[The panel consisted of Tony Allen of MVM (left), Jerome Mazandarani from Manga UK (middle) and Andrew Partridge from Beez (right).]Host – To begin with why don’t you each tell us some forthcoming titles and releases.
Tony – I’ll go first as I’ve got the least (laugh), I’ve not got a fantastic amount to new stuff to announce. The only new things on the horizon, and have already been commented on before, but probably the biggest one is ‘Blade The Immortal’ and another one people are waiting for, is the new Slayers 4th Season ‘Revolution and Evolution-R’.
The other that’s taken quite a while to get out is ‘Moribito – Guardian Of The Spirit’.
Just to let you when’s what from after this show, ‘Rozen Maiden Torment’ we’ve got following ‘Rozen Maiden’. ‘Pet Shop Of Horrors’ as a stand alone in August, ‘Moribito’ volume 1 will be in September. And that will actually be MVM’s departure from single volumes because we’ll be following the lead of Manga, actually doing the 2-disc sets. So of course, we have to sell twice as much of it, so go buy and twice as much please. That’s a slight lie there actually, ‘Blade The Immortal’ will be out in October and will be single disc, the same as the Americans and Australians are doing it, I imagine we’re all doing single discs for the same reason, because it cost a bloody fortune! So that will be 3 discs to complete ‘Blade The Immortal’. And then of course we’ll follow on with our well known boxsets. I think that’s one of the things that make MVM standout, is the quality of our boxsets we bring out for each series. So stuff we’ve not got out yet on boxset will be following on with things like ‘Aquarion’, ‘Fate Stay Night’, ‘Romeo X Juliet’ and of course, eventually you’ll find the ‘Slayers’ one. All 3 ‘Slayers’ series boxsets are out here at the show, and actually we’ve had great support, thank you to the people who have supported ‘Slayers’. And that’s all from me.
Jerome – Hi everyone, we’ve got loads going on. Before I start telling you some announcements, just like to remind you that we’ve got our Manga/Viz Media DVD bookshop over there. We’ve Sky Crawlers on DVD and Blu-Ray today, we’ve also got a £1.00 shop, over the by the entrance, so keep an eye on that.
In terms of new releases, obviously we’re really excited to have Sky Crawlers out on Monday. Evangelion 1.11 came out about a month ago and is doing really well! So I’m really pleased with that. In terms of big new announcements, we will be releasing ‘Eden Of The East’ as a double disc DVD and Blu-Ray boxset in November, which is a tentative release date, but it will be out before the end of the year so it should be a stocking filler, I hope, for a lot of fans. We’re going to be picking up ‘Baccano’. These are via Funimation, so we’re going to be releasing that before the end of the year. We haven’t got a firm release date, but ‘Solid State Society’, the Ghost In The Shell – Stand Alone Complex OVA, will be available on Blu-Ray in time for Christmas!
Andrew – It’s coming out in the USA, Autumn time says Bandai USA.
Jerome – So Andrew and Beez will be handling France and Europe, we’ll be handling the UK and Manga is selling it in North America for Bandai.
The other big news is that we finally have a release date for ‘Vampire Nights’, the first series. Now unlike everything else, they’re going to be single disc volumes but they’re going to be retailed at a very keen price, should be under a tenner at HMV, Play.com and Amazon. Volume 1 has the first four episodes and will be released in October. Volume 2 will be the next 3 episodes in November, and the next 3 episodes after that will be out in December. We’ll finish season 1 in January. There’ll probably be some type of season boxset, but Viz Media would like us to follow what they’ve done in France and the United States. Then early next year, we’ll be launching ‘Vampire Nights Guilty’, we’re really looking forward to that.
We’re also showing at the Manga booth today ‘Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva’, we have a teaser trailer, a really nice looking booth and we’ve teamed with Nintendo to let you guys have a go at the games. It’s the first Professor Layton animated movie, it’s from Level5 the team that make the games and will be out in October to coincide with the release of the third Professor Layton puzzle game on the DS. There’s going to be a lot of activity in October, we’re really excited about that. We showed it last week at the NFT and got a really good response.
