Death Note Licensed — A Good Thing?
You have probably read about it already. Death Note has been licensed by Viz Media. This is no ordinary licence. Viz has announced that they will be distributing the episodes online “soon after they air in Japan”. This means that Death Note will be the first anime ever to be legally distributed in North America while the series is still airing in Japan.
This has huge implications for anime fansubbing. For good or for bad.
But first, let’s take a huuuuge detour and look at a little comparison between fansubs and official DVD releases…
Speed
Fansubs have always been faster than commercial releases. Even if a show was pre-licensed and released with subtitles only, physical distribution just can’t beat BitTorrent.
Fansubs win by a wide margin.
Quality
Fansubs appear to have the upper hand with their fancy karaoke effects and typesetting, but in reality commercial translations are of significantly higher value. Personally, I would rather have professionally translated and edited subtitles than colourful effects. Official translations are done with the original script on hand, which makes a lot of difference compared to me translating Happiness! by ear.
Of course there are exceptionally good fansub translators, such as crustol who used to translate for AnimeOne, but they are extremely rare because if you are that good, you are usually getting paid to translate. Watching Triad’s Nanoha reminded me of just how bad fansubs are…
DVDs win. But I guess some people, such as Doremi fanboys, don’t care about translation quality. :P
Price
R1 DVDs are certainly not as overpriced as their R2 counterparts, but even factoring in the manufacturing cost, quite a huge portion of the price tag goes into overheads (wholesalers, retailers, transport…). Fansubs, like all other forms of piracy, are not exactly free. There is a moral cost involved which is dependent on your conscience and a risk cost involved which is dependent on your country’s copyright enforcement. Generally speaking, most fans want to support their favourite series and in that sense official DVDs have the advantage of providing a warm and fuzzy feeling after you purchase them…until you look into your emptied wallet.
It’s hard to compare this, so I have come up with a brilliant formula instead.
Makes no sense? Well I thought so…
To put it simply, fansubs are not free because money is not the only cost involved. However, fansubs generally still enjoy a “price” advantage because we are all heartless pirates and Big Brother has more things to worry about than cartoon pirates. Unless of course you live in Singapore. Ops.
Conclusion
Commercial releases are of higher quality than fansubs, (again, unless you live in Singapore. Ops.) but physical distribution is the fail. The only reason people like me buy DVDs is for the extras that come with the limited editions, which defeats the point of having DVDs at all.
In this age where data can be copied as many times as desired for almost no cost, it’s only a matter of time before the death of physical media arrives. Well, except for books because they provide a significantly different experience than from reading an e-book, whereas watching anime off a DVD or an exact digital copy makes zero difference to the viewer. So books are safe, that is of course until digital paper technology is perfected.
iTunes recently overtook Amazon as the 4th largest music retailer in USA. It’s only a matter of time.
What about anime?
It’s not going to happen overnight, but eventually the best model for the anime industry (at least IMO) is to legally distribute the anime episodes themselves as cheaply as possible to an audience as large as possible over the Internet, and then make a killing off selling merchandises (i.e. things that still hold meaning because they cannot be digitized…yet). It’s like how non-label bands give away their songs for free online and make money by holding live concerts and charging people $5 for a can of Coke.
By switching to digital distribution, the speed advantage of piracy is automatically gone. Commercial releases will still enjoy the advantage of higher quality. Because the overheads associated with physical distributions are gone, the price will be low enough (with a little push from fanboyism) to “underprice” the guilt+risk factors involved in piracy.
Now if only someone would take the first step…
…Or did Viz already?
I believe in a digital future. :P
January 12th, 2007 at 10:19 pm
Good writeup, but there are several things missing from your comparison:
Video quality.
To be honest, I don’t expect this one to affect the masses, but it certainly affects the diehard fans. It affects me, for sure. A decently mastered DVD is still many times nicer to look at than a fansub.
Convenience.
