Funimation Sues 1,337 BitTorrent Users Over One Piece

[ABlipinTime]

Just caught wind of this article today:
http://rubenerd.com/anime-piracy-boosts-sales/

which, via a few links, got me to this:
http://www.rieti.go.jp/en/publications/summary/11010021.html

[Nate]

It still takes time just to do a sub

Er, that's not a very good argument. I watched the live stream of Gokaiger at about 5:30 PM EST on Saturday. By about 7 PM on Sunday, it had been fully subbed by at least one group, if not two. There are some sub groups that are even faster and can produce subbed versions of a show in less than 24 hours. Subbing can't possibly be taking that long for the anime companies. Especially since fansubbers don't get paid and do it on their free time, and usually it's only about three or four guys doing it as opposed to an entire company.

Unless professional subbers get paid by the hour or something. "Yeah, I know it's been like a week for this one episode, but I wanna make sure I get the script just perfect! Seriously trust me, I'm not just wasting time to pad out my hours!"

and create a DVD and market it and everything.

But again, as I said regarding CDs and legal digital download services, the fact that there are streaming sites and other ways to digitally download stuff means that the pirates don't care about DVDs. If they did, they wouldn't download episodes, that's my point. Obviously they don't care about DVDs, so saying "Well it takes a while to produce a DVD!" means nothing to them. It means that companies don't care about them, and why should they give money to a company that doesn't care about them?

And they're still doing dubs because they obviously (incorrectly?) percieve dubs as something that the fans still want, and it helps them reach a larger audience.

I think blkmage posted something about how Clannad's DVD set that was sub-only had great sales, which would imply that most anime fans don't care about dubs. Also, these pirates are downloading fansubs. If they wanted dubs, they wouldn't be pirating the show because it's not dubbed!

I think the company just needs to judge what needs dubs and what doesn't. Pokemon? Yes, dub it. It's a kids' show. Naruto? It has mainstream appeal, so sure. What I'm saying is, what is an anime company's goal? If they want to try and put it on TV and market it to a mainstream audience, then dubs are fine. If it's a niche show or it's only going to get a small DVD release, they're wasting time AND money by dubbing it.
[quote]How does making a dub mean they're incompetent? creating a dub isn]
Dubs aren't mutually exclusive with subs for a while since DVDs, no. But here's why it's a problem.

Dubs cost time and money. You need to hire voice actors. You need to rent out studios. You need to hire directors. You need to not only translate the original Japanese audio, but also change the lines a bit so they match mouth flaps better, or so the same amount of information can be conveyed in the same period of time. Remember, there are some things in Japanese that take a long time to say in English but a short time to say in their language, and there are things that take a long time to say in their language but a short time to say in ours. Then you have to record the lines, and do many different takes until you get it right, which increases the time before it's finished.

But that's not all. They have to mess with the audio so that when there's music in the background, they can remove the Japanese speech and put the English audio over the music (it's not so big a deal if there's no music playing when a character is speaking, but if there is...).

So dubs cause the amount of money spent by the company to increase at least a little bit more as opposed to if they just subbed it and shipped it, as well as taking more time, thus resulting in a later product. It also means they have to sell more DVDs to cover the costs of the show as opposed to if they didn't dub it.

I'm not entirely sure of whether people prefer subs or dubs overall. I think it depends on what group of fans you ask. If you ask younger fans, they would probably prefer dubs, and I know a lot of people here like dubs as well. The more hardcore fans are pretty well-known as dub haters. It's hard to get an accurate estimate of how many people prefer which kind, and you also have to take into account that even people who prefer dubs will often still watch subbed.

I would be willing to bet that the amount of fans who will ONLY watch dubbed and refuse to watch subbed is pretty darn small. So why spend so much money to appease such a small group of fans? There's also people who prefer dubs, but they'll watch subs too, so it's not like the companies would be alienating them.

