After the surprise first lesson, Misaki throws the girls into their first audition. Yes, even on the first day. You might be wondering, how well did the girls do, particularly Haruna.
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Cue! – Episode 2 – The First Audition
anime industry
Cue – Episode 1 – Start of the Voice Actress Dream
Haruna dreams of becoming a voice actress. While she seems to have an initial pitfall, she is hopeful as she joins a new talent agency, AirBLUE.
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What is on My Mind – Fall 2021 (September-December 2021)
Since I have been so busy with work related and swamped with anime coverage, I plan to do these posts whenever I feel like it in the future. With that, it’s time to share some thoughts on some interesting topics from the past few months.
Also, Merry Christmas for those who celebrate. I couldn’t get the 12 Days of Anime post up on time since I was busy, but it will be out before the year ends.
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What is on My Mind – August 2021 – Kireina Yuri Revival, Feeling Left Out of the Anime Blogosphere, Kadokawa Censorship Remarks and More
It has been a while since I wrote a monthly post since I was very busy last month. With that, I want to share some interesting things from June and July. Also, I will also share some more details in the revival of the Kireina Yuri community.
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What is on My Mind – June 2021
At least, we have reached the halfway point of this year. With that, it’s time to share some interesting things that happened in May.
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Episode 9 – What is on My Mind – May 2021
In this episode, we focus on some interesting things from April 2021. This consists of the following:
- Kadokawa Wants to Make 40 Animation Titles a Year, but Is It Unsustainable?
- My Growing Interest in Seiyuu Live Performances
- Madoka Magica Gets a Fourth Movie
- Let’s Face It, WordPress Likes are NEVER Coming Back for Another Reason, Like Spammers.
- What I Have Been Up To
This is an audio version of our post, originally titled, What is on My Mind – May 2021 – Kadokawa’s Unsustainable Goal, Interest in Seiyuu Live Performances, Madoka Magica 4th Movie Announcement and More published on May 6, 2021. If you have any comments, leave a reply in the original post.
This podcast uses the following songs:
Night In Venice by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/5763-night-in-venice
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Ultralounge by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/5010-ultralounge
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
What is on My Mind – May 2021 – Kadokawa’s Unsustainable Goal, Interest in Seiyuu Live Performances, Madoka Magica 4th Movie Announcement and More
While we are heading to the halfway point of this year, it’s time to share some interesting things from the last month.
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Episode 7 – Reviewing the Anime Streaming Platforms – Which One Is the Best?
In this episode, we will be sharing our thoughts on popular anime streaming platforms where you can watch anime legally.
This is an audio version of our post, originally titled, Reviewing the Anime Streaming Platforms – Which One Is the Best?, published on June 14, 2020. If you have any comments, leave a reply in the original post.
This podcast uses the following songs:
Night In Venice by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/5763-night-in-venice
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Ultralounge by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/5010-ultralounge
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Episode 4 – Decline of Crunchyroll and Failure of Originals
In this episode, we will discuss the decline of Crunchyroll as it’s catalog shrinks and the failure of Crunchyroll Originals. We also discuss the implications of Sony possibly buying Crunchyroll.
This is an audio version of our post, originally titled Decline of Crunchyroll and Failure of Originals, published on November 17, 2020. If you have any comments, leave a reply in the original post.
This podcast uses the following songs:
Night In Venice by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/5763-night-in-venice
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Ultralounge by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/5010-ultralounge
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
What Is on My Mind – April 2021 – Sony’s Purchase of Crunchyroll in Jeopardy, Uma Musume Mobile Game First Impressions, Importance of Backups, and More
Now that we at the start of spring, it’s time to share some interesting posts I found interesting from the past month.
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Decline of Crunchyroll and Failure of Originals
For a while now, Crunchyroll is facing a big decline. In recent seasons, Funimation has been getting a lot of high profile shows in the past. To make matters worse, the service has been losing a lot of shows in its catalog while increasing the subscription fees.
Now, WarnerMedia, who owns Crunchyroll wants to sell it to Sony. Not only this will cause the problem of Sony almost controlling the western anime market, Crunchyroll will most likely cease to exist as they will most likely merge it with Funimation.
With the lack of shows that appeal to my tastes, I kind of let my Crunchyroll Premium lapse and I have yet to renew it. This is mostly because the titles I want to watch is now on Funimation or Hidive.
The question remains, what led to this situation? Is it because of Crunchyroll’s ambitious plans to work on creating their originals with the long-term plan of controlling anime? Or is it bad luck caused by the Covid19 induced recession.
Note: An audio version of this post is now available.
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What Is on My Mind – September 2020 – The Things You Like Turn to Crap Because 2020, Machikado Mazoku 2nd Season, and More
Now that Summer is coming to an end soon, it’s time to share my thoughts during the month. As expected, it’s not pretty because it’s 2020 after all.
