News roundup: Subtitles, signings, stage events, special CDs and sales figures

Want English subtitles in Sengoku Basara 4? Sending a letter might help...

It's not really a fully-fledged campaign, but a few of my fellow fans have been very supportive of the idea to write Capcom letters or postcards to show that there is demand for English-language subtitles in the Japanese edition of Sengoku Basara 4. If you're frustrated that the game will never come out in English, please think about joining in and sending a short fan message to the team too!

Even if you can't send a letter yourself, it might be good to spread the word through social media services. I sent my postcard this week.

A Sengoku Basara 4 stage presentation is planned for September's Kyomaf event

We've already heard that there will be a Sengoku Basara booth at Kyomaf (Kyoto International Manga Anime Fair 2013), and that there'll be a pre-release event for the new Burari, Bushou Futaritabi ~Kyouto-hen~ travel CD at the booth on 7th September 2013. Well, that's not all: Capcom announced today that they're holding a stage presentation at the event at 12:30 on 7th September. Both series director Yamamoto Makoto and producer Kobayashi 'KobaP' Hiroyuki will be there to announce the latest information about Sengoku Basara 4 and Morikawa Toshiyuki (Katakura Kojuurou) will be present as a special guest! Fans who want to see the presentation will have to apply for a lottery drawing on the official Kyomaf website.

Otokomae Tofu will be running a Sengoku Basara 4 tie-in

Popular 'manly' tofu brand Otokomae is known for its tie-ins and gimmicky marketing, and today it's been announced that they'll be collaborating with Sengoku Basara 4 for a special promotion!

Like Capcom, Otokomae Toufuten is based in the Kansai area so the two companies have teamed up to create a special 'Sengoku Basara 4 Tokusei Otokomae Toufu' pack for sale exclusively at the Kyomaf venue.

The packaging will feature the tofu company's character 'Johnny' together with a version of Sengoku Basara's Date Masamune drawn in the familiar Otokomae style. The set will contain tofu, tsuyu sauce, an egg and seaweed, all for ¥300.

Special edition of the first Sengoku Basara Magazine CD to be released separately

Amazon Japan is listing a special Sengoku Basara Magazine CD: Showgeki Basara Talk! Vol. 1: Masamune & Kojuurou No Maki Special-ban CD for release on 27th September 2013. It's being released by ASCII Media Works priced at ¥2,625. The provisional cover is rather striking with its cute Mame Sengoku Basara artwork.

The CD seems to be a 'special edition' of the talk show disc which came with the first issue of the magazine. Though the original was around 40 minutes long, this special edition will extend the runtime to approximately 76 minutes! It will of course be presented by Nakai Kazuya (Date Masamune) and Morikawa Toshiyuki (Katakura Kojuurou), and feature a brand new 'live' drama performance. Other newly-recorded content will include an appearance by Kubota Yuuki, the actor who played Date Masamune in the Butai Sengoku Basara stage plays until very recently. Among other things, Kubota will talk about his graduation from the series.

How much did the seiyuu talk for their session to span across the first two magazines with enough material left over for this standalone release?! I guess we can expect 'special edition' CDs for the future magazine discs, meaning that I'll effectively be buying the same content twice...

Well, it's Sengoku Basara so it's worth every penny.

Manga UK claims that the Sengoku Basara anime sold less than a thousand copies on Blu-ray

In a candid comment on the official Manga UK Facebook account, Jerome Mazandarani confirmed that Sengoku Basara season one has sold less than a thousand copies on Blu-ray in the UK since its release in November 2010, making it one of their biggest flops on the format. In other words, it's never broken even in this country when a Blu-ray release required sales of at least 2,400 copies to do so at the time it came out. That's why the second season is DVD-only here.

I don't like the lack of BD for the second season one bit, especially as it means UK buyers missed out on owning several Mini Sengoku Basara Two episodes. It's difficult to blame Manga UK if they would have lost even more money releasing it, though. If only the series was more popular in this country!

Details of the Butai Sengoku Basara 3 Utage Two official tour 

The Sengoku Basara stage play website has updated as promised with information about the official JTB tour. As well as the hotel accommodation and tickets, the people on the tour will be given three bonus items: a bromide (official photograph) of the main cast, an original Butai Sengoku Basara 3 Utage Two poster and a pass case. There are various packages available; fans should apply between the 7th and 11th August 2013 to participate.