We’re also launching ‘Manga Live Action’ which is our Live action label. We released a few live action films last year like ‘Ichi’ from Fumihiko Sori, who also did ‘Vexille’, we also released ‘Chanbara Beauty’ last year. This summer we’ve got a lot of releases, including ‘Kamui Gaiden’, which will be title ‘Kaumi – The Lone Ninja’ in the UK, that’s going to be out on DVD and Blu-Ray on the 9th August. We’ve also got ‘By The Will Genghis Kahn’ out at the end of August, which is Chinese/Russian film about Genghis Khan funnily enough. We’ve also got K-20 scheduled for release an August release, it features the star of ‘Three Kingdoms’ and it’s from the guys who did ‘Death Note’. There’s a lot of stuff, you really need to check our release schedule, visit Amazon or Play, but those are the biggies, we’re really looking forward to it, and we’ll have more news for you in October!
Tony – Andrew, just before you start, I’ve got to mention our Live Action as well, because of course MVM went into Live Action this year. Apart from all the brilliant stuff we had this year like ‘The Sinking Of Japan’ and 'Geisha Assassin', the next one we’ve got is ‘Samurai Zombie’ which, is bloody brilliant and looks like it’s shaping up to be really good! If you haven’t seen it, the trailer’s out, there’ll be a ‘My Movies’ campaign for it, and the sleeve design’s already out which is excellent! That’s looking pretty good as well!
Andrew – Before I get started, I just want to remind everyone to visit the Beez shop! They might have ‘Sky Crawlers’ a few days early, but we have ‘Code Geass R2’ a month early! Before I go into our lineup, we did come into trouble with the BBFC due to the ‘Dangerous Cartoons Act’, don’t hold me to that. One second of scene on Code Geass which had Shirley being groped by the class president, had a little girl in the background apparently viewing this. Now, under the ‘Dangerous Cartoon Act’ any child or minor viewing, the sexual act as well, is also under liability, so we were officially told cut that second out, or you can’t release it. It won’t be allowed. So what we did was we went with the TV version from the USA, which basically just overlays the previous image. So it’s not noticeable at all, all you will hear is a click or something that isn’t there when she’s scanning with her phone, so it just sounds like a problem with her phone to be honest. So it’s not noticeable, I will probably post a picture up on the blog as a DVD extra link, because it’s not illegal, it’s in fact crazy that it happened. But those are the rules, we have to obey them like everyone else sadly. But it hasn’t affected the quality, and the DVD is on sale today.
Host – So the groping is fine, but anyone seeing the groping is…
Andrew – Oh yeah, of course. The groping was apparently perfectly fine and that would’ve been a 12 rating.
Host – What’s the age rating for it?
Andrew – 12. Or 15, I can’t remember which.
Host – So real minors can watch it.
Andrew – Real minors can watch it, and character minors no! There’s logic for you guys.
