With the Japanese side of things out of the way, I thought it might be fun to look at the English adaptation side of things. It’s taken me a while, but I have pretty much finished it. However, it is pretty lengthy, so much so I have decided to split it up into two parts. For the most part I am of course concentrating on the US, but important developments happened in the UK as well as Australia during this time. With part one, I am looking at the physical and streaming home video industry, cinema releases, Hollywood adaptations, crowdfunding, the explosion of popularity in figures and movements in the UK industry;
Anime companies in the very early 2010’s were, to a degree, still reeling from the busting of the US anime bubble of the late 2000’s. Most US companies had scaled down releases substantially. With the exception of Funimation’s titles, the vast majority of physical home video releases were subtitled only. The situation became more dire with the head office of Bandai announcing that they were pulling out of the US home video market and that they would be winding up operations of Bandai Entertainment in March 2013. It soon became apparent that this new strategy was a worldwide one as Bandai also shut down their European video label, Beez, soon after. The company announced they would be now taking a more international approach to home video, with many of their top tier titles receiving English subtitles, and sometimes English dubs, on the Japanese blu-ray releases. However, in the end, most of these titles eventually received western releases anyway.
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| Aniplex of America's Garden of Sinners Box Set |
However, it wasn’t all doom and gloom for anime on home video formats. The 2010’s saw the rise of the blu-ray format and whole slew of new companies taking advantage of a collector’s market. An early entrant was game maker NIS America who released a slew of titles including “Toradora!”, “Love Live!”, “Anohana”, “Natsume's Book of Friends” and “Cardcaptor Sakura” for the first time on blu-ray. Though the oversized long boxes did irk some fans, they soon released their titles in more standardised boxes. But by the middle of the decade they decided to pull out of the US anime market. The other big entrant was Aniplex of America. While they used a similar marketing and release strategy to the ill-fated Bandai Visual USA of the previous decade, somehow, they managed to survive and even flourish in the market. This was mainly due to mega hits they actually owned the rights to including “Puella Magi Madoka Magica”, “Sword Art Online” and the sprawling “Fate” franchise. Rightly fans rightly criticised the company for their overly expensive releases, most of which could be argued aren’t value for money compared to similar US releases, especially when quality of packaging, actual content and extras are taken into consideration.
One of the biggest surprises of the decade was Disney relinquishing theatrical and home video rights to almost all of the Studio Ghibli catalogue to independent studio GKIDS. I’ll talk more about GKIDS in the theatrical releases section of this post, but will mention that the studio teamed up with independent DVD/blu-ray producer Shout! Factory to release their titles, which not only comprised the Ghibli catalogue but other anime fare, both otaku-type titles and family films. But the most unlikely hero in terms of physical releases this decade was Discotek. Though initially releasing niche and cult Asian cinema in the previous decade and a few older anime films from the 1960’s and 1970’s, they soon switched gears and aimed directly for the sector of the market which enjoyed older anime with a whole slew of new and “rescued” licenses. This included series and films saved from oblivion and painstakingly restored such as the 2001 “Cyborg 009” series, “Robot Carnival” and “Kimagure Orange Road”.
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| Viz Media's Sailor Moon Box Set |
Licence rescues or releases of fan favourites that never previously saw the light of home video continued through the decade including the “Dirty Pair” TV series, almost every piece of “Gundam” animation, “Rose of Versailles” and most amazingly all of “The Legend of Galactic Heroes”, albeit in an absurdly expensive blu-ray set which retailed for an astronomical US$800. Viz also had a massive scoop with the acquisition of the entire “Sailor Moon” franchise, including “Sailor Moon Crystal”. But the material they received for the 1990’s TV series wasn’t exactly high definition (old analogue composite master tapes in reality) and made the terrible decision to “enhance” the series by running through a filter that made the video look splotchy and smeary. Fans were rightly livid, but amazingly Viz ignored the criticism and did the same thing for the first three series. By the fourth series, “Sailor Moon S”, they had received better masters, but did not go back and redo the first three series. Release of the series was glacial as well; a total of five years for all five series and three films.