Sengoku Basara 3 Bloody Angel manga signing event announced

Itou Ryuu, the artist behind the Sengoku Basara 3 Bloody Angel manga, will be signing copies of Bloody Angel 1-5 as well as Monster Hunter Gaiden: Shuryou Sensen Monogatari for visitors to the e-Capcom shop in Odaiba. The two signing sessions will take place on 11th August 2013 at 15:00 and 16:00; to be eligible for an autograph, you have to have spent more than ¥2,000 at the store between 13th July and 11th August and earned a special ticket.

As a bonus, attendees will receive a drawing by Itou of their choice of character from a set list: Mitsunari, Yoshitsugu, Ieyasu (either the young or older version), Masamune, Kojuurou, Yukimura, Sasuke, Shingen, Motochika, Motonari, Hideyoshi, Hanbee, Kanbee, Keiji, Oichi, Tenkai, Magoichi or Hideaki.

The event is part of the shop's 'Capcom x Akita Shoten: 2 Big Fairs' campaign. The other half of the campaign is for Resident Evil (Biohazard) fans.

Capcom's financial results show that profits are down

This article may be of interest to some. It explains that Capcom's first quarter profits are significantly lower than last year's, hence plans for a company reorganisation and a lot of DLC sales. I wonder if we'll see any DLC in Sengoku Basara 4?

Sengoku Basara character designer produces an illustration for Kyoto Bakumatsu Festival

While unrelated to the series, fans may be interested to see artist Tsuchibayashi Makoto's illustration for this November's Kyoto Bakumatsu Festival in Uzumasa. The article states that the picture is of Shinsengumi leader Kondou Isami. Tsuchibayashi is known for producing the original character designs for Sengoku Basara as well as the stylised artwork used in the games.

KobaP tweets about Sengoku Basara 4

It's not big news, but KobaP tweeted to Hanbee's new stage play actor saying that there are still 'many' warriors to announce for Sengoku Basara 4. Let's hope we get more details soon!

Thoughts on why we're probably not getting an English version of Sengoku Basara 4

"I can't wait until it comes out in English!"
"I hope this comes out in the US!"
"I'm gonna get this game as soon as it comes out here!"

Comments like these seem to crop up wherever the new Sengoku Basara 4 trailer is shown. Every time, someone has to break it to the eager fan that the game probably won't be coming to the west, and every time there's surprise and disappointment in their response. It's heartbreaking.

It often feels as though the English-speaking Sengoku Basara community is its own worst enemy. It's necessary to click the following link to read the rest of this post since it's not something everyone wants to hear.

Blu-ray: Destroying the market for anime on home video

This entire post is a rant. Please skip to the next blog post if you don't like reading this kind of thing.

As the title is ambiguous I want to make it clear that this post is nothing to do with the way that splitting anime releases across two competing formats (DVD and Blu-ray) eats into anime sales. That's something the distributors have to deal with for themselves.

What I'm upset about is something completely avoidable which is killing my desire to buy new anime releases. As a collector, I find it disturbing to find myself skipping series I'd have collected a few years ago. It's not because of lack of interest on my part, nor is it due to streaming, piracy or cost. It's the fact that the anime industry as a whole has become so obsessed with controlling its audience that it's intent on making it as difficult as possible to support anime. The quirks of the Blu-ray format make it a powerful weapon in the anime home video industry's rush to self-destruction.

Two new anime streaming sites launch: Anime Sols and Daisuki

This past week has been tremendously exciting for western anime fans, with the launch of two brand new streaming websites. Both sites have taken completely different approaches to the inherent challenges in providing legal sources of anime online, and both have left me with very mixed feelings already.

Here are my completely biased personal opinions following the launch of the Anime Sols and Daisuki services.

Anime Sols is unusual even in the world of overseas anime streaming; rather than focusing on simulcasts, it's dedicated to streaming forgotten classics. Most interestingly it combines traditional streaming with a pledge system - like the system used on Kickstarter. Fans can pledge money for the series they like the most and any series which receives enough support by the deadline will receive a US (R1) DVD release with English subtitles.