But anyway, without the logic of the BBFC here, I did a license guessing game online, and I really want to go to the exciting one first which people have probably guessed. Going backwards, we have ‘Gundam 00 season 2’, that’s locked in and confirmed. We have the ‘Zeta Gundam’ movies. Those will both begin before the end of the year, around Autumn time, October expo time give or take. We also have ‘Outlaw Star’ confirmed now for the ‘Anime Legends’ range, and that will go straight to the ‘Anime Legends’ range, which is doing remarkably well in terms of the fact people like having anime cheaply, who’d of thought! To give a bit of background, the reason it’s not possible to straight to a complete boxset, for any of us just now, is that Anime Legends which is £24.99 RRP usually. Because we’ve sold it all already, it’s all ok. But if we wanted to sell it straight license wise even at £34.99, here’s the bleak picture, you’d have to sell about 8000 units minimum to make anything back, really, barring just breaking even. The reality with ‘Anime Legends’ alone, 5000 is doing well, really well if you did that. So there’s at least a plus of 3000 difference of people, to make a single boxset cheaply happen from the start, which is why it’s not going to happen in the near future. But, we’re all moving that way slowly, and if more people start buying, then the future may be positive. We are working on it, so give us some time. Building up to the last license, which is an interesting one, is ‘Durarrara’! Which is actually the same team of people who produced ‘Baccano’, the same writer behind ‘Beccano’, and the exciting news is that we’ll probably have that out by the end of the year! This is a special case, but (to the audience) how many of you are sick of waiting for the USA to release a title before we do? Well, the only way we can do that, is to release titles subtitle only initially, which is what I’m about to take a leap and try. Because I don’t think you guys should be made to wait, and it’s hard to persuade a licenser to license it to the UK first often, but we’re trying this. It’s no one’s fault we haven’t tried it before. It’s a very risky move and I’m sure the other guys here would agree with me on that. But, at this stage of the game, if you don’t take a risk every so often, you’re going to lose out eventually.
Jerome – True.
Andrew – So, giving it a go, and we’re going to see what happens. If it goes well, I suppose Jerome at least will come running behind me oppressively. What really did it for me though was, I’m a fan of both ‘Eden Of The East’ and ‘Beccano’ so I suggest you buy them from Jerome when they come out, but they got bought for English speaking rights by Funimation. Which meant event Jerome and I had wanted to release it earlier, we couldn’t. Because you can’t do it until they have the materials ready and such.
Jerome – This brings me onto ‘Summer Wars’. We were hoping to have ‘Summer Wars’ released on DVD and Blu-Ray in October. But, the materials came in very late to Funimation, and they’ve only just started dubbing it. We’ve actually licensed it directly from Nippon TV, but we will be using the same dub that Funimation produce, and that won’t arrive until the end of November. So, it means our home video release date has had to be pushed back to February of next year. But, It’ll be a really gorgeous and big release for us, we’ll probably put it on cinema screens a month or so before.
Andrew – It’ll do really well, it’s a really good film… and I probably shouldn’t be saying this (laugh). But I’m not saying we won’t release dubs. This is not what I’m saying. If there is a dub coming for a title that we license, we will wait for it. It’s common business practice. You don’t throw money at something only to get a dub out ten months later. If a title we license is licensed by the USA, and the dub is comes out, we will pay a material access fee, we will do a new boxset for it. Anyone who has adopted it early I will fight with down to the bone to arrange an upgrade for, like John Ledford has done with his new label Section 23, when he released a dub, although different reason for the upgrade there. That is what we’d look to do if it happens. I can tell you in the case of ‘Durarara’, it will be sub only in the USA as well when it’s released. It’s not related to my company whereas I can’t talk about it. I think Jerome will probably guess from that what I mean by that, but I digress from the main point at hand. So that’s what’s happening there, we have at least one more title in my belt already from that range. We’re going to work it out from there and see how it goes. If you like it, support it. We’ll do stuff on the Beez web shop which is about to go live, so you can perhaps follow the ‘wright stuff style’ model and the earlier doctored to be credited on the DVD as well, and on any promotional booklet we do to make a release happen too.Jerome – I forgot to say we’ve also ‘Naruto – Shippuuden’ boxset 1 available on the 14th June, that has the first 13 episodes. We have ‘Soul Eater’ part 1 out on the June 28th June, and ‘Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood’ will be launched around the 23rd August on Blu-Ray and DVD, double disc set, first 13 episodes!
Host – Would like to ask a question to any of the panel?
Q - In a recent interview Jerome, you said supermarkets won’t take anime titles, but didn’t explain why?