Funimation made some odd moves in the decade; sold off by Navarre to a group of investors that included original owner Gen Fukunaga, partnering with Crunchyroll only to nullify that deal several years later after Sony bought a 95% stake in the company. However, the weirdest thing was that Funimation briefly shared offices with Christian media company EchoLight Studios, a Texas-based Christian television production company run by Rick Santorum, the former conservative politician. Fukunaga was also the co-founder and manager of EchoLight Studios. The internal machinations of the company came under scrutiny when fans noticed incredibly negative reviews from employees on recruitment website Glassdoor with titles such as “Cannibalistic, Orwellian Nightmare”.
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| Reception of Sojitz's main office |
Early in the decade Funimation sued Sentai Filmworks and the remnants of the company they were rebirthed out of; ADV Films. Just before the anime bubble burst in the previous decade, ADV Films needed an injection of cash and gained a new Japanese partner who would invest in them; Sojitz Corporation. What actually happened is that Sojitz bought up anime properties for them at absurd prices and got them into incredible debt. When ADV couldn’t pay back the money they sold everything off to Funimation, who became the debt collector. ADV owed US$8 million. I still am utterly baffled as to why anyone at ADV thought it was a great idea to take up such a shitty deal to stay afloat. Three years later the lawsuit was dropped after both companies came to an agreement.
Although I’m not covering manga, it would be odd if I didn’t cover the demise of Tokyopop. Originally beginning in 1997, the company single-handedly changed how manga was released in the western world; from single issue comics sold in comic book stores to “tankobon” sized, “unflipped” (i.e. read right to left and printed the same way as Japanese managa) and sold in bookstores. However, the company flooded the market with hundreds of titles and several large chain stores carrying their titles went bankrupt, owing the company hundreds of thousands of dollars. Somehow the company managed to limp into the 2010’s. But the death knell for them was Kodansha entering the US market and taking back their licences. The company ceased manga distribution in April 2011. A dreadful reality web series called “America's Greatest Otaku” followed as well as a documentary on the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami called “Pray for Japan”. However, the company still continues to exploit young comic book artists with some of the worst contracts in the industry.
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| Shiori Kawana |
Voyager Entertainment who had previously released the English adaptations of “Space Battleship Yamato” in the US (mostly under their broadcast names of “Star Blazers”), unceremoniously sacked the only man on their team who knew how to market their stuff in the west, Tim Eldred, and tried their hand at releasing the newest entry in the Yamato universe; “Yamato 2199”. While the vast majority of anime fandom is in their early twenties or far much younger, Voyager incomprehensibly renamed the series “Star Blazers 2199” and attempted to sell it to US anime fans. This did not go down well. First there was no streaming, it was released as single discs (four episodes for an insane US$45) instead of half or a full season, and there was no English dub. Promotion was almost entirely limited to a series of utterly baffling videos featuring cosplayer and gravure model Shiori Kawana (dressed as series character Yuki Mori), who to be utterly fair, wasn’t completely well versed in English. Coupled with this was low production values of the videos including the obvious logo of the freebie software in the top left-hand corner. English speaking fans, who were not used to this uniquely Japanese promotion, were equally horrified and amused by the whole thing. Fandom sent in some rather demeaning questions for Shiori asking why it treats it audience like kindergarteners and if she was a nude model. Fandom wasn’t going for US$45 blu-rays sold by gravure models and ended up mocking Voyager. The series releases came to grinding halt with Funimation eventually licencing the series the latter part of the decade.
I’ll have a look at Australian companies separately, but I just want to mention one non US company; All the Anime. Founded by ex-Beez staff and based in Scotland and France, over the course of the last seven years have released some of best anime box sets in the English speaking world. They also released a number of titles in English (subtitled only of course) which hadn’t been released elsewhere such as “Princess Arte”, “Tokyo Marble Chocolate”, “Amanchu!” and a collection of Production I.G short films.