Of course, this doesn't take into account anime made for the mainstream, like a Studio Ghibli movie released in theaters where you're mostly going to have to make it dubbed since most people won't watch a subbed movie in the theater (I remember LOTS of complains about how much subbing was in Inglorious Basterds). But then again Studio Ghibli movies are released by Disney who has massive pockets and it doesn't really matter if they have to hire voice actors and all that, especially since a theatrical release will get much more of a profit than just DVD sales anyway.

[blkmage]

1. I'm incredibly skeptical of the effectiveness of the use of dubs as a friendly introduction to anime.

2. There are historical and cultural reasons as to why the perceived intrinsic value (as opposed to the explicitly voiced reasons) of anime (and all media, really) is lower now and why prices do not reflect that and why the industry cannot change that perception. I already did a tl;dr post about this in another thread.

3. Part of the reason is that fansubbing has shown that, no, it actually does not take a lot of time and effort to translate and distribute a show. A group of random internet people working from home, libraries, or Starbucks can get a subbed episode of Star Driver out in under six hours from airing (it airs 5 pm JST, which is like 3 am EST and it's usually up by 7-9 am EST) at almost zero cost every single week. That is: encoding, translating, editing, timing, and encoding again, and up it goes on the internet for distribution.

[Fish and Chips]

I'm not entirely sure of whether people prefer subs or dubs overall. I think it depends on what group of fans you ask. If you ask younger fans, they would probably prefer dubs, and I know a lot of people here like dubs as well. The more hardcore fans are pretty well-known as dub haters. It's hard to get an accurate estimate of how many people prefer which kind, and you also have to take into account that even people who prefer dubs will often still watch subbed.

I would be willing to bet that the amount of fans who will ONLY watch dubbed and refuse to watch subbed is pretty darn small. So why spend so much money to appease such a small group of fans? There's also people who prefer dubs, but they'll watch subs too, so it's not like the companies would be alienating them.

I do not have the source for this (though I believe Mech does), but Funimation ran a survey a couple months back concerning whether people who bought Funimation DVDs preferred subs or dubs. The split was something 60% to 40% in favor of subs, i.e. four out of every ten Funimation customers both want and expect dubs.

40%, while certainly not the majority (or necessarily indicative of the whole), isn't exactly an ignorable consumer statistic.

I myself prefer the dubbed track when it's put together well, and think a lot of the animosity towards dubs are based on people's inability to forgive the dark age of localizations.

Also, some of the stuff fansubbers try to pull drives me up the wall.

[ShiroiHikari]

Also, some of the stuff fansubbers try to pull drives me up the wall.

You mean like [a certain fansub group] and their trollsubs? Yeah that's pretty freaking irritating. You're there to translate the show, guys, not make jokes. Make your jokes somewhere else please.

40% prefer dubs eh? WELL THEY'RE WRONG AND DUMB. SUBS, SUPERIOR. DUBS, INFERIOR.

Nah, I'm just playing around, but that number does kind of surprise me. I still think it's a dumb idea to dub obscure series though. Leave the dubbing for the stuff with more mainstream appeal (well, as "mainstream" as anime gets anyway).

[Shao Feng-Li]

I'm kinda 50/0 when is comes to subs and dubs. As soon as a female character goes "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh??????????????" I turn it off, dubbed or subbed.

[Mr. Hat'n'Clogs]

1. I'm incredibly skeptical of the effectiveness of the use of dubs as a friendly introduction to anime.

For what it's worth, I know when I first started watching anime, I always watched something dubbed because I thought it kept me from being some freak who believes in how Japanese is better and stuff. I definitely prefer subs now, but I think it's worth mentioning that at least to me, dubs help smooth out the transition into watching anime.

I do not have the source for this (though I believe Mech does), but Funimation ran a survey a couple months back concerning whether people who bought Funimation DVDs preferred subs or dubs. The split was something 60% to 40% in favor of subs, i.e. four out of every ten Funimation customers both want and expect dubs.

40%, while certainly not the majority (or necessarily indicative of the whole), isn't exactly an ignorable consumer statistic.

