June 20, 2008
Sho-Pro becomes Sho-Shu
Posted by Madeline
Yesterday, the Anime News Network reported that two of Viz Media’s parent companies are joining in a unique way to streamline the licensing and distribution of anime and manga titles. Major publisher Shueisha has made an investment in Shogakukan Productions, the licensing and merchandising arm of publisher Shogakukan. Both companies are parents of Viz, so this new partnership should benefit fans of Viz’ products in the North America. During a press conference on the subject, representatives from both companies described the move as part of a strategy to increase availability of Japanese products in overseas markets (while maintaining control over those products).
It’s only June, but already it’s been a big summer for news about licensing and distribution of anime and manga outside Japan. The market is changing, and we’ll be intrigued to see what’s on shelves (and how it’s reaching them) this Christmas.
Filed To: Distribution / Over in Asia / Licensing
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July 19, 2007
AX Analysis: What About a Digital License?
Posted by Devin
Japan’s interest in cross-border licensing was pretty apparent from this years International Licensing Show last month in New York. According to LIMA Japan, at least 20 companies from Japan exhibited at the show in addition to Korean and Taiwanese pavilions that each housed a half a dozen organizations or more. No doubt, its now hot to license overseas.
But even with content licensing become much more common, the ‘hidden’ factor is content use and whether it can be used in a digital distribution. The issues related to digitization are not just related to weak government regulation but more than the way content is created and produced in Japan.
Right holders include talent as well as production companies and broadcasters, the search for permissions is frequently cumbersome or, in cases where rights holders have dropped out of the biz — or off the face of the earth — impossible.
Licensees have always had a tough time acquiring digital parts of licenses to use online. Sometime digital licensing for manga or anime for example “is not offered” in initial discussions. Digital distribution is often not a replacement license but an “add-on” costs to DVD or TV licenses. And knowing that, the US companies were quickly about to point out they are now “always asking” for digital rights. More than that, Japanese firms need to adapt licenses that are “multi-platform” or “advertising-based” like the a-la-Youtube model to successfully monetize in the US and European markets.
At the end of the day, Japanese licensing needs to change to meet digital demands. Per Discontent, we’re already seeing opinions change in Japan:
According to a Nikkei BP publication article, Japan’s Keidanren’s chairman Fujio Mitarai and Itochu chairman Uichiro Niwa has put forward a way to both allow for the full utilization of copyrighted content that may otherwise be ‘gathering dust’, and as enabler to fill the ever-expanding distribution channels with ‘much needed’ digital content.“[The government should establish new legislations that include a] more simplified, convenient procedure that could replace pre-authorization by each right owner” in a bid to promote the distribution of digital contents.”
A later article by VarietyAsiaOnline.com was misquoted in suggesting a government panel had formally recommended rule changes to ease TV to webcast licensing woes. Foreign pressure as well as the promise of wealth will only help to alleviate the “uphill battle vis-a-vis opposition from incumbent copyright holders who fear an erosion of their market power.”
Hat tip to PW Beat for the licensing article-
Filed To: Distribution / Over in Asia / Digital / Licensing
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July 13, 2007
Rebuild of Evangelion trailer available
Posted by Madeline
Rebuild of Evangelion is one of four films slated for release beginning this September by GAINAX, the studio behind the seminal and profitable series Neon Genesis Evangelion A viewer in Japan recorded the trailer while sitting in a movie theatre, then uploaded it to YouTube. The footage is grainy and the sound quality is poor, but savvy viewers will note the presence of more digital animation.
No word yet on North American distribution, leaving North American viewers to wonder if the films will be released consecutively, simultaneously, or simply in one large, expensive boxed set. Will there be VOD legal downloads when distribution is decided? What about theatre showings, as there were for the Cowboy Bebop, Fullmetal Alchemist, and Naruto franchises?
For more information, check out Eva creator Hideaki Anno’s statement on the subject.