Despite the downturn in physical home video sales, companies were still willing to enter the market. One of more interesting outfits was Anime Midstream. Their first title was the little known early 1990’s robot show “Raijin-Oh”, which they not only had dubbed but initially released in single DVD format with five or four episodes on each disc, while other companies where releasing titles in half season sets. After a wonky start and delays between releases, the company relented and released the latter half of the series as one set. In the later part of the decade they released all of the “BT’X” franchise.
Lastly, the weird story of Crimson Star Media. A brand-new company, they licenced the anime “Looking Up at the Half-Moon Anime”, but disaster struck when owner, Corey Maddox, was gaoled for a year on charges of violating probation. The original charge? Nine counts of sexual exploitation of children. In the end Crimson Star Media didn’t release a single disc. Nozomi Entertainment (video company for the Right Stuf) released the series instead.
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| Chris Beveridge |
Even though there was a lot of movement in the physical home video industry, things were changing. Fandom’s go to source for everything DVD releases, AnimeOnDVD.com, had already been sold to a company called Mania.com back in 2008. The company rebranded the site and to be frank, it was never as good as the old AnimeOnDVD.com. Eventually the site’s former owner, Chris Beveridge, jumped ship in 2011 and created his own site, The Fandom Post, which covered much more than anime, but was still heavily focused on anime releases. Mania disappeared a couple of years later. However, the lack of posts on The Fandom Post’s message boards compared to the heyday of AnimeOnDVD.com was indicative of shift in the way fandom watched and consumed anime.
Of course, the biggest change this decade with fandom was the move from owning physical copies to streaming anime from legitimate companies. This had already begun in the late 2000’s when pirate anime site Crunchyroll went legit and began licensing titles directly from Japanese companies. This soon morphed into “simulcasts”, where anime would be translated and released to fans several hours after broadcast. In many cases western fans had access to most broadcast anime before most Japanese fans who did not reside within the metropolitan Tokyo region. This is because stations in other prefectures don’t broadcast episodes for up to a week later. Other companies soon realised there was money to be made in streaming. Funimation initially had a streaming deal with Crunchyroll, but broke it off in the latter part of the decade and created their own streaming platform. Funimation also pioneered “simuldubs”, which as it sounds involved the English dubbing of titles being broadcast several weeks after the initial broadcast. Other established companies got into the streaming game as well, such as Sentai Filmworks who created the Hidive website.
Unsurprisingly mainstream companies got back into the anime game after an absence of many years. Netflix became a mainstream steaming service giant during the decade and cast its eye over anime. They managed to licence and even commission some big shows including “Devilman Crybaby”, a CG adaptation of the recent “Ultraman” manga, “Violet Evergarden” and “Little Witch Academia”. But their biggest title was the original “Evangelion” TV series. This acquisition wasn’t without its issues; a new dub was commissioned for its release, and the series’ iconic end theme had to be replaced due to licencing issues. Streaming in general also wasn’t without its issues though. Crunchyroll in particular was criticised for poor quality video, and worse, underpaying translators. The timing of its issues with translator’s pay unfortunately happened at the same time Crunchyroll management had spent a fortune on creating a rather gaudy new office for the company. Fandom rightly criticised them for it. As home video rights are often tied to streaming rights, this meant in some cases a physical home video release did not eventuate, especially for Netflix titles, which did irk a section of fandom.
