Reading Anime News Network I saw that there was a panel with the salacious title of “Fansubs: The Death of Anime” looking at the report, it seems a little less histrionic than usual, but there still doesn’t seem to be a discussion of other elements behind the supposed “Death of Anime”.
Underpaid Animators: The Death of Anime
Market Saturation: The Death of Anime
Live action children’s TV programming: The Death of Anime
Williams Street Studios: The Death of Anime
Single Disc TV releases: The Death of Anime
Over-valued licences: The Death of Anime
Of course these issues are harder for professionals to discuss in a public forum, as they probably don’t want to offend those people in the industry who would be under criticism. Or to do much self-analysis in public. Much easier to focus on things they have less control over. And that’s OK. There’s plenty of times I’ve had to allow tact dictate my behaviour professionally too.
What confuses me are the fans who don’t want to acknowledge or vocalise these other problems. And more importantly, industry “news” websites like Anime News Network don’t seem to either. I don’t know whether it’s because they are in a bubble and aren’t in touch with the video market as a whole (note: a lot of my perspective comes from spending 3 years dealing with every video distributor in the UK), or are just not wanting to bite the hand that feeds them.
That being said it may be they are very much in tune with the market to a certain extent, as the focus on piracy over market saturation was definitely the tune I heard from UK video industry bodies while I worked at Videolog. There’s a tendency in some businesses to look outwards rather inwards when dealing with problems, and the home entertainment industry is more guilty than most of this.
Regardless, the end result is we are left with this illusion that if only fansubs went away, Shawne Kleckner could build a Scrooge McDuck money bin, Shouji Murahama could afford to change GONZO’s name at least another 2 times a year and ADV could finally afford to make that live action Evangelion movie.
And that’s possibly more damaging than any piracy.