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What Is on My Mind – August 2020 – Crunchyroll and Poor Translator Pay, Blog’s Domain Turns 10, In Defense of CGDCT Genre, and More
With July ending very soon, it’s time to share some interesting posts and some thoughts during the month.
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Reviewing the Anime Streaming Platforms – Which One Is the Best?
A while ago, I shared some thoughts about anime streaming services. Believe it or not, in 2017, I realized that streaming anime is a lot more convenient than messing with torrents. While I dabbed into streaming sometime in 2016 by subscribing to three months of Funimation Now, I never shared my experience using it. Eventually, I cancelled it. A year later, I finally subscribed to Crunchyroll after being a holdout for years. It’s mostly because I couldn’t afford a subscription since was in college at the time.
While I was going to share my experiences with Crunchyroll and my three months using Funimation Now a while back, well it didn’t quite happen. Between the period when I lost my job, focusing my time finding another job, finally getting one and moving, this idea went by the wayside.
Since then, a lot has changed in the legal anime streaming landscape. Some players such as Daisuki and a few others have gone under. Of course, there are some new players as well such as Hidive, and the revamped Funimation streaming service.
What really inspire me to finally share my thoughts is Irina sharing her thoughts on streaming platforms. While her review focuses on the state of streaming in Canada, since most of our readers are from the United States, it’s time to focus on the state of streaming here. Of course, I subscribed to all three services. With that, I will share my overall impressions on after using them for a while.
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Impact of Covid-19 on Japanese Animation Studios and the Need to Embrace Digital and Telework
Believe it or not, I have covered the impacts of the Anime Industry due to Covid-19. However, we still didn’t know the full impact back then, until now. This just didn’t happen overnight. Animation studios faced problems such as poor working conditions, a packed production schedule and noticeable delays in 2019.
As expected, the coronavirus situation made the whole thing worse. Sure, a handful of titles suffered minor delays. Eventually, the coronavirus situation worsened with more than forty titles facing delays. As a result, studios had no choice but to delay productions. Eventually Japan declared a state of emergency on April 16, weeks after delaying the Olympics. This does not come at a surprise since the workplace at these studios clamped. As a result, this makes social distancing efforts nearly impossible. With that, I want to focus on some thoughts on the whole situation.
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The SARS-CoV-2 Outbreak – The Impacts on the Anime Industry and Everyone’s Lives
As expected, it seems that the Novel Coronavirus has started to affect everyone’s lives. For an anime fan, it definitely had an impact. Not only anime productions are getting delayed, but also events and even anime conventions. Even the Tokyo Olympics that is happening later this year is in jeopardy and will most likely see a delay.
Not only that, various anime productions faced delays as a result. Some are very noticeable with Koisuru Asteroid, Toaru Kagaku no Railgun T, A3, and others. It doesn’t end there. Some spring anime, most notably Re Zero Second Season along with a bunch of films pushed back until the summer. Moreover, Amazon is prioritizing shipping of certain goods to deal with the virus. This causes things like anime DVD/Blu-rays, merchandise, video games, etc to face shipping delays. With that, we are living with a new reality and life as we know it is changed forever.
You might be wondering, what is the Novel Coronavirus (aka Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2/SARS-CoV-2/nCov-19/Covid-19) and what affect it is happening on the anime industry. Most of you should have heard about this virus on the news and social media. As expected, it’s having a huge effect on people’s everyday lives. I will share some of my thoughts on how this situation is affecting me personally.
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Pitfalls of Anime Streaming, Competition and Subscription Fatigue – Is It Becoming Too Fragmented?
It’s obvious that the Novel Coronavirus has caused a lot of public events to become cancelled along with schools. Aside from people who have a job, but can’t telework, most will be at home. In other words, some or most of you would binge watch on anime while being stuck at home.
This of course brings the topic of anime streaming. In recent years, anime has become more accessible legally through legal streaming services like Crunchyroll, Funimation, and others. Not only that, you don’t have to spend $50-250 to buy the whole series on DVD or Blu-ray to watch it. Of course, we started to see Crunchyroll losing the lion share of the anime streaming as competition heated up.
If you recall, Amazon tried to jump in the fray with Anime Strike and Netflix doing its own thing. While competition is good as it doesn’t cause a service to become complacent. During that time, Crunchyroll became a bit lazy by not updating their video player and with poor video quality.
Once competition took hold, they eventually added an HTML5 player. It’s not without consequence. They lost a good amount of their catalog once Funnimation pulled out of the deal.
