Anime Only Being Partially Licensed

[lurichan]

It seems to be a rather annoying thing that I've noticed in the anime industry as of late. It seems that companies like Funimation gain the licensing rights to some titles, but if they don't generate enough sales for the first season or so they just don't release the rest of it leaving the fans in a sort of state of limbo.

A few examples of this would be Kodocha (Kodomo no Omocha) which Funimation only released the first season, but chopped it up into 2 seasons for releasing purposes. So, of the 102 episodes that exist, only 51 of them have ever actually been brought over to America. That leaves half of the series unfinished for anyone who doesn't seek out a fan-sub. The only condolence for American audiences is that the manga was indeed fully released and goes through the entirety of the plot.

Another example from Funimation is Cased Closed (Detective Conan). Not only have the not licensed all of it (So far 130 episodes by their count) but they changed the season breaks and divided up specials into separate episodes making it even more difficult for fans to pick up where Funimation left off.

My third and final example for this particular post is Full Moon (Full Moon o Sagashite). Viz Media released 7 DVDs in 2005 and 2006 before they decided that this 52 episode anime wasn't generating the sales they wanted to, and just left the rest of the series in limbo. Again, if you want to watch the full series either you will need to track down a fan sub of it, or read the manga for a slightly different plot ending.

So, for discussion's sake, how do you feel about anime companies that don' t finish releasing something, or don't even bother getting the license for the full series? Do you have any more examples to add to this partial list?

[Scott]

Yeah, that is bad when they do a half job on a series.

I could not see myself spending hundreds of dollars buying 100+ episodes of a series on DVD. I don't think most people have the spare cash or enough desire to spend that type of money to buy into massive series like that. That being said, Funimation probably buys licenses to test the waters... They release a season and see if it is profitable, if not, they shelve it. They can't financially continue on series that doesn't make the cut.

Maybe the best idea is to take those under performing series and release them in a format that could net a profit. The most likely would probably be a release on the internet with subtitles only. That way they don't have the costs of physical distribution or the cost of English voice acting and related.

[yoda2nd]

I think part of the reason for this may have to do with the changes in the anime industry in the last couple of years.

I think that the industry grew far too fast for it's own good and bad marketing.

US Anime companies were more or less pumping out titles as fast as they could get the licenses to distribute them. With this tactic they flooded the market with a few hits, but these hits could not off set the cost of titles that did not sell well. They were trying to capitalise on a emerging market, without really understating if a title would sell well. This kind of business model is not unsustainable, and lead to the fall of several companies (Pioneer, Gainax and ADV).

The other aspect of what is going on is bad marketing. For years the anime community has complied of high prices, and the industry failed to adapt. Couple this with a world wide economic recession and you have a very bad situation. We can see now that the US anime industry is starting to adapt. With free broadcasts on the internet and more box sets cheaper and faster to market, things have started to improve.