Being one of the few latino anime journalists in this little game, I’ve noticed in the years since the introduction of anime on DVD that many licensors and distributors would include Spanish dubs/subs on many titles, with the two biggest properties in terms of recognition in the US being Neon Genesis Evangelion and Dragon Ball Z.
Read on for my take on the ultimately abandoned idea.
In their typically shortsighted “wisdom”, the United States Federal Trade Commission is now enforcing a very arbitrary set of rules for bloggers concerning product reviews and the disclosure of any connections to companies providing products for review starting today.
The intention behind these rules is to increase transparency and the elimination of obvious paid reviews that attempt to sell products instead of providing actual information, but the way they want every blogger to do this is by placing a disclaimer at the beginning or end of each review, along with the value of the product or service being reviewed.
This is despite the acceptance of other forms of explicit endorsement in mainstream media without the same level of accountability being forced by the new rules.
FTC “Change You Shouldn’t Believe In” Boilerplate:
I get products and access to services from a lot of sources.
As a general rule, I only review products that companies or other industry insiders send or provide me with access to me directly. This makes sure everyone is on an even playing field, and I do not accept offers of additional payment, sponsored junkets or other gifts outside of what is provided for possible review in order to remain objective.
I believe that the purpose of reviewing products such as anime DVDs, manga and streaming services is not to tell consumers to go buy them, but to tell companies where consumers themselves want to see improvements in such products.
My current review policy already reflects this, but it seems the FTC does not trust bloggers to determine that for themselves and feels the need to add an additional layer of useless regulation that will invariably prove ineffective and unenforceable due to lack of funding and staff in its current form.
Recently, Microsoft and Shueisha jointly the forthcoming launch of a new mobile manga service for Microsoft Windows Mobile based devices beginning in December via the recently launched Marketplace for Mobile application store currently compatible with devices running Windows Mobile 6.5 (compatibility with older devices running Windows Mobile 6.0/6.1 is said to be arriving later this month) for free, with the move to a paid model by next March.
The service will be offered in Japanese and English in 28 countries, including Japan and the United States, as well as Europe. The first offering will be a free sample version of Dragon Ball with no further specifics on titles.
Read More for an in-depth explanation of current issues with Marketplace for Mobile and its potential to kill this paid manga initiative before it even gets off the ground.
This thread on 4chan’s /cgl/ board about the worst examples of the mythical weeaboo and fangirl brought back a flood of hilarious and painful memories for me.
If you’re not familiar with the term, a weeaboo is an extremely obsessed Japanese anime/manga fan (usually white, though there are exceptions) that goes out of their way to express their enthusiasm for the form, often to the point of irritation at best and physical/emotional harm at worst.
Also, the discovery of the rare Japanese “Americaphile”, a Japanese person obsessed with American culture.
So I watched Disney XD’s treatment of Naruto Shippuden on Wednesday and it was far superior to the treatment given by Cartoon Network for the first series. It turns out Cartoon Network’s edits for the whole of Naruto were garbage compared to the light touch Disney gave the first four episodes of Shippuden.
Noted websites have a rather damning report concerning Funimation and the One Piece episode leak debacle, going into extensive detail regarding the distributor’s lack of security for its public video server, and the apparent knowledge that they knew about the capability to rip its videos for months.
A damn good read for those that want facts without PR spin, as other sites are so hell bent on defending Funimation’s obvious incompetence while placing sole blame on an obvious target without taking the facts into consideration.
Sony Pictures CEO Micheal Lynton during a breakfast co-hosted by the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University and The New Yorker this past Thursday:
I’m a guy who doesn’t see anything good having come from the Internet, period. [The internet] created this notion that anyone can have whatever they want at any given time. It’s as if the stores on Madison Avenue were open 24 hours a day. They feel entitled. They say, ‘Give it to me now,’ and if you don’t give it to them for free, they’ll steal it.”
Read More for my take on why he and Sony are doing it wrong.
Lately, I’ve been seeing posts all over the anime blogosphere touting the advantages and disadvantages of having mobile and electronic manga in a similar manner as the Japanese market.
What all of these posts fail to address is the vagaries of this market and the fanbase as a while ignoring key points in infrastructure that make mobile and e-manga a non-starter in this market unless key changes are made to accomodate content.
When the blog and Twittersphere went nuts over the weekend after discovering that swaths of LGBT themed publications were delisted from Amazon sales rankings and general search (on Easter weekend no less), people were rallying the torches and pitchforks, convinced that Amazon was censoring the offending material and sending a message of veiled bigotry.
It seems that Amazon wasn’t on a campaign to censor and keep LGBT literature away from the general populace, as much as it was a result of human error caused by vocabulary confusion.
According to former employee , the problem stemmed from a French employee working on the French version of the site confused the vocabulary for adult with erotic and sexuality as a result of local context differences, leading him to enter the information which blacklisted LGBT literature along with other unrelated literature in the Health, Mind & Body, Reproductive & Sexual Medicine, and Erotica categories.
As the Amazon backend is built to synchronize information across international portals, it not only affected titles in the US but it also affected titles across Amazon portals around the world.
After months of hushed speculation and rumor stretching as far back as the beginning of last year, the official launch of the Bandai Entertainment YouTube channel this weekend not only signals the distributor’s attempt to offer VOD programming, but it quietly acknowledges the speculation that Bandai Entertainment was in fact planning to launch a full-fledged variant of the Bandai Channel VOD service in the US before recent events forced the reevaluation of such plans.
The speculation came to a head last year as representative Robert Napton of an online project during the Anime Today podcast last December when asked about future plans involving the company, with Napton dancing around the issue audibly as if to cast doubt on future DVD projects.
With more and more of the fandom moving to venues like Joost, Funimation, Hulu, CrunchyRoll and YouTube, in lieu of DVD availability the need for yet another portal was being questioned. Now that Bandai has decided to open their video channel for the US on YouTube with the intent to offer complete series, it remains to be seen whether this will be an addition to their current production strategy, or a signal to a wider shift away from DVD sales.
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