Computer -> TV… err, no. Most people just don’t do it.
This will change soon when video streaming set-top boxes become popular, but it’s nowhere near here yet.
Functionality.
You just know this shit is going to be DRM locked down, and be a total pain in the arse unless you fit exactly into the one usage scenario they designed it for.
A DVD just works.
As for me… I think, if it was timely, I’d use it for series I liked, but I’d still buy DVDs/BluRay/whatever for something I could be called an actual ‘fan’ of.
I might even buy both, using the online method as a preview similar to fansubs, if it was timely enough.
January 12th, 2007 at 10:30 pm
i read someone’s bliog that if Viz are going to sell the episodes in $1 per episode, he might buy/download. But if it is really true that Death Note is licenced by Viz, then i shall not dl death note anymore. not cos i’m afraid but suport the original for once.
January 13th, 2007 at 12:37 am
anon,
It’s hard to accept full digitalization of media because it feels like you have nothing if you don’t have the DVD casing to show for it.
But ultimately, in terms of entertainment and information, digital distribution is superior in every way and it will be the future once a new generation learns to deal with the paradigm change instead of trying to stop it. There will be other physical anime products to collect. There’s just no practical reason beyond an fixated attachment to the current status quo as to why it has to be DVDs.
But of course, I am speaking about the future that is still some way off…
Maybe 5 years.
January 13th, 2007 at 2:02 am
> But ultimately, in terms of entertainment and information, digital
> distribution is superior in every way
Change ‘is’ for ‘can be’.
Every. Official. Digital. Distribution. So. Far. Has. Sucked.
It’s not about disc vs. no disc. It’s about freedom of what you can do with the actual data.
This Death Note thing will be no different to all the others, I guarantee.
It’ll require I authorise with some internet server to play it on a limited number of computers, I wont be able to put it on an unsupported portable device because of the encryption, I wont be able to use my player of choice even on PC, etc etc.
Wake me up when I can do everything with these videos that I can with a DVD (never :)), and when the quality is the same. Until then, I’ll be buying DVDs…
January 13th, 2007 at 3:06 am
Legit digital distribution and fansubbing are not in competition. The former does not meet the primary needs of the latter, for me anyway. Fansubbing is about trying as many new shows coming out in Japan as I can. If I like a show and watch it to completion, I will buy the R1 DVDs, should it get licensed. I own over 550 (all anime) so clearly it’s working out for me.
Should Viz become a success with this, it won’t be from the fansub crowd. Not even from the sectors of the fansub community who, like me, support the legit releases and have hundreds of anime DVDs. We know they won’t beat fansubs to “market” unless they coordinate with the Japanese to massive levels. And we know the price won’t be cheap enough. And even if they can charge a reasonable price ($1/ep), and work that coordination in with the Japanese, this is only going to happen to the most popular shows. And even then, only the most popular shows that are known to be such ahead of time. This could happen with Haruhi 2, but it never would have happened with Haruhi 1. This can happen with Death Note, but nobody in their right mind would have thought to do it with, say, Stratos 4 — and yet, I still like that show, quite a bit.
Who might buy this? The impulse-buy “iEverything” crowd. The people who will look at each Death Note ep in the Viz iTunes store as sort of the equivalent of the latest trendy podcast. If Viz can rope them in, I say good for them, but it’s not me, or most other fansub watchers.
And going by the little flags for your readers, most of them wouldn’t even be allowed to buy these Viz downloads, most likely. I do not expect these to be downloadable outside of the United States and *maybe* Canada.
And, of course… DRM. I don’t even need to go into how much DRM sucks and how worthless it is. I will never buy digital downloads with DRM. Not until the day they wrest the last DVD from my cold, dying hands.
But we’re not there yet, and thank goodness. Viz is still releasing Death Note on DVD like anything else. Can digital downloads become a good idea? Yes. I watch everything on my computer anyway. I don’t plan on ever buying a TV for as long as I live. But as ‘guest’ noted, every digital download service in existence sucks, horribly, unless you’re of the iPod crowd I mentioned earlier, and some some reason approve of those crap services.