Filed To: Over in Asia
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June 27, 2007
DC Invests in Manga
Posted by Madeline
DC Comics, possibly intimidated by Marvel’s Mangaverse and Dark Horse’s close relationship with Masamune Shirow and other mangaka, has invested in a manga start-up called Flex Comics Snip:
Translated editions of Japanese manga dominate U.S. graphic novel sales, and the Flex Comics venture makes DC Comics one of the first English-language publishers with a significant investment in a Japanese manga producer. DC publishes licensed Japanese manga in the U.S. through its CMX imprint.
It seems that DC has had this in mind for a while, what with their establishment of DC Comics Japan last year. They also seem to have been watching Flex, which has been producing manga since December. What interests me is that DC and Flex seem to be following the scanlation model of marketing: they want Web-heavy advertising before converting manga titles to print. But I question how they plan on getting the word out about Flex — the readers who watch BitTorrent and scanlation sites for the next big manga title don’t necessarily think to visit a corporate site. (On the other hand, Tokyopop has any number of manga readers on its mailing list.) And in order to earn purchasing decisions, DC/Flex will have to include something extra with their bound editions: new colour illustrations, interviews, gift certificates for related merchandise, or something similar.
Thanks are due to Emru for the link!
Filed To: Distribution / Over in Asia
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June 23, 2007
Anime Fans Spur Further Funding in Nitch Social Networks
Posted by Devin
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A few months ago I did a wrap up of the anime social networks as well as a later article on adding legal content to your blog in Japan.
One site they like to visit and show their skill is deviantART, an art community site of not just anime and manga fans, but for the world. If you’re a visitor of the site, you’ll see the influence from anime and manga almost immediately. Which is why its to no surprise the $3.5mil first round of funding as reported by PEHub (via PaidContent.org)
The site, which caters to a variety of artist categories such as painters, cartoonists and photographers, was founded in April 2000 and claims to reach over 14 million unique global users per month, with 5 million of those uniques coming from the US. DeviantArt did not say how it plans to use the funding, or who participated in the round, although it does list video compression developer DivX as one of its shareholders.
Also mentioned before with a high affinity of anime fans is Livejournal, one of the early open platforms for blogging. Another rapidly enclosed anime/manga community is Gaia Online, which in the last year has received funding rounds of $8.93M and $12.01M. Gaia Online’s highlights include more than 7M registered users and a message board with more than 1 billion posts! Social network Cyworld US, the American version of the popular Korean social networking site, launched last year as an ‘anime-like’ interface that’s been compared to Gaia Online.
The list of social networks is endless: I’ll let Wikipedia be your guide. This is only better news for upcoming Tokyopop V2.0 (launching very soon) and Anime Online.
Filed To: Over in Asia / Digital
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June 18, 2007
JASRAC Ruling May Have a Chilling Effect on Manga Scanlations
Posted by Devin
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There’s been much buzz from a ruling a couple of weeks ago in Japan from a victory by JASRAC, the main music copyright collection organization for Japan, over Image City, whose MYUTA service lets users employ a central server to store songs from their own CDs, to play on their own phones. The case started back in 2005-
A key feature of the service was the capability for subscribers to access and play the stored music tracks on their mobile phones. JASRAC immediately stepped in and contacted Image City, claiming the service required its approval in order to launch. Image City disagreed, saying the service was outside of JASRAC’s domain, and the stage was set for a legal battle.Not wanting to operate under the cloud of legal uncertainty, Image City suspended the MYUTA service in April 2006. The company then filed a motion with the Tokyo Court seeking confirmation that MYUTA fell under the category of ‘private use’ copying for a single individual, and was therefore not subject to JASRAC’s authority.
The court ruled that because Image City owns the servers from which the stored files are downloaded, the company was responsible for the public transmission of copyrighted works.
According to Japan Inc’s Music Media Watch, the case could have serious IP repercussions in Japan-
The decision has sparked a storm of protest from many in the Japanese online and digital media community who feel a dangerous precedent has been set. If online services for individuals can be shut down because the servers might be storing copyrighted material, then JASRAC [or some other copyright holder] could apply similar pressure to other existing ‘personal use’ services such as Yahoo’s Briefcase and Apple’s .Mac.