So, we know anime fandom mostly dumped physical releases when the bubble finally burst in the 2000’s and never really went back to buying them. So, the question is; where was that money going? The answer of course was merchandise, mostly towards highly detailed figures. Thanks to an overabundance of anime comprised mostly (or entirely in some cases) of female characters, there was never going to a be a shortage of inspiration for these figures. If we’re being totally honest, the vast majority of these figures are aimed young men. And naturally, even if the character didn’t act that way in the anime, a fair wack of these figures had a sexual aspect to them. It did amuse me that western fandom would baulk at paying a single cent to watch anime, yet seemingly have no qualms about plonking down US$150, minimum, for one of these figures, and usually would have a harem of dozens of these figures. Other merchandise that tickled a mostly young, male western fandom included body pillow covers, which again, were even more sexualised than the figures.
The other big change this decade in terms of how fans viewed anime was the increased presence of anime in cinemas. There were a couple of reasons why this took place. First there was the change in how film was distributed to cinemas; from 35mm film prints to digital which made things a lot cheaper for distributors. Especially so for distributors of foreign language films, they no longer had to source 35mm prints and “burn” subtitles onto that existing print. Secondly there was an increase in cinema for niche audiences such as simulcasts or rebroadcasts of opera, theatrical plays or concerts. This included anime as well. In the US two film distributors lead the way in theatrical anime. The first one was Gkids. Founded in 2008, their focus was in foreign language animation. Apart from their acquisition of the entire Studio Ghibli catalogue, they also theatrically released some of the biggest hits of the decade including “Promare”, “The Night Is Short, Walk On Girl” and “Weathering with You” All of their titles also received physical home video releases as well. The other main distributor was Eleven Arts. This company is a US branch of a larger Japanese one. Much like Gkids, this company focused mostly on foreign language material, notably Japanese cinema, but also distributed some US/Japanese co-productions, mostly of the exploitation and genre variety. The company distributed some big anime hits of the decade as well, including “Penguin Highway”, “Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms”, “Liz and the Blue Bird”, “Sound! Euphonium the Movie - Our Promise: A Brand New Day” and “A Silent Voice”. Oddities they distributed included “Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Reflection” (which never got a physical home video release in the US) and most bafflingly “The Laws of the Universe: Part 1”, an anime film from right wing religious cult Happy Science.
Crowdfunding saw the promise of creators sourcing funding directly from fans. However, the reality wasn’t what some in the industry hoped for. Many US and UK companies used online companies like Kickstarter in order to help source and collate the funds. However, the projects put up for crowdfunding were sometimes rather curious. For example, was there a need to crowdfund for English dubs of “Escaflowne” and “Aria”? Surely there was no need to crowd fund a blu-ray box set of the original “Bubblegum Crisis” OVA? While companies like All the Anime, Funimation and the Right Stuf dabbled in crowdfunding, AnimEigo used it for every release they issued in the decade. For them it was a guarantee of shipping a set number of units for a predetermined price. Japanese companies also used it as a way to gain funding directly from English speaking fans. This was used mostly for pressing up English language blu-ray sets and creating one off OVAs. While it worked well for the former, there was mixed results for the latter, with the vast majority of projects failing to meet the required funding goal. Projects which did succeed included “Little Witch Academia: The Enchanted Parade” and “Nekopara”.
After licencing numerous anime and manga for adaptation in English, Hollywood actually came through this decade with several decent adaptations actually hitting the big screen. Easily the best and most successful would be “All You Need is Kill”, which was adapted from its light novel origins into “Edge of Tomorrow” and stared Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt. For a big budgeted action flick, it was highly entertaining and well written. It made an astounding US$370.5 million at the box office. Hollywood had another crack at “Godzilla” and managed to turn out a decent film. Directed by Gareth Edwards, who had only made the low budget but special effects filled sci-fi horror film “Monsters” previously, it was a pretty good film for what it was. A sequel, “Godzilla: King of the Monsters” was released at the end of the decade, but the box office wasn’t as good.
