アニ・ノート

The subject says it all, as they say: Random Curiosity is being shut down. I am habitually disappointed in the disposition of archives which Divine is going to keep at a separate domain. Big help, that, to my permalinks. And I think Maestro could have kept the old site around, dormant. Or perhaps not: bandwidth is not free even when serving essentially static content.

Two more notes:

1. 538 comments from well-wishers at the time of this writing. Scamp, you wanted to count comments? Can you pull in that much… do you feel lucky, punk? This is more than Miao has ever gotten; in fact more than Sankaku gets.

2. The other mainstay of AB, THAT, has successfuly navigated the transition from its founder Impz. I am certain Omni could have handled the succession better if he only wanted. However, Divine apparently wasn’t up to snuff.

UPDATE: Posts like this one started to roll in. Zyl says: “My sadness is tempered by how Omni is leaving us while he is still at the top of his game.” Kabitzin adds: “I also wonder what this means for Animeblogger.net which has been floundering for quite some time.”

Sixten says that

So I have faith that NIS America will do a good job with Toradora, which is already available for preorder, for $48 for 13 episodes, 2 DVDs, subtitles only.

Seems quite reasonable to me. No Bandai Visual shenagians that I can see. So, I’m fairly optimistic for Toradora’s sales, although the marketing is going to be an question. I do not receive any traditional media and I did not see any viral marketing attempts like ASOS Brigade thus far, so I cannot tell how NIS(A) is doing on that count.

BTW, Toradora Portable, which, presumably, is being shipped to me right now, costs about $60. It is not translated and more expensive than the anime at that, but supposedly has an Ami perfect end. It won’t interest Sixten, because it’s not a J.C.Staff production, but I’m not that picky.

UPDATE: Perhaps I was too optimistic above, because I forgot that Toradora is a two-season show, not a 13-ep. So even with Robert’s good graces we’re looking at a $80 a set. Which is still ways away from The Bad Half of Bandai craziness, but not what you’d get from Media Blasters either.

Just as I quetly celebrated the wrap-up of Railgun at Chizumatic, a picture of what is undoubtedly a Railgun collage appears at Hop Step Jump with the following message: “Won’t somebody please think of the children?!” (in original quotes).

The way games and DVDs go out of circulation is a sore spot for many, I’m sure. But, fans pooling their money is a wonderful force of good. Purely by accident I noticed that Idolmaster SP received a reprint for all of Wandering Star, Perfect Sun, Missing Moon.

The main point of Akira’s article seems to be opining against the “conventional wisdom” of falling revenues:

As a result of my research into Gonzo’s collapse, I’ve discovered that animation studios do make quite a bit of revenue: Gonzo didn’t fail because its sales were severely hampered. As a matter of fact, Strike Witches sold quite well. It failed because of poor management and bad investment choices.

Akira also raises, somewhat tangentionally and perhaps accidentially, against the widely discussed post by a MAL user about studios becoming a hostage to a narrow demographic, by stating that DVD counting is not everything:

This may come as quite a shock to many fans and observers of the industry, but many people are not asking the right questions: often, people gauge a studio’s “success” by using DVD sales as a general benchmark, the assumption there being that DVD sales represent a major part of revenue.

Well, the MALer backed this assumption with pretty pie charts. The credibility of them may be a suspect, or may be not. Credibility of Akira is definitely in question after what appears to be a confusion of what is revenue and what is profit:

While some may doubt the impact of Sunrise’s contract-based system of employment, statistics show that it works: Sunrise’s total revenue over the past few years was greater than Toei Animation’s, who outpaced Sunrise two to one in terms of sales revenue, which is further evidence that sales is not the key determinant to financial success within the industry.

Obviously the contract-based or other system of employment cannot be shown to “work” based on “revenue”, since employment is accounted as costs of doing business, not revenue. It’s either a basic logic mistake or a confusion of profits and revenue. The latter seems more probable due to an attempt to differentiate “total revenue” and “sales revenue”. Which would actually made a complete sense due to revenue from, say, interest on studio’s cash reserves – but not in the context of the discussion of outsourcing!

Here’s another funny quote, or actually two of them funny together:

Comparing employment figures across companies, Sunrise has one-tenth the number of regular employees of Kyoto Animation. One-tenth. Most work is outsourced to Koreans or freelance animators on a contract basis. Kyoto Animation, on the other hand, employs in-house animators for most of the work, significantly increasing costs.