In terms of strategy, Anime Sols is an absolutely brilliant idea. Customers can try the shows before deciding to pledge, cutting out the risk of supporting something they won't like and catering for both fans of streaming physical releases. It's also completely transparent about the realities of organising a physical release for a niche title - empowering hardcore fans of particular shows to support them in a way that's never been done before. Samuel Pinansky, the fan who put Anime Sols together as a labour of love, has been extremely responsive to questions so that he can take the feedback straight to the Japanese rights holders. I have nothing but praise for the way the site is being run.

And yet, I want it to fail.

That doesn't mean I have a personal grudge against Anime Sols or old anime series in general. The site is streaming several shows I'd dearly like to own on DVD and I appreciate the effort that has gone into creating something truly innovative for the community. My problem is that only people living in the US or Canada are allowed to participate in Anime Sols. Foreigners are not only barred from watching the streaming anime at all, they can't even pledge money or earn the rewards offered as incentives. It's not all bad news; the site owner has confirmed that foreigners should at least be able to buy the DVD releases if any of the projects reach their targets - we just can't help make that happen.

I want Anime Sols to fail in its current incarnation for one reason alone: it makes me feel utterly, utterly powerless as a fan. The reasons for the blanket ban on foreign users are complicated, apparently rooted in rights issues where older series have been licensed to companies on terms which wouldn't ever be allowed today. I imagine it's similar to the infamous problems with Harmony Gold and the Macross series. This situation is the fault of the rights holders and their international partners and there's nothing overseas fans or third parties can do about it. Even knowing this, however, doesn't make me feel any better about tolerating such a rotten state of affairs. Websites which go as far as blocking international IPs to break the world up into arbitrary geographical regions make the anime industry weaker.

So please, Americans, enjoy Anime Sols and continue to sponsor physical releases for the best shows. Once again, the millions of English-speaking fans outside your region are completely dependent on your generosity - and believe me, we don't want it to be this way either. I will be the first in line to sing the site's praises if the aggressive region locking issues can be addressed in future.

Daisuki

I wrote a long ramble about Daisuki when the project was first announced so I've been eagerly anticipating the site's debut. The approach that the creators of Daisuki have taken seems to be to provide a legal anime portal where fans can watch anything they like without giving up and resorting to illegal sources, while supporting the series through ads and merchandise sales in the attached store. It will obviously take some time before that ambition can be fully realised, but how are they doing so far?

After a two-week delay from its original April date, Daisuki launched this morning with a quirky selection of titles: Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Sword Art Online, Lupin III, Mobile Suit Gundam Seed, Mobile Suit Z Gundam and a series of Prince of Tennis OAVs. Frustratingly only the last three titles are available in the UK. That's just half of their catalogue; disappointing for a global website which is supposed to be reducing the perceived 'need' for piracy among anime fans. Because Madoka Magica and Sword Art Online are newer and more marketable, the site's design uses these series for most of their promotional art even though foreign customers aren't allowed to see the videos.

It's a dreadful shame that Daisuki hasn't been able to solve the problem of certain series being restricted to the US market. Two of the three locked shows come from Aniplex - not Aniplex USA, but the Japanese side. It's a strange situation as the simulcast for Sword Art Online was available to the UK on Crunchyroll. I can't be sure without confirmation from users in other regions, but could it be possible that Sword Art Online has been licensed by a UK company and they've demanded exclusive streaming rights for the region too? That would certainly explain why Puella Magi Madoka Magica is not streaming to us as Manga UK licensed it for home video. If so, my feelings of disappointment extend to Manga UK as well (and to the mystery SAO licensee).

With regards to Lupin III, I don't understand what TMS has against the vast English-speaking world outside America, and I doubt I ever will.

It would be interesting (not to mention helpful) if clicking links to the unavailable shows would take foreign users to the local licensor's company website so that they can watch the series elsewhere or provide the local company with feedback about the lack of a viable streaming industry in their country. This would make Daisuki a useful resource rather than a visible reminder of how fans outside America are often overlooked.

Of the three series available to the UK, I have two of them on home video already and the third is an OAV spin-off for a television series we never got to see here. There's clearly some work to be done before Daisuki is going to be a website I visit regularly for my anime streaming needs.