Jerome – It’s not because they hate anime. To be honest, most of the buyers at supermarkets who buy dvds are not that familiar with anime. The main reason is that supermarkets offer dvd that people go in and pick up in an impulse. You’ve got your big studio releases while you’re doing your shopping like Avatar. Like ‘you spend £50 in Tesco and you buy Avatar on DVD and Blu-Ray for £10 or whatever. That’s one of the reason why we launched ‘Manga Live Action’, and why Tony (MVM) is doing what he’s doing. If you can pick up a good Asian genre movie like a war movie or samurai sword play martial arts, and you can pick it up for a pretty good price, and we can offer it to supermarkets at a good impulse price, which is to be honest with you has to be under £10, that stuff sells. Moving back to the main point on anime, you guys, when you don’t buy your dvds, you’re self purchasing, you’ve planned what you’re going to buy and you go to HMV to buy it, or you go to Forbidden Planet, Play or Amazon. The supermarkets feel there’s not enough education out there for customers to go in. For example, ASDA sell all the Dr.Who range now, and there really enjoying good business with that. They’ve slowly educated their supermarket customers, that you can buy the new Dr. Who DVDs there every month. It’s not writing off anime in supermarkets, but we are a long way off. Most animated sales in supermarkets are generally the big Disney-Pixar films or Ben 10, things which have a lot of toy merchandising, so it’s quite complex. Naruto would have gone into supermarkets had Jetix continued playing the show and the merchandise had rolled out, but unfortunately unless it’s Pokemon, Dinosaur King, or Yu-Gi-Oh, it’s not going into supermarkets. But you will see Ponyo in there though. That's going into Supermarkets.
Tony – It’s very good if you have the shelf space in supermarkets as well, you have to think there are hundreds and hundreds of titles that are out every month, and even in big stores like ASDA, by the time you take the films, tv series, the big stuff like Disney and Warner, there’s very little space for the likes of us to get in. I been publishing for what, 18 years, and we just got our first title into supermarkets last month! Which was ‘The Sinking Of Japan’ and did fantastic on the back of 2012. You've got to have a hook to want to go in there.
Jerome – We sold about 15,000 ‘Ichi’ DVDs through ASDA, Morrisons and Sainbury’s last year, which was quite interesting, But the other thing with doing business in supermarkets, is that you need TV advertising. With that all your costs go up and it’s a bit of nightmare. I was in France earlier this year and it’s interesting to note that if you go into Carrefour supermarket, they have even less space for DVD and they always have Anime! That shows how mainstream anime is in France, and that’s because of the mass TV exposure there. I think they have 2 or 3 terestrial channels showing anime every day. There’s a couple pay subscription channels and Video on demand. With that level of saturation you will see it in supermarkets.
Q - Are there any Manga books that you’re aware of being adapted into anime?
Jerome – Good question. Yes I am actually, there’s one I’m a huge fan of ‘High School Of The Dead’ it’s a monthly Dragon or Shonen. Madhouse are turning that into a 14 ep series that’s airing at the end of July in Japan, we’re really interested in picking that up. I think it’ll be really big next year. The Manga’s fantastic, that’s one I’m really excited to see.
I believe there’s a second season of Soul Eater.
Andrew – Yes.
Jerome – Andrew I’ll hand this over to you.
Andrew – There’s Soul Eater obviously because the impression I got was that they left off before the end of the Manga was finished. That was kind of Fullmetal Alchemist all over again. Obviously Fullmetal Alchemist, the anime, is actually going to be animated again right to the end of the Manga now, you might be aware of. But, there’s actually an interesting thing about that, you mentioning the Manga titles, is that a lot of titles which have been converted, are coming to an end of manga format now, like Fullmetal Alchemist for example. So (a) – there’s going to be some replacements coming in, and (b) – you might see one or two other ones which have been. At the Tokyo Anime Fair this year, there was a lot more emphasis on new, original titles from what I saw. There’s a new (Space Pirate Captain) Harlock movie coming, which is CGI that looks amazing, and I think it’s going to be a bigger hit in the west than Japan.