… and …

Finally, Sunrise has a unique advantage of Kyoto Animation. As an old, established studio, Sunrise has a number of in-house writers, who can churn out original anime series.

So… Having employees is an advantage (a unique one, too!), but not having employees… is also an advantage? What actually is going on here is a clumsy attempt to explain that keeping rights in house is important; the whole paragraph is dedicated to it. It’s not about writers.

Still, it’s a curious article, and it probably makes good points, although I am not sure, since the argument is rife with bizarre sentences. I disagree with the refusal to provide numbers as well. They would’ve made the work of writing much easier, and the excuse used to withhold them is plain ridiculous.

P.S. What is not addressed here is the split between the financial failure like GONZO’s and the reduced profit margin as a conscious tradeoff against the product quality (I am definitely not knocking Sorakake here, and in fact I wrote that Haruhi’s quality was uneven (in both animation and writing), but the quality is supposed to be KyotoAni’s strength).

The lede at Anime Dream made me wonder if he fell into a common trap of confusing Magikano and Maburaho:

Every so often, a series comes along that’s so terrible, one can only wonder why it ever left Japan.

Actually, here’s an answer:

It’s tempting to compare Mike’s output with that of Charles Solomon. Same weariness and irritation with anime is evident, sprinkled with the same absolute knowledge of what is good and what is not. But he is not a fraud: he watched the show. And the bad parts he mentioned are really that bad, and of course the usual GONZO ending caps the series. Or decapitates.

The way Moritheil thrawls Twitter for blog dorama and inevitably catches SVS may not be all that linkworthy, but check out this comment by Scamp:

I wasn’t aware anyone actually read what he wrote due to the fact none of his posts have any comments

What we have here is a personal attack against SVS that rests on a pile of iffy assumptions. First is that the popularity is everything, of course. Or why else to blog, right? And then, that comments reflect popularity. Moreover, they are assumed to be the only gauge of popularity. What’s missing, or is perhaps implied, a suggestion how SVS does not enable comments precisely because their low number would place him low at the totem pole that Scamp imagines. The very ugliness of the religion of comments is on display here.

I’m almost afraid to reveal the secret of blog measurement to someone so obsessed about the race to comment counts, but it’s possible to see (some of) links, with, for example, Google Blog Search. And sadly for Scamp, there are many results. Heck, there’s even an easy service that puts a number of the pole slot to it: Technorati. As of this writing, Anime Almanac is 478 (while Ani-nouto is only 125 — time to slit wrists! — and the Cart’s Driver is not even indexed). Surprise, it was not about comments.

As for reading the Almanac, then yes, I, for one, read it. Was a fan for years, actually, and I think I earned the right to talk about its author’s “enormous talent for fail” and tendencies of self-aggrandizement. The way dorama drives bloggage, I rarely get to talk about Scott’s dodged persistency and ability to self-reinvent the blog (with the “Daily Almanac” most recently), which is a pity. With all his faults he at least groks blogs and perhaps has something to teach his detractors.

When I saw the above, it reminded me about something else… But of course.

Although strictly speaking it’s not news, John attracted my attention to it today:

British expatriate in Japan Danny Choo has revealed his establishment of an independent anime production studio called “Mirai Fusion” (Future Fusion). The studio is presently developing two projects, one of which is a promotional video starring Choo’s original mascot character “Mirai-chan.”

I thought Danny was from Singapore or Hong Kong, but whatever.

BTW, Danny’s entry showcases his workplace. Let’s see:

UPDATE: Steven thinks that the picture is not authentic.

He opens with the following attention-getter:

[Yuno] flushes her key down the toilet and then spends most of the next week as a hobo, wandering from room to room, trading sex for lodging [...]

Oh LOL.

But then, the grumpy animeblogger with the heart of stone tries to live up to his reputation:

In any case, it was better than most of the last few episodes, and I’d call it one of the stronger episodes of this season, but like most of the rest, you can really feel the formula that Shaft has completely locked themselves into. That would be fine if they used it as a platform, but after the 10th time of seeing this exact same morning exercise routine and about the 23rd time of the ending bath, I can help by groan and fight off the urge to fast forward every time they start.

The tough love, which SHAFT probably needs. Actually this is kind of how I felt twice, when I dropped Hidamari and Hidamari x365 after ep.6.

What made GA different, I think, was how it a) used the cast’s quirks to a great effect (although Hidamari tried too, but…), b) inserted all the pseudo-educational stuff to water down the slice-of-life, c) paid attention to the animation, d) delivered the funny. And they did not overstay their welcome, at least thus far.