Looking at things more positively, there's a lot of promise in Daisuki's website design. The video player seems to work well and I was able to watch an episode of Prince of Tennis this morning without any obvious problems. The videos come with an option to toggle the English subtitles off, and it looks as though there's room to add additional languages in future if there's enough demand. They've included a Japanese-style giveaway campaign to attract new customers (the prizes are pretty good), and there's a survey which users can fill in to vote for shows they want to watch on the site. I also like the general aesthetics of the website and the abundance of information that's available in the help section. The store doesn't seem to be online yet.

While fans in the US have been complaining that the titles available for streaming are already present on other websites, I see this as a promising step. Exclusivity is the biggest hurdle to legal streaming after region locking; in the long run, fans don't want to have to pay multiple subscription fees to be able to watch their favourite anime on a bunch of different websites with exclusive content. Getting as many series as possible onto every legal platform can only be beneficial, theoretically preventing companies like FUNimation from sitting on rights in the one region and ruining things for everyone else.

I can't help but notice that One Piece has apparently disappeared from the list of titles since the original press release, instead relegated to a 'Coming Soon' box on the Toei Animation Studio page. With Manga UK now holding the UK rights (and no doubt planning to put it on iTunes and Netflix one day in line with their glacial DVD release schedule), I'm gravely concerned that when it finally makes its appearance on Daisuki, One Piece is going to be locked away from the UK as well. The struggles of streaming - and the assumptions I make in the absence of communication - make me resent the existence of our half-hearted UK anime licensees more than ever before. I would love for there to be more engagement from the UK anime companies to stop this happening - in the absence of that, I'd prefer that Japanese licensors stopped giving UK distributors exclusive streaming rights at all. They are wasting so many opportunities to attract fans away from piracy this way.

As Daisuki does cater for the UK (in a limited way), it's earned a spot in my very exclusive list of recommended links. It's got almost as many series as the lacklustre UK streaming portal Anime On Demand, after all! Let's hope they are able to respond to user feedback swiftly and turn the site into something all anime fans can be proud to use.

Update 17/05/2013: It seems that someone at Daisuki has heard our cries, as Aniplex have unlocked both of their series for UK streaming leaving only content from TMS restricted to the US. I'd be extremely interested to know whether Aniplex's shows (Puella Magi Madoka Magica and Sword Art Online) are now available worldwide outside Japan, or whether they're still limited to certain areas.

This is a big step in the right direction and I have my fingers crossed that TMS will follow suit. More information about which shows are available in particular regions (like that provided by Crunchyroll when they announce new acquisitions) would be very helpful for those of us who travel or have friends overseas.

My hopes for the new anime streaming service, Daisuki

With the news earlier today that the Japanese anime industry is finally looking to take control of the neglected overseas market, I thought I'd do something I've been thinking about for a while and post a comparison of the existing solutions along with some hopes for the new one. It will be interesting to look back on when we finally hear more details about Daisuki!

Since we only have two active digital anime providers available to the UK, my post is going to focus on them. Viki haven't picked anything up for the UK for a while (as far as I know) while the other modern services such as FUNimation, Hulu, The Anime Network and the upcoming Anime Sols deliberately block foreigners to focus exclusively on a US audience. The current situation here is bleak; without Crunchyroll's efforts to expand to the UK we'd be left with only French company Kaze's Anime On Demand side project for a handful of delayed streams each season. Long dead UK company ADV Films did try some cross-promotion with a local version of The Anime Network before streaming had caught on fully. The other UK DVD companies have yet to show much interest in simulcasting at all, letting an opportunity to market their existing UK discs remain unexplored.

Basara Matsuri 2013 ~Haru No Jin~ speculation

As waiting patiently between news updates is no fun, I want to speculate a little! As previously reported, the two-day Basara Matsuri 2013 ~Haru No Jin~ festival will be taking place in Japan on the last weekend in March this year. What follows is my own imagination running wild, not any kind of actual news.

Here's what we know so far (accompanied by vague commentary).

1. Nishikawa Takanori will be appearing as T.M.Revolution, rather than abingdon boys school who performed the most recent song for the series. This might mean nothing at all, however, it might hint that a new song is on the horizon. And why would T.M.R. be releasing a new Sengoku Basara song..?