Jerome – Gaiking and Captain Harlock, I believe both of those are being produced in the states and not in Japan, that’s what I originally heard. But the teaser trailer on show at Tokyo Anime Fair, were absolutely astounding. There’s a lot more CGI, I think there’s a move away from adapting long running Manga series into anime, because the Manga markets in a decline. The TV studios don’t want to buy 26 or 52 episode run shows. The future for a lot the smaller animation studios, is in short form OVA’s or even movies. In Japan they might open an hour long movie on a couple of screens in Tokyo, and then build up to the DVD and Blu-Ray release about 3 months later.
Andrew – I think that’s good, because there’s more room for studios to do their own thing. You’ll see a lot more people being allowed to do their thing for a shorter space of time. You’ll see some of the best adaptions will get them. I half wonder if we’ll see a new adaption of the new Rumiko Takahahsi Manga, because everything else she’s done in the last few years has been turned into a anime, and it’s very Bleach esque to an extent. Apart from that, it is going to more original and shorter works. So manga, if converted, like Fullmetal Alchemist season 1, where it has the effect of where you get a curb off, so it can be wrapped up quickly. Is that something anyone really wants, as it’s feel less satisfying. [23.45]
Q – Question for Jerome. You mentioned you were licensing ‘Kanon’.
Jerome – Yes, we’ve put in an offer for Kanon, I think that will be next year I think.
Q – Speaking as an often persecuted moe fan, does this mean there is an outside chance I can look forward to title of a similar niche, making a transaction across the Atlantic in the future?
Jerome – Funimation have a lot of all English speaking licenses. I think they've also got 'Masters Of Martial Arts'...
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NOTE – Unfortunately, at this point, there is an issue with our recording which affected the next minute or so.
However, Jerome went on to say he’s worried about these types of series because of the recent ‘Dangerous Cartoons Act’, and if they have to make cuts to a series or feature themselves, it would cost a lot of money to do so.
Andrew referred to the issue they had with Code Geass R2 once again.
Discussion then turns onto the 'Digital Economy Bill'.
Andrew began talking about his thoughts on how this new act means that the government has the right to punish before a trial.
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Andrew – …They’re right to look at people who download excessively, we all probably steal in some capacity, but the letter of the Law say we’re breaking it for doing it. It’s very draconian, I feel it’ll be appealed. For example, they’re talking about punishment before trial. I could download 500gb or 1TB worth of Gurren Lagann. I’m the license holder for that series technically. I could be downloading it and checking something, I could be doing any number of things with it. I would be cut off from my internet connection before they checked that. So, if there’s a trial first even then it’s a bit curious. But I think the actual letter of the law is a bit suspicious.
Jerome – I think the fundamental issue is that you guys, the fans, the audience, don’t shell out for some of the content, be it through iTunes, streaming subscription or buying a few DVDs a year, there won’t be more made. It’s true, and it’s getting incredibly hard to monetize anime, and my fear is, there will be anime, but there will be Ghibli-esque movies, there won’t be as much short form or episodic. We all need to support it. And that is much as each fan buying a couple of DVDs a year, but really annoys me is that I get all these kids coming up to the stand and saying ‘is D-Gray-man series 2 out today?’ I say ‘not for about another month’, and they say ‘I’ll just import it or download it’. And they’ll happily go to TokyoToys and buy a £30 yaoi paddle, or a £100 replica sword! So, you’ve got to value the content, it’s not fair to say the anime show, movie or Manga book isn’t worth buying, I can just get that for free. I’ll spend my money on some tat that some 5 year old made in Vietnam or China. I mean, there’s even kids outside that haven’t even bought a bloody ticket to the expo, but set up a facebook group to meet at expo and do their cosplay thing, but they won’t even come in here. The guys that run the show, still have to pay for the security and Health and Safety people, to make sure no one jobs themselves outside dressed a 10 foot tall friggin’ carrot. So it’s very annoying and it really pisses me off, and if everyone just supports it a bit and understands that your money, goes back to it. The way it works is that Manga licenses a show like Naruto, we pay TV Tokyo a license fee, and on every DVD we sell, we pay them a royalty. For people to say ‘you’re middle men, you just take all the cash and don’t give anything back to the studio’, is complete bollocks. We do. We fund the anime studios, our money goes back to them, and they make more shows. That is important to remember. Tony – We do fund it, all my money goes back to them because we make bugger all, all my money goes back to Japan virtually. I mean, MVM entertainment as anime, is almost a hobby! It’s certainly not a money maker!