This does not compete with or meet the same needs as fansubs.
January 13th, 2007 at 3:37 am
Edit: I suppose I should add, of course, that I still consider a digital distro license a license like any other, and thus would stop downloading in that case, just as I would when they announce a DVD license (which Viz has confirmed for DN anyways). So I’m not trying to say “I just need an excuse to keep downloading Death Note” or anything. In fact, I stopped downloading it like a month ago when there was that ANS report about someone having the license (we all knew it was Viz, obviously).
January 13th, 2007 at 3:58 am
(If I keep coming up with replies as long as this, maybe I should start my own blog…)
I agree with you as far the direction the industry should be headed (and IS headed, although I wouldn’t say “headed” so much as “dragged, kicking and screaming”)
Therea are some other issues, though.
- Commercial releases aren’t always superior to fansubs.
You rightly note that there are some absolutely HORRENDOUS fansubs out there. The best fansubs, though, a far better than any commercial sub I’ve seen. And commercial isn’t frequently “pretty good”, either; I left the realm of commercial R1 DVDs and manga for a good while because I was absolutely infuriated by the poor translations (OK, that, and price.). This has become far better lately: Del-Ray’s Genshiken translations are absolutely stupendous, and their primary goal is to make the translation as true to the original as possible, and they don’t sacrifice readability at all. Even today, though, things which are easily explainable by a small note are changed completely. The dubs are still usually butchered in unfathomable ways, but the subs, which are aimed at people who want a closer translation, still often lose a tremendous amount that they don’t have to. あずまんが大王 was an example of commercial subbing done with far greater care than I was used to, but it still has some absolutely infuriating, WTF moments in the translation (Incidentally, I was trying to find the old fansub of Azumanga out of distrust of most commercial releases, but found the commercial DVD rip by mistake, and I was warmed up to commercial releases again, despite its problems).
Quite frankly, I’m still slightly skeptical over whether Kadokawa USA will do a good job subbing Haruhi, and I have no confidence that it would have been done as well as it is now if it weren’t for the (mostly) stellar example already set by a.f.k.
Commercial releases tend to be better technically, thanks to scripts and better translators, but the better fansub releases seem to take more care for the viewer and the original content.
Commercial releasers were dragged down in part by the technology: DVD subtitles are just lousy for anything but the simplest of uses. Different technology means more flexibility to put more text on the screen at once in a legible, non-intrusive manner, which means potential for truer, better-flowing translations.
There will never be perfect translation, because the languages just don’t allow it. If I’m paying DVD prices, though, I expect the translation to be stellar.
- DRM. I won’t even touch the ethical issues. The practical ones will suffice.
Right now, the ONLY cross-OS DRM is Apple’s “FairPlay”, and that’s really only available if you’re selling through iTunes (which isn’t an option for everyone). Yes, Windows is on 90% of the PCs out there, opening up Microsoft’s DRM-of-the-Week, but Microsoft has yet to come up with a truly usable DRM scheme, and with other operating systems gaining a foothold, going with Microsoft not only means losing a good (and increasing) 10% of your potential customer base, but screwing your customers should they change operating systems, or change computers, or reinstall Windows, or… etc. (there are ways around it, but it’s not foolproof, or super-easy).
Of course, the argument can be made that non-Windows users can just… buy Windows! There are many things wrong with that argument, but the only one that’ll get through to most people is price. My $20 DVD becomes a $120 DVD, and that’s assuming I know how to buy an OEM copy of XP Home. And if I don’t want to reboot to watch my movies, that’s another $100 or so for virtualization software.
And then the biggie: Portable players. DRM cross-platform compatibility is an even bigger issue for portables. It’s not even as simple as Apple versus Microsoft in this case: Microsoft’s PlaysForSure becomes SureDoesn’tPlay when the Zune enters the picture!