2. The Matsuri events tend to involve a preview of the next game which is coming out. At the last Matsuri in 2012, however, there was no new game coming up and instead a new stage play was announced. As 2013 is already fully loaded on the live performance side with both Butai Sengoku Basara 3 Utage and the Takarazuka Sengoku Basara lined up, it seems unlikely that there'll be any more announcements of that nature in the near future.

3. It's not impossible that they could rerelease the PSP game yet again and finally add the rest of the Sengoku Basara 3 characters to the roster. However, the PSP games have always been pitched at a wider audience and come at the same time as a new anime release. There's nothing similarly mainstream announced for 2013 - yet.

4. There are a number of other Sengoku Basara developments due at a similar time, including the new dedicated magazine (which was originally dated for the end of March before being changed to the more vague "spring 2013"). The Sengoku Basara Triple Pack is also coming out at the end of March along with some new novels. The first anniversary of the official fan club falls at a similar time, and the Tsuchiura museum tie-in begins in mid-March too. It might be that the highlight of KobaP's Matsuri announcements ends up being the full details of the magazine, which will in turn carry some information on the next project when it comes out. We already know that Masamune will be the cover star of the first issue so if they end up announcing anything in the magazine, could he be a more central figure again in the story of the next game?

5. The new stage play will probably save some kind of announcement for when it finishes in May. Wouldn't it be perfect if there's a new game on the horizon, so that they can announce that the next stage play adaptation will be Sengoku Basara 4 at that time, matching the new game at the peak of its hype?

6. At events where a new game has recently been announced in the past, we're often treated to previews of some of the dialogue live on stage. The main seiyuu guests announced this time are Keiji, Kojuurou, Yukimura, Hideyoshi and Motochika. Nobunaga, Motonari and Sourin will be joining them on the first day and Hisahide, Ieyasu and Mitsunari on the second. For the most part, the guest list is of limited value as it depends on the availability and willingness of the individual voice actors to some extent. I can think of a few interesting new scenes I'd like to see from the selection of characters available.

7. It's worth noting that there has never been a big game announcement at a Basara Matsuri event before. Of course, Capcom might break with tradition at any time. What would fit the usual pattern best would be an announcement in the gaming press a few weeks before the event. Here's an incomplete, very simple timeline I made showing the game announcements:

2005 July: Sengoku Basara is released.

2006 February: Sengoku Basara 2 is unveiled.
2006 July: Basara Matsuri 2006 ~Natsu No Jin~ previews Sengoku Basara 2.
2006 July: Sengoku Basara 2 is released.

2007 March: Sengoku Basara 2 Eiyuu Gaiden (Heroes) is unveiled.
2007 March: Basara Matsuri 2007 ~Haru No Jin~ gives more details on Sengoku Basara 2 Eiyuu Gaiden (Heroes).
2007 July: Sengoku Basara X is unveiled.
2007 October: Basara Matsuri 2007 ~Fuyu No Jin~ previews Sengoku Basara 2 Eiyuu Gaiden (Heroes).
2007 November: Sengoku Basara 2 Eiyuu Gaiden (Heroes) is released.

2008 April: Sengoku Basara X is released (arcade).
2008 June: Sengoku Basara X is released (console).
2008 September: Sengoku Basara Battle Heroes is unveiled.
2008 October: The anime adaptation of Sengoku Basara is announced.

2009 April: Sengoku Basara Battle Heroes is released (and television anime begins).
2009 May: Basara Matsuri 2009 ~Haru No Jin~ announces the first Butai Sengoku Basara.
2009 June: Sengoku Basara 3 is teased.
2009 July: Sengoku Basara 3 is unveiled.

2010 May: Basara Matsuri 2010 ~Haru No Jin~ previews Sengoku Basara 3.
2010 July: Sengoku Basara 3 is released (and second season of the anime begins).