Andrew – Abstracting away from the law of digital downloading, I’ve given my piece on the actual letter of the law there, how many of you (the audience) genuinely think you can see any impact this having on Japan right now? (A few members of the audience raise their hands.) This is the thing, I get a lot of people coming up to me going ‘but it’s not really affecting Japan just now is it’. The real thing is, as you’ve seen no one could really see the bit credit crunch coming, except the few people who were ignored, so I full expect everyone here to ignore me when I say this. But it is affecting the Japanese studios! At Tokyo Anime Fair, it was bleak, the amount of the space there was there compared to the year before.
Jerome – Yeah it was.
Andrew – March last year was thriving with people. This time there was myself, Jerome, Madman (Entertainment, Australia), the usual crowd, and all the hallways, and you can see this from some Manga’s photos of places, was empty for the business days. That’s where it really matters, and that’s the kind of thing in the next year, two years, you probably will see several large name studios shut down, because they’re in the red and they’re desperately trying to make some new anime to turn a profit.
Jerome – I understand times are tough, people can’t spend as much as they do and technology is advancing every day and it’s so easy to access the content. I personally, wouldn’t want to see Manga pursue individual people. I’m much interested in taking down sites and portals that are putting our content up illegally. There’s one site in particular called ‘Anime Freak TV’, which have everything on there. They’re streaming and they're running advertising and that really pisses me off because they’re stealing our content and our licensers content, and their making money from advertising on it. That’s just plain wrong!
Andrew – I think we’d all agree, that none of us, if we were faced with a legal request from the ISP’s ‘Do you want to pursue charges against X, Y and Z persons, for X downloads’, I think we’d say no, because there’s no reason to persecute you guys because it’s available on the internet. Again, I stand by my statement it’s against the law and we all are probably on a weekly, monthly basis breaking the law to some extent on it. But it should be the websites who are targeted.
Jerome – I think we should get off this one, but I will add that you can go to Crunchyroll, Manga.co.uk…
Andrew – Anime News Network as well.
Jerome – Yeah, and one last thing. To be fair, if we can’t offer a service that’s as good or better than the pirate sites, it’s incredibly hard for me to sit here and say do the right thing. Again, we will continue to improve our site, and I know it’s not perfect. But I hope in a few more months we won’t have episode 42 of Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood still missing from our free streaming servers.
Q – In the USA, the Gurren Lagann films are to be released exclusively through Amazon.com and the Bandai shop. This is set to be a subtitle only release. How will this affect a potential future UK release?
Andrew – For the UK, this mean the release of Gurren Lagann the movie, will be a subtitle only release. This was a decision by Aniplex America for the release. The movie is a compilation with new bits added. So there’s not much money behind creating a dub on our side for it. So it means whoever licenses it in the UK, it will have to be subtitle release. What Aniplex American have done is create a very posh Japanese style release.
Jerome – It’s lush, I have one on my desk.
Andrew – Yeah, same.
Jerome – Andrew and I are gonna be in a wrestling ring later to settle who gets it.
Andrew – Yeah, we’ll probably just wrestle it out or something, I can’t decide right now.
Q – This question is about the Funimation sale. They recently came into a cross field of trouble. Say if the worst happens, and Funimation dies, is that a good thing or bad thing for us in the UK?