And then there’s the PSP, of course, with its own DRM and encryption, but PSP users are used to being screwed on video. Well, were: Now 3.03 OE-B firmware is out, and supporting 480×272 resolution video, making more of us happy campers (Speaking of: In my quest to unlock full-res video on the PSP–before I was beaten to the task by DarkAlex–I hacked PSP Video 9 to work with the full-resolution video. If any one needs the hack, contact me.)
Some major broadcasters in the US and Japan have begun to get a clue. NBC lets viewers stream episodes of some shows, if you’re willing to sit through an ad or few. They stream it, presumably to prevent piracy, but what they haven’t gotten their heads around is that if they offer fast downloads of non-DRMed video, piracy won’t be an issue, because every one will come to THEM for it. If all any one had to do in order to download a high quality, non-DRMed, non-proprietary (even if patented) formatted episode of a given show was watch a commercial or few, piracy of that show would nearly vanish overnight and the network would be compensated.
- Greed.
Plain and simple. Companies aren’t willing to lower prices even if they’re saving nearly all their overhead cost. Some are concerned about perceived value dropping in customers’ minds, while most just don’t want to give up any penny they think they can get per sale (even if it means losing the majority of their sales). Granted, companies ARE out to make money, and I can’t blame them for pricing at the correct point to maximize profit, even if it means losing sales, but I think it’s clear that many lose enough sales that their profits are not as high as they could be.
- The question of technology, beyond DRM
Soft subs or hard subs? Hard subs, for the time being, are much easier to do well and discourage cross-region distribution (we’re not operating in borderless economies yet, sadly), but soft subs make production easier, make multi-language releases easier (which will be more relevant than most expect), and give the viewer the option of having them turned off completely, which is an important feature if it can be provided.
Unfortunately, there is no clear standard for quality, featureful soft subbing, and the competing formats are neither concrete or well supported.
Similarly, the still-progressing nature of file formats makes this harder. To distribute video with soft-subs or multiple language tracks, an alternative to the common container formats is required. The Ogg container is good, but not as fully featured as Matroska, and neither of them are well-supported or popular enough, and no other popular container formats with the necessary features exist. Once a new codec appears, or one of the existing ones gains ground and becomes a bit more mature, a quick download will fix that for most users, but it’s just another barrier for the time being.
In conclusion:
It is going to be MUCH easier to make all of these leaps with online distribution. Any one who retains physical distribution, though, has an incentive to use DRM to match their protection on DVD, inflate online prices to prevent losing DVD sales, and do no extra work on subtitles than they did to produce the DVD.
One day, we will log on to a production company’s website, or their preferred centralized distributor’s site, watch a commercial, and then download a completely unencrypted video file. The only question is “How soon?”
January 13th, 2007 at 4:24 am
Maybe it’s time we wean off this anime business and actually STUDY or perhaps WORK, and READ more NON-MANGAs?
January 13th, 2007 at 4:35 am
“Maybe it’s time we wean off this anime business and actually STUDY or perhaps WORK, and READ more NON-MANGAs?”
…What are you on about now? What in the world does watching anime have to do with studying, working and reading? I watch anime, and yet I study, read and work (well, “studied”, I finished my masters degree in December).
And what in the world does that have to do with Death Note or digital distro? Or was it just trolling? =)
January 13th, 2007 at 4:47 am
The above is the longest comment I have ever seen in this kind of blog. Congratulations.
