In
January at Ohayocon, American leaders of the anime importing industry
warned that piracy of anime DVD's was hurting the Japanese animation
industry. At Animazement, the same warning has come from a leader in
the Japanese industry, longtime animator Yasuo Yamaguchi. The situation
starts with the high prices of Japanese DVD box sets, which, according
to Yamaguchi, can cost hundreds and thousands of dollars for a complete
set of a TV series. "The true fans are having a hard time affording the
DVD box sets they really want," Yamaguchi said. So, some Japanese fans
have turned to cheap Southeast Asian pirated box sets, at one fifth the
cost of the legal discs. "They have started stealing the market share,
and that has started to become an intentional issue," he said. Those
pirated sets have been auctioned on Yahoo's Japanese service and the
Japanese anime industry has tried to block the auctions, but the
pirates keep working around the blocks, he said.
According
to Yamaguchi, 2004 is a high-risk, high-expectation year for the anime
industry. The three biggest directors in the business - Hayao Miyazaki,
Mamoru Oshii and Katsuhiro Otomo - have high-profile feature films
scheduled for 2004 release. Already in Japanese theaters at this
writing was Innocence-Ghost in the Shell from Oshii. Yamaguchi
suggested that the second of Oshii's films based on Masamune Shirow
manga was starting to look like a box office disappointment, grossing
only half the total it was expected to earn. That film, aced out by
Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, also didn't get the hoped-for major
award at the Cannes film festival. "Considering that there are a lot of
Oshii fans in the United States and Europe, industry people are waiting
to learn how much of their investment might be recouped," Yamaguchi
said. Still to be released were Otomo's long-delayed Steam Boy and
Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle. So much is riding on these features
that "...in the worst case scenario, if all of these features did not
do well, the Japanese animation industry would go into a dismal state."
The
gamble represented by those three features can be understood by looking
at the performance of animated films at the Japanese box office in
2003. All of the most successful anime features last year, especially
the latest Pokemon feature, were based on TV shows. Original
animation features did not get the box office results as the shows with
TV tie-ins, and all only the Ghost in the Shell film has links to a TV
show. While animated features (such as the annual Doraemon film)
usually lead box-office performance among Japanese films, 2003 saw a
live-action film top Japanese films in Japan - but even that movie was
based on a TV show. Why do Japanese anime producers try so hard for
success outside of Japan? The offshore market is far larger. Japan has
2,600 theater screens, while that total is the typical number for the
release of a single film in the U.S. (which has 35,000 theater
screens). And getting a major foothold in American theaters for anime
movies would counter a trend where American movies are the biggest
draws at Japanese theaters. Still, anime is a major part of TV
entertainment in Japan, which has 75 animated shows on broadcast and
cable. Yamaguchi said half of the animated TV shows were new shows in
2003, an exceptional turnover from one season to the next.
Later
at an interview session, Yamaguchi made an observation that shows he
follows Theodore Sturgeon's law ("90 percent of everything is crap").
"What is brought to the United States are the best of this (anime)
crop. It used to be the best Hollywood movies were the only ones
imported to Japan, and the Japanese would get the impression that they
were all classic films. But when you come to the United States and see
all of the movies, you realize that Hollywood produces a lot of crap.
The advantage of having quantity is that you can get quality from
that." Some Americans are surprised by what they see as excess violence
in anime as compared to animation made for a U.S. childrens' audience,
but Yamaguchi noted that the intensity of anime is what makes it
appealing for a younger audience - and there's nothing to show that it
hurts the viewers, he said.
In
January at Ohayocon, American leaders of the anime importing industry
warned that piracy of anime DVD's was hurting the Japanese animation
industry. At Animazement, the same warning has come from a leader in
the Japanese industry, longtime animator Yasuo Yamaguchi. The situation
starts with the high prices of Japanese DVD box sets, which, according
to Yamaguchi, can cost hundreds and thousands of dollars for a complete
set of a TV series. "The true fans are having a hard time affording the
DVD box sets they really want," Yamaguchi said. So, some Japanese fans
have turned to cheap Southeast Asian pirated box sets, at one fifth the
cost of the legal discs. "They have started stealing the market share,
and that has started to become an intentional issue," he said. Those
pirated sets have been auctioned on Yahoo's Japanese service and the
Japanese anime industry has tried to block the auctions, but the
pirates keep working around the blocks, he said.
According
to Yamaguchi, 2004 is a high-risk, high-expectation year for the anime
industry. The three biggest directors in the business - Hayao Miyazaki,
Mamoru Oshii and Katsuhiro Otomo - have high-profile feature films
scheduled for 2004 release. Already in Japanese theaters at this
writing was Innocence-Ghost in the Shell from Oshii. Yamaguchi
suggested that the second of Oshii's films based on Masamune Shirow
manga was starting to look like a box office disappointment, grossing
only half the total it was expected to earn. That film, aced out by
Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, also didn't get the hoped-for major
award at the Cannes film festival. "Considering that there are a lot of
Oshii fans in the United States and Europe, industry people are waiting
to learn how much of their investment might be recouped," Yamaguchi
said. Still to be released were Otomo's long-delayed Steam Boy and
Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle. So much is riding on these features
that "...in the worst case scenario, if all of these features did not
do well, the Japanese animation industry would go into a dismal state."
The
gamble represented by those three features can be understood by looking
at the performance of animated films at the Japanese box office in
2003. All of the most successful anime features last year, especially
the latest Pokemon feature, were based on TV shows. Original
animation features did not get the box office results as the shows with
TV tie-ins, and all only the Ghost in the Shell film has links to a TV
show. While animated features (such as the annual Doraemon film)
usually lead box-office performance among Japanese films, 2003 saw a
live-action film top Japanese films in Japan - but even that movie was
based on a TV show. Why do Japanese anime producers try so hard for
success outside of Japan? The offshore market is far larger. Japan has
2,600 theater screens, while that total is the typical number for the
release of a single film in the U.S. (which has 35,000 theater
screens). And getting a major foothold in American theaters for anime
movies would counter a trend where American movies are the biggest
draws at Japanese theaters. Still, anime is a major part of TV
entertainment in Japan, which has 75 animated shows on broadcast and
cable. Yamaguchi said half of the animated TV shows were new shows in
2003, an exceptional turnover from one season to the next.
Later
at an interview session, Yamaguchi made an observation that shows he
follows Theodore Sturgeon's law ("90 percent of everything is crap").
"What is brought to the United States are the best of this (anime)
crop. It used to be the best Hollywood movies were the only ones
imported to Japan, and the Japanese would get the impression that they
were all classic films. But when you come to the United States and see
all of the movies, you realize that Hollywood produces a lot of crap.
The advantage of having quantity is that you can get quality from
that." Some Americans are surprised by what they see as excess violence
in anime as compared to animation made for a U.S. childrens' audience,
but Yamaguchi noted that the intensity of anime is what makes it
appealing for a younger audience - and there's nothing to show that it
hurts the viewers, he said.
