In lieu of a standard "state of the industry" panel, Chris Beveridge of AnimeOnDVD.com hosted his own open panel in which he hoped to address the lack of such a panel. While plenty of silly questions like "what was your favorite forum thread last year?" got in, there was plenty of good discussion going on.
Most of the discussion centered around what is the best format for anime to be distributed on. The news of Gonzo working with YouTube and CrunchyRoll was the topic on everyone's mind, and Beveridge saw great potential in the industry going down the same experimental route as Hollywood's recent-launched Hulu site. Free anime supported by adviews could become the optimal way for professional anime distribution for the fansub crowd, provided they can get over watching three commercials per half an hour. (As long as it's not the same ad over and over like on AdultSwim.com, I think I could live.)
At the same time, he doesn't see anime distribution on physical media going away for a long time. Beveridge was visibly excited about the industry's support of Blu-ray, especially since the US now shares a disc region with Japan, facilitating the easy import of Japanese releases. At the same time, he doesn't see the fansub watchers transitioning to Blu-ray because if they cared about episode quality, they would have transitioned to DVDs - far cheaper than Blu-ray discs - by now. Rather, Beveridge stressed his theory of future coexistence between ad-supported websites for the fansub crowd and bonus-filled discs for the quality-concerned fans.
Beveridge even believes the iTunes model can work well for anime, because what fans would be paying for is professionally translated subs immediately after an episode's airing in Japan. Meanwhile, the ad-supported website ideas being thrown around involve dubbed anime, which still has more viewers than subbed anime. It's yet to be seen if the iTunes model will be a viable option, though, as he was quick to point out that Viz's early downloads of Death Note were far later than they had announced, allowing fansubbers plenty of time to translate their own version. However, should it pan out, we may see a scenario in which dubs are only made for anime that have a high amount of pageviews or downloads so that they are more accessible to the mainstream fans.
Overall, there are lots of potential options for the industry to investigate while it experiences a recession. Beveridge went as far as saying that the industry's health is currently at levels not seen since the 90s. Sadly, I'm almost firmly in the fansub crowd because of my lowly status as a college student, but I would fully support a more professional ad-supported site for streaming anime, whether it's CrunchyRoll or an industry-supported Hulu-style site. Are any of these legal alternatives to DVDs/Blu-rays looking good to you?
live comments!