As expected, exclusive simulcasting is becoming an issue as people have to subscribe to the multiple services to watch the content they enjoy. Otherwise, he or she will miss out unless they subscribe. As they say, each subscription adds up in the end. This phenomenon is called subscription fatigue. While some bloggers have covered this concern, it’s time to go more in depth in it.
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The Reasons Why You Should (Probably) Not Pirate Anime
Since 2017, I started the shift towards streaming mostly because it’s convenient and it’s probably the cheapest way to support the industry. From the monthly subscription fees, royalties are paid from the shows you watch, which eventually goes back to the studios and the industry.
Given the problem that studios are facing with low pay and poor working conditions, if more switched to legal alternatives, it would help the industry. After all, revenue generated overseas will become more important given the change in demographics in Japan.
While streaming is not the ideal solution mostly because of region restrictions, it’s not a problem if you live in North America. Of course, exclusivity of titles and fragmentation is another issue. Certain titles will only be available on Crunchyroll, HIDIVE, Amazon, Netflix or Funimation. In other words, this will require subscribing to multiple services.
If you take these drawbacks from the picture, it’s a better way to watch anime as it’s convenient. One doesn’t have to mess around with Bittorrent, worry about what video players to use, and having enough disk space. You just watch whatever you want.
However, people who live in regions where legal options are readily available and can afford it still choose to pirate. People have to realize that not only this is selfish and immoral given the poor state of the animation industry, you are also putting your information security at risk. Not to mention, piracy or rather the correct term, copyright infringement is illegal. I will explain why you should probably stop pirating anime and consider legal options if available.
(Note: Pardon the lack of images, they are coming in a few days)
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When A Fairy Tale Becomes a Nightmare – Analyzing the Production Failures of Märchen Mädchen
Back in 2015, I analyzed production issues in regards to Anime. It seems that every year, production issue are becoming more apparent. It’s saddening that a lack of production values can hold a show back regardless of how good or interesting the story and characters are. To me, no adaptation deserves the poor treatment that this show received. This adaptation is Märchen Mädchen.
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All Work and No Pay – Part II – Animator’s Pay and Working Conditions Keeps Getting Worse
Back in 2015, I covered and analyzed the poor wages and working conditions animators face. It’s a known fact that animators are paid very little, they work long hours, and receive little free time. Since then, I wonder how things progressed since then. Have they improved?
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The Sad State of Legal Anime Streaming or Why Anime Strike is Cancer – Update: It’s Dead
In recent years, there is a big shift towards legal streaming. As mentioned in an earlier editorial, streaming sites like Crunchyroll makes anime more accessible. While there are drawbacks such as region restrictions and lack of offline viewing, it keeps most people from pirating anime. Legal streaming overall allows anime to become more mainstream than it did in the past. Of course, this spawned more competition such as Funimation, Daisuki and others.
However, in 2017, the state of streaming deteriorated. It’s obvious that Amazon and Netflix now wants the piece of the streaming pie. Earlier this year Amazon launched Anime Strike. Meanwhile, Netflix becomes a serious contender by taking more high-profile titles such as Little Witch Academia and Fate/Apocrypha. While competition is good as it prevents companies from being too lazy, it has a lot of drawbacks. As seen with the huge backlash towards Anime Strike, it can have negative impacts to the fandom as a whole. Moreover, it can derail the trend towards legal streaming and drive people back to piracy.
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Avex Export Ban and Why It’s Bad for the Anime Industry
Just a few days ago, something blew up in the fandom. Apparently, Avex Pictures have banned exports of Blu-rays, DVDs and CDs to countries outside of Japan. While this does not affect the music division, it does bring negative implications for people who imports Anime Blu-rays, DVDs and CDs. I will share my thoughts about the Avex export ban along with background information behind it.
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Does Downloading Anime Makes You Less of an Anime Fan?
In the past, I have touched upon thoughts about piracy and how they are taking a wrong approach. Although legal alternatives have made some strides, it has shortcomings besides other issues like region locking and that the subs have quality issues in the viewer’s eyes.
With that in mind, while fans tend to look down other fans because of their tastes of Anime, there is another issue that is also apparent, people chastising people because they prefer to download anime opposed to streaming it legally or buying Blu-rays. While I will share why this practice is counterproductive, there are various reasons why people choose to continue to download instead of watching it on a legal streaming site.
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Thoughts about Japanese Anime Releases: Why they are Expensive?
A few years back, I have shared my thoughts about collecting anime Merchandise. While I stopped buying anime DVDs several years back since I wanted to focus more on importing Japanese games and anime CDs from Japan, I decided to buy Idolmaster Cinderella Girls in Blu-Ray, which makes me wonder about Japanese anime releases and how they differ from licensed releases.
While I covered it somewhat in previous editorials, I never gone into much detail considering that I did not own a single Japanese release. Now I do, so it is time to talk about some differences and why they are expensive.
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