After promising to make the film for nearly a decade and a half, James Cameron finally came through with “Alita: Battle Angel”, though with Robert Rodriguez in the director’s chair. The resulting film wasn’t bad at all. The CG created Alita was amazing, especially with her facial expressions and Rosa Salazar’s performance was very empathetic. Christoph Waltz was also excellent as Dr. Dyson Ido. Unfortunately, the dialogue at times was gobsmackingly awful. Though the film made an astounding US$404.9 million at the box office, a sequel looks unlikely, despite fans of the film championing for one. Though audiences seemed to despise Rupert Sanders’ (“Snow White and the Huntsman”) adaptation of “Ghost in the Shell”, I thought it was an interesting take on the franchise. Criticism of the film seemed to centre solely on the fact Scarlett Johansson portrayed Major Mira Killian, who in the original manga was a Japanese woman (Motoko Kusanagi). The criticism seemed to ignore the fact a key theme in the film was loss of identity, which Killian was grappling with in the film. It also seemed to ignore Killian’s real identity which was revealed towards the end of the film. Despite the accusations of “whitewashing”, the cast was quite diverse with Takeshi Kitano, Pilou Asbæk, Juliette Binoche, Chin Han and Danusia Samal in the lead and secondary roles. Lastly, Japanese pop culture has really seeped into western pop culture. For example, “Ready Player One”. Though not a great or memorable by any stretch of the imagination, the film did include some surprising cameos such as a Gundam, Kaneda’s motorbike from “Akira” and the Mach 5 from “Speed Racer”.
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That offending scene from "Code Geass Lelouch of the
Rebellion R2" |
At the beginning of the decade in the UK, changes in laws banning what was known as “extreme pornography” also contained a subsection colloquially known as the “Dangerous Cartoons Act”. Essentially this was a change in the law do to with possession of “non-photographic visual depictions of child sexual abuse”. The change meant that non-realistic depictions were now illegal, where as before, the law explicitly stated only photorealistic images and drawings were banned. This change did cause some waves as there was the possibility UK anime fans could be gaoled for importing ero anime and manga freely available in the US and Japan. However, there were no real cases of this happening. While the British Board of Classification (BBFC) was notorious in the 1990’s for censoring and even banning various anime that Manga Entertainment had intended to release, censorship of titles had been loosed over the decades and it was now unheard of for a title to be censored. However, in 2010 UK company Beez received a notice from the BBFC to censor a single shot from episode 10 of “Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion R2” due to the fact it may “encourage an interest in underage sexual activity”. The issue with this problematic shot was that it included a picture from a photo album, which had a nude young woman in the background holding up her arms so her breasts weren’t showing. The incident seemed rather hysterical and absurd. It’s highly doubtful any part of “Code Geass” would turn anime fans into paedophiles.
In the next part I’ll be looking at what happened in Australia, a decade of turbulence in English speaking fandom, and the rise in physical tokusatsu releases amongst other things. And seeing as we have just discussed the home video market, here’s a list of my favourite releases of the decade;
My Favourite English Language Physical Anime Releases of the Decade
- Tiger & Bunny Part 1 to 4 Limited Edition (Kaze/Manga Entertainment, February 2013 to September 2013)
- Attack on Titan - Part 1 and 2 Limited Edition (Funimation, June and September 2014)
- Love Live! School Idol Project - Season 1 Premium Edition (NIS America, September 2014)
- Patema Inverted Ultimate Edition (All the Anime/Anime Limited, October 2014)
- Kill la Kill - Part 1 to Part 3 Collector's Edition (All the Anime/Anime Limited, October 2014 to June 2015)
- Escaflowne Ultimate Edition (All the Anime/Anime Limited, November 2016)
- Outlaw Star Complete Blu-Ray Box Limited Edition (All the Anime/Anime Limited, November 2016)
- Revolutionary Girl Utena - 20th Anniversary Ultra Edition (Nozomi Entertainment, January 2018)
- Flip Flappers - Complete Collection Limited Edition (Sentai Filmworks, February 2018)
- Robot Carnival (Discoteck/Eastern Star, March 2018)
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