For me this legal downloading thing is bad news. If this becomes popular then fansubbing will most likely become less popular. I live in Norway, one of the last free countries in the world. Despite having a nearly communist government we have certain basic rights and freedoms. Americans do not. The “War on Terror” (War OF Terror) and the “Patriot Act” killed what little was left. America is now ruled by a ruthless capitalist cospiracy. This means that there is no privacy, big brother sees you and you can be sure he will punish you, even if your “crime” is downloading. 1984. A little off topic here…
Anyway, what I am trying to say is that in America anime is cheap but downloading is risky. In Norway, as far as I know, no one has ever been prosecuted for downloading(other than child porn etc.) and certainly not anime. However, buying is not only difficult but also horribly expensive. On average a little more than 100kr per episode, thats around 15 USD. So buying is completely out of the question, even if you were filthy rich you probably wouldn’t bother. I watch reletively much anime and if I were to legally purchase everything I have downloaded I could have bought a small house for the money. So no. Buying is out of the question.
As mentioned in some of the posts above there are large diffrences in the translation between fansubs and commercial releases. The biggest diffrence as I see it is that the commercial releases has to be understandable for someone who has never watched anime and does not understand Japanese at all.
The fansubs however are aimed at more experinenced anime watchers, may of whom understand Japanese to some degree. I myself is one of those, I understand most of what is being said in an average anime episode but not everything and until I can be sure I won’t miss anything I will prefer fansubs over raws.
However, because of this understanding I do not need a very american equivalent of what was easily understandable Japanese, I would much rather have the Japanese in romaji or English that is less common(less good) but closer to the original meaning.
I belive other than me also share this point of view.
Sorry for the long comment and bad English, I am to tired to check for errors now.
January 13th, 2007 at 4:49 am
To Mac:
I agree with some of your points, disagree with others, but it’s the greed one that just sounds weird. I understand that it’s a big factor in much of business, but it’s also rather hard to put a clear line between “greed” and “responsible profit maximization”. The former has negative connotations that might not be legitimate. Legit for the RIAA, sure, but anime companies? Ehh, not really.
No anime company is making money hand over fist, despite what people might think about the prices. Most shows, as per comments by reps from the R1 companies on forums indicate, do not make a lot of money, if they even make a profit. Most of the time, two or three really successful shows make up for the losses incurred with low-profile shows that couldn’t compete with the glut of releases we see on shelves in the US (companies are gradually adjusting to this however, realizing that too much product means each individual show sells less, all while Japan charges more and more for licenses).
And as for those prices, most people who complain it costs too much just don’t know how to stop well. The next time I hear a person whine “I can’t afford $25-$30 for 3 episodes!!” I’m going to kick them to the curb, point to the nearest computer with internet access, and say “Go shop online you idiot”. First, most discs are not 3 episodes anymore. Your average 24-26 episode series is more likely to be 6 discs than 7, and 8 is almost unheard of with current releases. Secondly, general rule of thumb is, for domestic US customers, set your goal for at least *40%* discount off of MSRP ($18 a disc, you can do better if you know where to shop) except for Geneon, where you generally have to settle for ~35%, depending. Obviously prices are higher for importers for various reasons, but if you order in bulk (maybe 4-5 discs at a time? Not all that many) and shop at the right places, you can get off with paying under $25, and usually closer to $20, and that’s shipped. The place you might get slammed is customs, but there’s not much the R1 companies can do about that. That will clearly vary by country.
So, generally speaking, R1 anime companies are not terribly “greedy” in the negative sense, though I know we can all point out cases that were exceptions. As far as the entertainment industry goes, R1 DVD buyers have it pretty good. I imagine that digital downloads will still cost far too much in the eyes of many (myself included), but I don’t think it’s something we can point to and just cry “GREED! GREED!”
January 13th, 2007 at 4:51 am
Marwin: generally if you want people to take your point of view seriously on something like digital downloads seriously, it helps not to start with some irrelevant, cliche political conspiracy-theory-babble. Just a tip.
January 13th, 2007 at 5:14 am
anon: I think “greed” is probably a poor choice of words on my part.
As I said, I have *zero* problem with a company pricing something to maximize profit. All to frequently, though, business severely limit volume by overpricing. I can understand that: It’s far riskier to start with low prices than it is to start high and decrease prices over time, and most businesses make a sizeable chunk on the “gotta have it now” crowd by starting high. That gets no complaints from me! Businesses are in this game to make a profit (I know first hand) and there are expenses that come with it.