2011 January: Sengoku Basara Chronicle Heroes is unveiled.
2011 January: Sengoku Basara Fifth Anniversary ~Budoukan No Utage~ event gives more details on Sengoku Basara Chronicle Heroes.
2011 July: Sengoku Basara 3 Utage is unveiled.
2011 July: Basara Matsuri 2011 ~Natsu No Jin~ previews Sengoku Basara Chronicle Heroes.
2011 July: Basara Matsuri 2011 ~Natsu No Jin~ gives more details on Sengoku Basara 3 Utage.
2011 July: Sengoku Basara Chronicle Heroes is released (tie-in with June's anime movie).
2011 November: Sengoku Basara 3 Utage is released.

2012 January: Sengoku Basara HD Collection is unveiled.
2012 August: Basara Matsuri 2012 ~Natsu No Jin~ previews Sengoku Basara HD Collection.
2012 August: Basara Matsuri 2012 ~Natsu No Jin~ announces Butai Sengoku Basara 3 ~Setouchi Kyouran~.
2012 August: Sengoku Basara HD Collection is released.

2013 March: Basara Matsuri 2013 ~Haru No Jin~.

What would I like to see happen in the next two months? First and foremost, the announcement of Sengoku Basara 4 for Playstation 3. I want them to make a huge deal about it and create as many tie-ins as possible. It doesn't matter if it takes a long time before the game is finally available to buy; simply knowing it's coming is enough for the time being.

If not a new game, then a new anime would be wonderful (either a television series, or another movie). Ideally, I'd like it to deal with the characters who haven't yet made their anime debuts. While a full anime would be best, given the current popularity of comedy shorts, an anime adaptation of Mame Sengoku Basara or one of the other manga series seems like a possibility.

The other area where the series is strangely lacking is character songs. I personally own seventy-eight different Sengoku Basara audio CDs and yet there has never been a single character song (that wasn't also a theme song); odd given the popularity of the characters and seiyuu with female fans! Although a lot of stalwart overseas fans would sigh if this ever happened, I'd definitely buy the CDs...

There's a lot of demand for more figurines of the characters as well on the merchandise side. The Sengoku Basara 3 characters don't even have official One Coin trading figures yet to go with the original cast. Another possibility is a second season of the television drama Sengoku Basara -Moonlight Party-, which wouldn't interest me that much (three completely different live action interpretations in the same year?).

Of course, it's very possible that all they'll do at Basara Matsuri 2013 ~Haru No Jin~ is hype the upcoming stage events more and announce some crazy new merchandise tie-ins. We'll have to wait and see!

News: The English version of Weekly Shonen Jump is finally available simultaneously (so long as you're in America)

This week marked a major landmark in the digital revolution, as the famous Shounen Jump weekly manga anthology magazine finally started publishing chapters in English, completely legally, on the same day as they go out in Japan. Given the colossal popularity of series such as Naruto, Bleach and One Piece in the US as well as in their country of origin, this is one of the biggest developments in the western digital manga industry to date.

Manga columnist Deb Aoki has published an article which covers the fan reaction so far as well as some comments from the magazine's side. The ignorant remarks from a few fans have been depressing to read, but overall a lot of people seem to be willing to get behind this. If it's a successful venture it bodes well for English manga distribution in future. The one fly in the ointment so far is that the English-language version, Shonen Jump, is limited to readers in the US and Canada. Region locking once again rears its ugly head!

If, like me, you're not from the US, I cannot stress enough how important it is to let the people behind Shounen Jump know that we're out there and waiting for our chance to enjoy simultaneous manga releases. They've produced a handy little form you can complete asking where you're from and whether you want to read Shounen Jump in English. I implore everyone from overseas who reads this to take a moment to participate if possible and let their voices be heard; the more feedback that the decision-makers get, the faster they will realise that something needs to be done.

If you can't think of three manga titles you want to request on the form, may I suggest that Kuroko No Basuke and Gintama could always use more votes..? I've noticed a fair number of visitors to this blog come here searching for more information about Gintama, and there's no better way to expand its fanbase than to give the official English manga release a second chance in the marketplace.

In any case, congratulations to the lucky fans in the US and Canada; I'll keep my fingers crossed that we'll be joining you soon to reap the benefits of digital distribution.

All The Anime: A brand new UK anime distributor

Earlier this week, rumours began to spread about a new anime-related project in the UK going by the name 'All The Anime', associated with a new company called Anime Ltd. A Twitter feed and Facebook page soon surfaced, as did a placeholder website promising more details soon.