I myself prefer the dubbed track when it's put together well, and think a lot of the animosity towards dubs are based on people's inability to forgive the dark age of localizations.

Also, some of the stuff fansubbers try to pull drives me up the wall.

I don't necessarily think that the entire fourty percent wants a dub. About a year and a half ago I would have marked dubs, but I wouldn't be turned off from a series not having a dub, so saying that they expect dubs or will only buy dubbed releases isn't necessarily accurate.

I know that for me I pretty much always watch stuff subbed now(Baccano! and Cowboy Bebop are exceptions, though I've been meaning to rewatch Baccano! subbed), even though I used to always watch dubs.

[blkmage]

From what I understand, Funimation's stance seems to be dub everything, which I don't think is the wisest strategy. Even if 40% of their customer base wants dubs, there are different ways to slice that pie. Something that's been touched on already is finding out which shows these people watch. Doing a dub for stuff like Soul Eater makes sense, but I don't think you'll find fans of, say, Ikkitousen to be clamouring for a dub.

The other thing to note is that I'd imagine that's 40% of their current customer base. But surely, they're looking for ways to grow their customer base. What does the landscape look like among prospective customers?

And of course, there's stuff like cost. What is the cost of creating dubs for shows that no one watches anyway? What is the percentage of the cost that goes into dubbing? Does it make sense to make dubs if it costs more than they could be getting if they dropped dubs and replaced their customers?

Or how about consumer choice? Does it make sense to be offering only one version of the product? How about considering doing what Gurren Lagann did?

To be honest, the price of the cheaper set probably doesn't even need to reflect the difference in cost. It could probably be slightly cheaper and it'd have cheap people like me who don't care about dubs at all going for it.

I just find it silly that Funimation unconditionally dubs everything when it obviously isn't in their favour to do so and no one would notice ("oh no, Strike Witches isn't dubbed, CURSE YOU FUNIMATION"). It's things like that that make me raise an eyebrow when they're lamenting about the state of the industry.

[TheSubtleDoctor]

So yeah, these companies ought to broadly sort shows they acquire into "mass market appeal" and "niche audience" categories. If they think a show might have some truck with casual anime fans or even broader crossover appeal, it seems like the cost of a dub would be justified. With your Lyrical Nanohas of the world, that is to say, the niche stuff, dubbing doesn't make much sense. Now, if a sub-only release sells like hotcakes, and there is a substantial, vocal demand for a dub of that thing, then go back and dub it.

blkmage, are you referring to the dub-only and sub-only releases of TTGL? If so, then you should know that this strategy actually hurt sales quite a bit. Consumers were confused. Many accidentally bought the wrong ones and returned them without bothering to buy a new one, not knowing that a corresponding set existed in the format they wanted. Others didn't bother to buy at all because they weren't sure which set was which. I am not saying that the idea of releasing shows this way is altogether bad or unworkable, but there is a bad precedent. How to split the blame b/w Bandai and the consumer is, at best, unclear. I would think other companies would be hesitant to dip their toe into such waters at this moment.

[Yamamaya]

Funimation seems to work under the assumption that if you don't have a dub, new anime fans won't buy your work. You need to have a dub to be friendly to all audiences, including your anime audience who may not like subs.

The problem is that they dub shows that have little to no chance of gathering new anime fans. Is a non anime fan really going to blow 40 bucks to buy a dubbed Strike Witches DVD box set?

I will admit that dubs have definitely improved since the early days, partially due to the anime industries actually getting some good voice actors such as Vic Micherpderp, Johnny Bosch, Christina Vee, Brad Swaille, the chick who played Holo in Spice and Wolf, etc etc.

I will usually listen to a dub just to see how it sounds, but I still am absolutely fine with subs. Sometimes I prefer them.

I agree that certain titles should get dubs due to mainstream appeal or potential for mainstream appeal(a la Baccano). But dubbing everything just seems to be a waste of cash to me.