Music isn’t the only media stored in Yahoo Briefcase and other similar services: manga scans & scanlations are also very popular to view and store online. There’s a chance of liability now, which might encourage these type of storage services to shut down.
In the US market, such digital works are covered with DMCA safe harbor regulations where infringing work is routinely taken down based on complaints. As Youtube and other services gear up their content filtering solutions, future online storage such as Yahoo Briefcase might have fingerprinting and digital identification tools to identify manga scans and stop it before its posted online — thus forcing manga readers to use Bittorrent and other Darknet solutions.
Filed To: Over in Asia / Licensing
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May 21, 2007
Hollywood Invests in Ideas; Finance Invests in Dollars into Asian Media
Posted by Devin
The influences on Hollywood and the Asian film & movie industry have been trading everything from plot development nuances to outright redo’s of major movies the last number of years. The number of examples of each market’s influence on each other are too numerous to count, even if they’ve been labeled as particularly risky ventures.
But it seems that adapting to a far-east movie philosophy is starting to become commonplace in Hollywood’s screenwriting community. Today’s case in point is the upcoming “Pirates” trilogy, At World’s End.
We essentially abandoned the typical three-act structure for the motion picture,” [Ted Elliott] continues. “And we were influenced by foreign movies that came out of cultures that are markedly different from Western culture, particularly Hong Kong movies and Japanese anime. What they create is this kind of dream logic, and we were trying to imitate that in ‘Dead Man’s Chest,’ which is not common to Hollywood films. … We did this in the first movie and we did it really well, and we pushed it even further in the second.”Given the value of the “Pirates” property, and Disney’s sizable investment in it, one might expect the studio to have had a hand in shaping every part of the material.
“Creatively, I haven’t heard a word from the studio as to what they think it should be, beyond good,” says Rossio.
Despite the artsy dollops of Brecht, the writers maintain an awareness of who they work for, and just how far out of the Mouse cage they can go.
But the newest trend watch is not ideas, but US dollars investing directly or indirectly into Asian media companies. General Electric is mulling over a possible investment into the
Korean cable TV sector if a recently concluded free trade agreement between the U.S. and South Korea is ratified. And today, Fuji TV and TV Asahi bought more shares of Toei Animation, all because of certain cross-border party:
The buy was apparently in reaction to the recent purchase of 5.1 percent of Toei Animation shares by US hedge fund Steel Partners. Both TV Asahi and Fuji TV are, not simply shareholders, but long-term partners with Toei Animation in the production and broadcasting of the toon house’s shows. By boosting the stakes owned by its corporate allies, Toei Animation hopes to stave off a bid by an outsider like Steel Partners to influence its corporate governance.
Clearly the trend is for a more careful look into Asian media: not only because of its influence in the US pop-culture market, but because its become a profit center derived from its increasing success. Even with some international regulations falling by the wayside, Asian media prefers to be owned if only for keeping content creation under its own control. Yes, even if there’s love in the air as this year’s Cannes, an outright buy of an Asian media company is still a bit far away.
Filed To: Distribution / Over in Asia / Retail
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May 9, 2007
Add Anime & Manga Characters to your Blog in Japan — Legally
Posted by Devin
For the thousands of people who have blogs and images with plenty of scans from Japan, now there’s a way to legally use characters for your own blog. Its a great way for companies to engage with their customers by giving them access to exclusive content and news.
Production I.G., Trans Cosmos and Animo have joined together to create a new blog service “Decoblog”. The beta version launched on March 22nd of this year. They aim to attract 500,000 users within just three years. Production I.G. will allow several of its character properties to be used in the venture. Users can choose over 500 styles of these characters for their blogs. They exhibited their new service at the Tokyo Anime Festival, where they presented the Decoblog service with a promotional video and some trials for attendees.
With so many pop-culture social networks popping up in the last six months from FUNimation and Tokyopop, there’s still a question of legally with their use of content from Japan. Despite numerous legal claims filed against operators of similar web sites YouTube and MySpace, it has not been untested whether or not such website operators are liable for copyright infringement from their users uploading and sharing protected content.