Hearing that the insightful Andrew Partridge was behind All The Anime was music to my ears. Andrew is very active in the fan community, having been attached to Beez when they released DVDs over here in the past and more recently to Kaze UK, Anime On Demand and the Loves Anime movie screening initiatives. He knows the market here, he personally listens to fan complaints and feeds them back to the industry, and more importantly, he's got a track record of being able to deliver on his promises. It's directly thanks to his persistence that we've been lucky enough to get some noitaminA shows on DVD over here - including The Tatami Galaxy, which is still unavailable in the US. And it's thanks to Andrew that I've been lucky enough to see some great anime movies in the cinema over here before their DVD release. That kind of thing would have been unthinkable a few years ago.

While the launch date for the project is currently January 2013, All The Anime finally broke their silence today with a lengthy interview with Anime News Network elaborating on their plans. The key points are that they'll be distributing a mix of classic anime and newer content on both physical and digital platforms while also expanding into cinema screenings. Most excitingly, as well as actually distributing anime they're going to be doing so with an eye on the dedicated collectors. Hopefully we can expect some NIS America or Aniplex USA quality releases.

I'm looking forward to what January will bring!

News: Shounen Jump goes digital in Japan

I was very interested to see that Shuueisha has finally launched a worthwhile digital manga platform on iOS today. As the descriptive name Jump Book Store helpfully indicates, the focus of their app is to provide a place to buy, collect and read various manga series associated with Shounen Jump (and the rest of the Jump family).

The English-language Viz Manga app from Viz was a enormous disappointment for users outside the US. It works beautifully on my iPad, but for reasons of corporate politics most of the worthwhile content is not available here with no alternative provided locally. It's a matter I'm rather sore about. With digital manga growing in popularity, legal methods to enjoy it are limited, especially if you want the popular shounen titles from Jump at the same time as users in Japan and America are able to read them. Being stuck in the past is being condemned to a life of reading spoilers by accident online.

Strangely, manga on the Kindle is also stuck in a rut due to Amazon's constraints on accepted formats, leaving phones and desktops as the big hopes for the medium in the digital age. It has been frustrating seeing the iTunes Store packed full of illegal manga sharing apps for months on end without much competition from the rights holders. I've tried reporting the illicit apps before with no luck - Apple don't understand the market, and don't care unless the person filing the report is someone important.

Things are at last shifting, I hope, with JManga having released a proper app for their service a few days ago and now Shuueisha tapping into the younger market in Japan itself. The main complaints from Japan so far seem to be the pricing, which is on par with with physical paperbacks rather than cheaper as had been expected, and the variety of titles on offer, which will probably improve rapidly. After playing with the app for a while myself I have to say it's a little bit twitchy compared to Viz America's slick, uselessly region-crippled effort. I tried downloading some samples in 'tachiyomi' mode to play with the interface; pictured to the right is the interface overlaid on a zoomed-in panel from Ao No Exorcist. The quality isn't as pin sharp as a printed book would be, however I can't deny that having a library stored digitally instead of upon my groaning shelves would be handy for a genre as calculatedly addictive as shounen manga. Investing a few pounds to check out the manga version of some currently-popular series is much easier than buying the heavy physical books and getting them shipped over. Not to mention considerably quicker.

It's amusing that while Japanese customers are fuming at the cost per volumes, the prices seem cheap to me, as a foreigner, entirely because they circumvent shipping fees.

I've not tested making a purchase yet. It looks as though it will work even though I'm overseas - and rightly so, because there's a natural language barrier here. Travellers, expats and students need to be able to buy material legally in languages other than those of their current country of residence if the digital world is ever going to be anything other than a joke. Having said that, it would be magnificent if Shuueisha can expand this model in future and add their English-translated versions as an option for people who aren't lucky enough to live in America. Japanese students would certainly enjoy learning English more if they were able to do so with Luffy!

Looking at the top in-app purchases on launch day shows that the series with successful anime adaptations on the air at the moment are doing particularly well.

It's great to see Japan talking about digital delivery. The Jump Book Store has clear room for improvement and it's my hope that they keep moving in the right direction to bring fans more and more ways to read manga, wherever we live and whichever languages we speak.

