Youtube channel opened by anime studios will have thousands of free anime.
- Thread starter Dreiko
- Start date
They specify that they plan on having eps with english and chinese subs. I doubt they'd go through the trouble just for the miniscule population of Japan who needs subs to watch anime.
What this *looks* like it's going to be at this moment is a place for companies to dump their old family friendly shows that aren't currently licensed for international release, which means there will be some historically significant and obscure things on there, but there's unlikely to be much crossover with the interests of the international otaku community at large.
Nah, proper otaku community members value history and take pride in appreciating random weird obscure stuff that most people have never even heard of. It's the newbies who just watch shonen stuff or stuff with hot chicks that won't get much out of this.
A proper otaku watches and loves all of it.
There is a very, very wide gulf between people who only consume modern mainstream populist stuff and people willing to watch World Masterpiece Theatre.
Sure, generally speaking and in reference to all sorts of mediums, that's overall true.
In the anime fandom in particular however, the volume and relative obscurity of the stuff you've watched is a status symbol. An emblem of your fandom and your love for the medium.
There's also a lot of mainstream fans too but those are not who you really are speaking of when you're referencing the "international otaku community". Those people are at best brand-new entrants of the community if at all. I'd say most of them are gonna be casuals who watch anime like they watch other cool shows and kinda stop there. Not actual otaku who are into the lifestyle of con-going and show marathoning with libraries of manga in their house.
Again, there is a very wide gulf between people who are all in on anime as a hobby and people willing to put aside time to watch kids' shows from the 80s. I'm the secretary of my university's anime society and have watched people haul bulging bags of manga and figurines out of MCM Birmingham. There's moe fans, mecha fans, aficionados of arthouse, and one guy who's an absolute fiend for yuri, but I only know one man who will deliberately go out of his way to watch things merely because they're available, and even he's unlikely to use this service because he's first and foremost a hoarder who has to get through the backlog of things he physically owns. If I were to watch two episodes of shows from my personal backlog every day without fail starting today and didn't add any more I'd be finished by March 13th 2023. My life is too short to spend watching old mass market stuff that isn't aimed at me.
Ill probably keep my crunchyroll, as Im used to it and it has Dubs. I didn't see anything about dubs being on that new channel
So apparently most of the stuff being uploaded is older family friendly fair that doesn't do well on streaming service, since the fanbase there are typically older otaku. Since there's no market for it at funimation or crunchyroll, they're putting it out on youtube for ad revenue. I'm not sure how lucrative that actually is, but maybe they're hoping to appeal to younger fans and get them into anime.
It wasn't really my cup of tea, personally, but I can see why people like it.
If their idea of "family friendly" is Black Jack and Attack on Titan, I'm all for it haha.
I think what they meant about it being family friendly in that remark if we have the same one in mind was that your kid won't have to scour the web for sites that might have viruses or offer hot nights with local milfs to get to their anime. Also it's just marketing-speek. The thing nintendo does, all the while releasing senran kagura schoolgirl massaging simulators.
Honestly, I never watch dubs so I have no idea, but since this will apply to some shows that may have never been dubbed before at all, and since the dubs are prolly partially owned by the likes of funimation and so on, I doubt they'd be able to put them on.
This move is kinda serving to undercut localization firms who are trying to muscle in on the creative side of anime with westerner perspectives too much, so I doubt they'd be keen on supporting them in this venture.
You just need to be enrolled at a UNI to be in the anime club. There's no test to take before entry. Just because people are in it, that doesn't mean they are what I describe.
I have a lot of experience with anime clubs from back when I was in college. To be elected in a position of authority (secretary or president in my case) you need to have friends who vote you in, not take an anime knowledge test, it's more about doing work for the club and being helpful and friendly, which of course is cool too but that doesn't translate to other traits. I saw people there who legit didn't even know what a Kamehameha is during one of the games we played (and I was wearing one of the tshirts they gave with DBZ Burst Limit preorders back in the day which literally spelled it out in the back, I even stood up and pointed at my back and they still didn't get it XD).
Also, you have situations where you all watch something together but people will be talking during the show being played or they will be playing games and not be paying attention, which to me is akin to sacrilege. Legit can't stand watching stuff in that environment.
So yeah, your anime club has one proper fan who cares about anime as a medium and is seriously enough into it to want to explore its history. There's no contradictions here.
So, a western venture capitalist convinces Japanese anime companies to put loads of old anime that aren't profitable licenses for streaming up on YouTube to make money on YouTube adds, because somehow anime that isn't profitable to stream will be profitable on YouTube.
That...seems optimistic. At least there's gonna be a few older shows with decent quality rips. If it lasts long enough to get a worldwide release.
That...seems optimistic. At least there's gonna be a few older shows with decent quality rips. If it lasts long enough to get a worldwide release.
Basically, the logic is that none of these shows will ever get picked up for traditional international (or even domestic) distribution because not enough people will want to watch them to justify a company like Funimation or Aniplex purchasing the rights to sell the shows overseas. In this model, the studios are working on the assumption that if the shows are on YT they can steadily make small amounts of money over time, even if the audience is small, which on paper looks like a pretty good deal if the alternative is not making any money off them at all. The only element of risk is whether the ad revenues will be able to pay for the staff who manage the channel. It's not a move totally without precedent; Sunrise has been making selected Gundam shows available via their GundamInfo YT channel for years, although they do have the advantage of everything they upload serving as advertising for home releases of the shows, and associated products like Gunpla. Also, Toei, Aniplex, Sunrise, TMS, Nihon Ad Systems, and Dentsu previously attempted to operate an ad funded streaming service in the form of Daisuki between 2013 and 2017, but it was a commercial failure. The advantage this new idea has over Daisuki is that the hosting of the content will essentially be free as it's on YT, and the shows being offered would never have gotten an international release by any other means, so the need to compete with normal distribution doesn't exist.
And that would make sense to me, except that the instigator is a venture capitalist.
They aren't known for viewing steady, small amounts of money over time as acceptable
They aren't known for viewing steady, small amounts of money over time as acceptable
I suspect that the investors won't have had to stump up much cash to get this off the ground and if it proves profitable it should steadily produce income in perpetuity. Venture capitalists are notorious for demanding unsustainable growth from startups, but at the end of the day profit is profit and savvy investors will happily take modest returns from low risk investments.
That guy was a higher-up on youtube so his use will prolly be facilitating the deal with insider knowledge.
I don't trust the guy farther than I can throw him but when Toei is investing in this venture I will have my hopes high.
