$ Pie
Between the music industry (Sony BMG's snafu) and Hollywood's plunging B.O. receipts, there is one aspect of entertainment that never seems to wane, or at least, die a horrible death. Anime is that one place my colleagues can never seem to grasp and thus, I've noticed a flurry of articles as of late from Fortune and CNN Money regarding the state of anime and manga.
The recurring theme both articles resonate is that anime embraces it's fans/viewers/consumers and doesn't hunt down/mame/threaten them. Actually, the fansubbers are seen as gatekeepers in the eyes of the anime community. I can go on and on regarding their ethos and culture, but the bottom line is, they are the grassroots marketing machine that anime companies don't need to pay exorbitant amounts of monies to run (instead they get free schwag - lots and lots of it). They are, quite frankly, the perfect marketing department.
Now, anime is a completely different monster regarding how and what to program in the US. I've been fortunate enough to be one of those rare programmers who knew what to program - I'm an anime fan. I knew what to put on the air (even the ones I couldn't put on the air -- you bad boy hentai watchers!). But, the one factor that movie studios, major record labels and cable operators always overlook are the customers. They simply don't want to understand the concept of "give and take" - giving viewers what they want and taking their advice in the process. That's what makes anime so different from the rest of the entertainment industry. With anime and manga, there are frequent mashups and AMVs (anime music videos) that would seriously send heads spinning at movie studios. So, instead of demonizing their customers, anime distributors allow fansubbers to do what others consider illegal and until the title is licensed by a major US distributor, they keep on subbing.
I can tell you personally that it has helped me figure out what titles to look out for. And how can this be applied to the music and movie industry? Well for starters, you can stop putting those copy-protection software.
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Comments
"Hollywood's plunging box office..." Yet another negative lead-in based on box office revenue being down by six percent? I have a hard time figuring out how that can be defined as "plunging".
In any business, sales ebb and flow. This should be especially true in an industry where all the products are new and untested every year, like they are in the movie business.
In fact, it's amazing the numbers stay as consistent as they do.
Posted by: Randy Purcell on December 15, 2005 at 03:52 PM