An acceptable solution might be blanket licensing, used right now in the music industry. ASCAP, BMI, and the Harry Fox Agnecy are all organizations that copyright owners can join to give it a mandate to license its content. Unfortunately, Japanese content organizations such as JASRAC have taken mostly confrontational situation against infringers like YouTube.
As a counterpoint, some Japanese firms have started to setup licensing arms: Kadokawa Group Holdings established a new company, Kadokawa Production, to manage the copyright of their contents. Kadokawa’s works will be intensively managed, with the eventual goal of licensing out of merchandising and screen rights.
So right now, there really isn’t a sure way to license those characters. Maybe what’s needed in the future is an international anime & manga rights organization, especially for licensing rights outside in Japan. Maybe we’ll be seeing it soon–
Source: 3/9/2007 Nikkei Sangyou Shimbun, 3/9/2007 RBB Today
Filed To: Over in Asia / Digital / Licensing
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March 23, 2007
CPM & Libra: Case Study Difficulties of Japanese Licensing
Posted by Devin
The case of Japanese publisher Libre and Central Park Media is one of the few licensing issues that is hit among the blogsphere, and you can review the breaking coverage over at Mangacast & Mangablog.net. Licensing content, especially foreign content is never easy. Compiled with the situation that these are unique works, its foreseeable that one might end up with one or more of these situations. What makes licensing (and the Japanese flavor of licensing) so complicated?
Licensers demand time periods. When you license a work you have use of the work for X time, and you have this time to translate, re-author, and distribute the work. Sometimes in the case of a multiple-volume work, you need to release your first volume on Y date, with all volumes out by Z date. Licenses can be tied to company control. This usually implies that a change in ownership or dissolvement due the bankruptcy can temporary suspend or terminate a license. Licensers can sell contracts. A license has value and rights that is has granted the licenser in turn for monetary value. In turn, the licenser can sell those contracts to a third party if he or she wishes. Japanese companies are allowed collusion. Japanese companies are allowed collusion You’re allowed to talk to other firms and collude on price, services, and licensing agreements, to a certain point. For a long time Label Mobile, the joint venture between the five Japanese music labels, kept most smaller licensers away because on their own the costs would be so much higher, in effect locking out most would-be competitors. Collusion can only be used at a certain point, as recently the Japanese equivalent to Fair Trade Commission investigated Label Mobile for unfair business practices. I mention this because– Licensers sometimes say no thanks. Almost unheard of in the US is a licenser that says “no” or wants unreasonable distribution terms. Movies such as Battle Royale or Yaoi are controversial in regards to its content and the western marketto of making money. Japanese licensers are much more aware of cultural clashes between the two countries and will sometimes purposely table the license.
Filed To: Distribution / Over in Asia / Mobile
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March 7, 2007
NYCC: Digital Media Wrap-up
Posted by Devin
Sorry, but I’ve been a bit slow in compiling some of the awesome digital news in Anime & Manga. Here’s a summary of the good stuff happened at the show two weeks ago:
Webcomics have plenty of models: which is the right one?
T Campbell from Broken Frontier provides the stats. At debate is which model is best: Advertising/Ad-supported based on pageviews? A pay per view or paid content model? Scott Rosenberg, CEO of Platinum Studios, quoted is traffic as 10mil+ views a month, while Heewoon Chung, President of Netcomics and ecomixmedia had tried the ad-supported model in the past. I tend to believe a hybrid model may be best: better technology (thank you Google) have made ad-supported models all the rage– yet if the content is nitch enough, it may find an audience.
FUNimation launches social network
One of the quieter announcements was the launch of AnimeOnline which joins Tokyopop as the two anime-company sponsored social network for fans. FUNimantion’s field into the space also staffs some editorial direction and content. Two other pure comic/anime social networks were also launched in the last couple of months: the independant ComicSpace and Hypercomics owned by PlanetWide Media. There’s plenty of potential for more anime and manga-based social networks: after all, doesn’t LiveJournal have to thank us?
Mobile Comics for the Emerging U.S. Market
Filed To: Distribution / Over in Asia / Digital / Mobile / Adv/Marketing
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