However, all too often companies lose significant (profitable) volume of sales because they weren’t willing to lower prices when it was appropriate. A good example of this is the pricing of music on the iTunes store. If you shop right, you can get just about any US music CD album for $10, but the record companies think that this price is too low when sold on iTunes. They are delivering an inferior product with higher profit margins (due to practically no distribution overhead), but they think the price should be higher. Most record companies also pay artists less for digital distribution, despite the lower overhead.
It’s more of a refusal to change than it is greed. Wanting money is the motivator for wanting to stand still, but at some point standing still loses money. I think “greed” may apply because they want to continue their profiting by forcing the market to stand still, instead of adapting with it, but it’s a matter of semantics in that case.
Digital distribution brings the chance to lower prices and raise profits simultaneously–in fact, without lowering prices, digital distribution will either fail or stagnate. However, it brings ease of distribution and lowers cost enough so that not only can they maintain current profits at lower prices, but set price points that will potentially increase sales volume and raise profits.
Getting there is quite a leap, though, due to the risks and stubborness at the executive level.
January 13th, 2007 at 5:20 am
I’m feeling a bit guilty about using “they” as a collective for all business when it comes to inability to change with the times.
There ARE companies run by people with a clue who want to adapt to new markets and stay ahead of the game. They are few and far between, but they exist. Unfortunately, those companies are generally hampered by having to deal with other companies who aren’t as willing to change or take risks.
January 13th, 2007 at 5:34 am
Sorry, forgot that americans are not very good at reading English…..
January 13th, 2007 at 6:31 am
Any show I like I prefer to have in a physical format, rather than digital and at the mercy of my shabby luck with failed computer hdds. Not that that I couldn’t burn my own DVDs, but if I was going to that extent I’d rather pay a little money for something professional looking and feel all fuzzy inside for “supporting the industry” or whatever it is you kids call it.
I might pay a small fee for a digital copy of a show I hadn’t ever seen before, but for anything I want to watch again it’s gotta be in a shiny case. Call me a dinosaur.
(these points have probably already been made, ah well)
January 13th, 2007 at 7:29 am
While I welcome Viz’s step into digital distribution, I have to say that it’s something which propably wouldn’t work for me.
All thanks to DRM. It’s not even about freedom to do what I want with it, It’s about being capable of watching it at all. I don’t think I’m going to stop using MPlayer anytime soon, even given it’s slow development over the last few years. And the only reason I boot into Windows now is for games and Internet (cause I still haven’t installed bluetooth stack on my linux…).
And as I found in Polish copyright law… it doesn’t matter If I buy the DVD or watch fansubs… The only different thing will be which part of copyright law will put me to prison… Now that’s a “Paragraph 22″ like situation….
(The reason: If I watch fansubs, I might get by thanks to fair use law. If I watch DVD, I am guilty of “circumventing technical copyright protection measures” by cracking CSS keys. I wonder how you can call that cracking given that my old K6-500 did it in less than 30s….)
January 13th, 2007 at 8:54 am
I’ve long been thinking that this kind of model would be a good way to go. I really don’t have much to say that hasn’t already been said. My largest issue is likely going to be the DRM thing, since it will likely lock the platform to Windows.
Ultimately, at least for me, it comes down to price and usability. DRM usually kills usability, and my feeling is that it might be too much money.
As much as this move would have been welcome a couple of years ago, I think viz will have a tough sell of this to most of the fansubbing community, and those who watch fansubs.
It’s hard to be skeptical with no details though, so we’ll see what viz does, maybe they’ll surprise us.
January 13th, 2007 at 11:03 am
This post has been good. Particularly the comments section. Great insight. Do I sound like a spambot now?
January 13th, 2007 at 11:21 am
Yes.