Bucking the trend: Kickstarter

One of the recurring themes in this hobby lately, from the perspective of a foreigner, is that the industry is closing itself off as much as it can from entire regions, actively preventing sales and growth. Realistically, foreigners outside Japan (and the major markets it recognises such as the US) aren't worth a great deal, I know. There is a old fashioned belief both in America and in Japan which persists that each market needs to be treated separately, and those not being catered for don't wish to contribute.

However, today a project was set up which moved me to create a post (and indeed, to finally start using the blog I'd prepared!).

Kickstarter is a website which arranges for projects stuck in funding hell to get a boost from private individuals with money to burn. It's like a matchmaking website for wallets. For some reason, it's become extremely popular lately in America and people who would normally be too cheap to pay $20 for a PSP game are suddenly breaking out their savings to help fund strange indie gaming projects which may never go anywhere. I don't entirely understand it, but there have been a number of significant successes to date and if it's convincing fans to contribute more, it seems like a good idea.

Kickstarter was successfully used for a US manga project recently, but to date it had never been used for anime. Rumblings from western companies implied that it caused problems in negotiations with the Japanese rights holders and had a stigma of making things seem that the production companies had no money; in Japan, where companies generally retain some level of dignity and distance from their customers, it wasn't seen as presenting a good image.

There's also a logistical problem in that to put an anime project on Kickstarter, you need to have the licence to it; speculatively creating a project for something you don't actually have any rights to is not going to look good to anyone, and only risks ending in disaster when the contract negotiations fail or the asking price jumps. Similarly, few Japanese companies are going to want to let a western distribution house sit on a title trying to raise funds, preventing the creators shopping it to other companies. Not to mention the fact that a US distributor would only hold the licence for their region, crippling their ability to reach out to would-be investors globally.

In other words, the only way Kickstarter was ever going to get a proper anime project going was for someone in Japan to take the risk. Amazingly, that has finally happened.

Today, Yuasa Masaaki has launched a one month Kickstarter for a short, experimental anime called Kick-Heart. It's an absurd-sounding story which is bound to make for a very entertaining short film, and he has enough on his resume to get me interested even before considering that Production I.G. and Oshii are attached to the project too.

As I was just watching another quirky indie-style anime only the other day (Yamamoto Soubi's This Boy Can Fight Aliens, which received a US Blu-Ray release recently), I finally signed up to Kickstarter today and threw my support in for this one too. One of the site's gimmicks is that 'backers' can be encouraged to bid more by being offered rewards for meeting certain targets, and the $60 reward is a Blu-Ray of the finished animation if it all gets off the ground. Given that standard Blu-Ray pricing in Japan isn't cheap anyway, I decided that it was more than a fair price and this was the tier I went for (sadly, the $10,000 tier with its promises of a dinner with staff and a personal studio tour is a little out of my reach). The creators have since added some more reward tiers between the ultimate prize and the more affordable ones, so hopefully the response will pick up quickly as the wealthier backers start bidding. They've already been making good progress towards their target ($14,000 raised out of $150,000) in the few hours the site has been online.

Although I'll certainly be happy if I can be watching a shiny Blu-Ray disc of secret pro-wrestling nun romance in a few months from now, I want this project to succeed for other reasons. The creators are reaching out and directly targeting English-speaking foreigners with their Kickstarter page, and for the first time we can go straight to those creators and show them how much we want to support imaginative new anime. Even though I'm not in America, even I can throw my money down and show them that I both love anime and am willing to pay for it, and it doesn't have to be a safe romantic comedy adapted from some flashy new light novel with guaranteed sales potential.

I'd like to see more of this kind of thing. 

As for what the next Kickstarter project should be, I've already decided what the most sensible western anime company funding need is: the second half of Glass Mask! Sentai Filmworks reportedly mentioned at Anime Weekend Atlanta in the past few days that it was never happening (the first half sold too poorly for a release of the second to be profitable). Ok, Sentai Filmworks, you have the rights to it, and there is a small and passionate minority of fans who bought the first half sitting around waiting for the second. Stick it up on Kickstarter and we'll fund the release of the rest of the show. I'm ready when you are.