NOTE: Edited to be less reactionary. Sorry to be so confusing. - TJG

Bang Zoom Entertainment, the California-based studio best known among anime fans for providing English-language tracks to several US anime titles and better known to all as the location where Conan O'Brien and Andy Richter recorded their parody dubs of Ghost in the Shell and Blood: The Last Vampire, might stop dubbing anime in 2011.



In an editorial entitled "Anime - R.I.P." from Bang Zoom Entertainment President Eric P. Sherman earlier this month, Sherman places the blame for the US industry's demise squarely on fansubbers. Sherman cites the loss of Geneon, CPM and ADV as well as Best Buy pulling all but the top 20 performing anime titles from their shelves on the lack of sales due to fans choosing to download rather than buy:

"If people don’t resist the urge to get their fix illegally, the entire industry is about to fizzle out. It won’t be a big dramatic change at this point. Last year we saw Bandai fire 90% of their staff on one Monday in January, and two years ago we saw Geneon (neé Pioneer) shut their doors and auction off their wares to the highest bidder. CPM died a slow, painful death. And ADV fell hard and fast, the way mighty giants will. But from here on, it won’t be so exciting. Japan is already suffering and struggling to bring out quality titles. They can’t rely on everything being picked up by US distributors anymore. And little by little, it just won’t be here anymore.

You can’t find much anime at Best Buy now. In fact, where can you find it for sale? Think about that. There are fewer new titles coming out, and less and less stuff will be in English, because it’s just not worth the cost of dubbing it. It’s true that entertainment distribution models are going to be changing dramatically. DVD may be on the way out forever, and online TV is becoming a reality very quickly. But so far, there are no successful ways to monetize online entertainment. Not so that creators can afford to produce and distribute quality content.

Anime is going to die."

Click here to read Sherman's entire blog entry.

NOTE: The emphasis above is Sherman's not mine.

My thoughts: While I've tried to limit my use of fansubs over the years and only cover things that can be accessed legally for my site, I'd be lying if I said that I never use them ever. Fansubbing is both a bane and boon for the anime industry - more fans than ever, but less and less people going out of their way to buy. I can imagine Bang Zoom being especially bitter. Series that set the Internet ablaze in fansub form haven't had as much success on DVD, such as The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Lucky Star and Gurren Lagann - all Bang Zoom dubs (Gurren Lagann's lack of sales can also be attributed to an extremely confusing release schedule, but that's for another day).

It's also not surprising that anime dubbing wouldn't be profitable for Bang Zoom anymore. Companies once associated with Bang Zoom, such as Geneon and Bandai Entertainment, have either long gone out of business or have gone sub only. Since the near-monopoly FUNimation does their own dubbing inhouse, its unlikely Bang Zoom would get more business in the anime world.

However, the blame can't ALL be placed on the fans. The phrase "don't bite the hand that feeds you" comes to mind. As in, don't blame your target audience because they're not buying enough of your product (granted I could turn around and use this phrase to point at the fans who try to justify never buying anything). As has been pointed out many times before, pretty much every company except FUNimation has failed to adapt to the times by neglecting to do market research, studying fandom communities and for a long time ignoring the growing trends in fansubbing, which is far from a recent problem. On the contrary, fansubbing has existed for about as long as anime could be recorded in any form.

Some blame needs to be spread to the Japanese anime market as well. Part of the reason we have to wait so long to get legitimate DVDs is because of the high fear of reverse importation, something that wouldn't be as much of a problem if Japanese DVDs weren't exponentially more expensive than their US counterparts. However, this cost is somewhat of a necessity in what is a very niche market. There's also the growing trend of a majority of anime having moe themes that really only appeal to that niche otaku market in Japan and nowhere else. While I consider myself a moe fan, I'm not going to watch 10 moe shows a season and I think other moe fans can agree that's overkill. However, in an industry where the only people who are buying are the diehard otaku, it makes perfect business sense to pander to them and them alone if you know the product you're pushing out will sell.

So how does anime become profitable again? Well, if I knew the answer to that I'd be a very rich woman. There's been some success in legal streaming sites, but as Sherman himself points out they've yet to really turn a profit. Even sites like Crunchyroll depend not only on people buying premium memberships, but also on those people watching every show that they've licensed the streaming rights for, and in great numbers. Crunchyroll has in fact lost quite a bit of money on some shows.

But at least they're trying. As Einstein once said, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

The Japan Girl