Jerome – It’s a bad thing! They are the single largest acquirer of Japanese Anime to the English speaking market. But I would like to say, there is absolutely nothing be concerned about. Navarre want to sell Funimation because they’re the most profitable company in their port folio. Navarre, I believe, would like to free up the cash and also I think because Funimation are moving in a really interesting direction, and it’s put Navarre out of their comfort zone. Funimation are actively producing their own animation films now. So I think they would be much more at home with a larger film distribution company, or even a Japanese owner.
Andrew – Maybe Bandai, who knows?
Jerome – The company Manga UK belongs to, Stars Media, they’re also up for sale at the moment. Manga the last 5 years, the whole time I’ve been here, has been sold 3 times.
Andrew – It’s like a game of pass the parcel in the media industry. Everyone panics because they say someone’s trying to sell Funimation. But the reality is large corporate groups and owned by parent companies, and at a certain point the investors go ‘I’m bored with that now. Sell it now, make a bit more money’. It’s like home owning! You own a home, you improve it, you kick it out again and sell it to someone else and let it be there problem.
Jerome – Generally with anime distributors, if it’s up for sale it’s a good thing because it means actually you’re making money. No ones selling something because it’s losing money right now, it’s because no one wants to buy.
Andrew – Unless you see something like Funimation closing it’s doors, the package they’re offering to the president of Funimation as well, is designed to incentivise very, very good sales. I have no doubt they’ll sell it to someone who is fantastically rich, probably.
Host – Ok, we have time for one more question.
Q – Jerome. Recently, like with the Professor Layton movie, you’ve been dealing with the company Kaze. They also release shows like Sgt. Frog and One Piece. I was wondering if this means if you’re going to be working with them more because France has such a strong relationship with Japan?
Jerome - Yes. The situation with Professor Layton is that is was acquired for distribution in Europe and the UK by Kaze, the largest distributor in France. They are now a fully owned subsidiary of Viz Media Europe. Now we already distribute Viz Media as you know, and there will be more title coming through via Kaze. Kaze are probably more likely to pick up UK rights on movies, and a few series. Sgt. Frog, I think might be one that Funimation have, but I’m a bit reticent to pick that up. I just don’t know it would work for us at the level it’d need to be to break even. Show like One Piece and Dragonball Z, which is a continuous… it’s a hobby actually, working at Manga I like to send offers to Toei Animation for One Piece and Dragonball Z. We really would like to release those two, but we still have a lot of negotiating we need to do with Toei.
Andrew – I think it’s the same for all of us. We all have a pet title. We occasionally go back in the sheets we use to calculate profit and loss. We fiddle around to try and find the system to bring our favourite titles over. Sgt, Frog, back in the days when it was meant to be ADV releasing it, I only know this because SUNRISE brokered the deal, so I heard off the record, through friends. This was meant to be a big thing. They wanted it done properly, as in merchandising and everything at the same time. My opinion on it now, is that if were all going to do it we should have done it already to an extent.
Jerome – Yeah, it’s a sort of a self-referential show for Otaku and Anime fans, and I don’t mean to be rude, but there aren’t enough of you in the UK to make that show work.
Andrew – Let’s test this out here. How many of you guys would buy Funimation style releases, as in smaller sets of Sgt. Frog?
[Some members of the audience put their hands up.]
Jerome – Yeah, that’s my point. We’d love to do it. But Funimation are trying to establish a UK streaming service so that some of these shows that aren’t on DVD here will be available. And they will also be exploiting their digital rights on iTunes. So don’t worry. Yeah, it’s a bummer that you can’t buy it on Region 2 DVD, but you should be able to access that content in the next 12 months via iTunes, Manga.co.uk, YouTube and other portals. Funimation have a fantastic digital service in the US, they’re on Hulu, YouTube, Funimation.com, I think they’ve got five or six different platforms you can access online to watch their content for free or subscribe or download.
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