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Answerman - Ho-ho-hangover


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jr240483



Joined: 24 Dec 2005
Posts: 4380
Location: New York City,New York,USA
PostPosted: Fri Dec 26, 2014 12:55 pm Reply with quote
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The better question is why Cartoon Network DID show anime when none of their competitors went for it.


that is kinda obvious. they took a gamble while the rest didn't and it paid off for them since some of the anime they showed were insanely popular in both toonami and on adult swim.

hell its cause of how well they were doing broadcasting anime on adult swim was the reason why CN ponied up a crapload of money to fund season 2 of big o. not to mention working with production ig to make igpx even though some people didn't liked it that much which was ashame cause it was a good series too. but even i admit it kinda have a slow paced on the story development. kinda the same thing that moribito had which was a good series but was never meant for AS.
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CatSword



Joined: 01 Jul 2014
Posts: 1489
PostPosted: Fri Dec 26, 2014 1:16 pm Reply with quote
Nickelodeon DID try to get involved in the anime craze. In fact, they played a variety of anime on their early morning blocks like Belle and Sebastian and Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics many years ago.

And as the story goes, they had a whole deal lined up with ADV for Sgt. Frog; however, after ADV went under for some reason FUNimation saw no interest in continuing the deal.

Disney...well, Disney, uh, tried? Naruto: Shippuden would have likely had more success for them had they placed it on the main channel instead of their digital subchannel, but I have a feeling they were a bit queasy about the violence.

They also aired the Stitch anime on the same subchannel for four days. Yes, four days. In an early morning timeslot during the school year. Sandwiched in between reruns of series older then the kids supposed to be watching them. Rolling Eyes
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Maidenoftheredhand



Joined: 21 Jun 2007
Posts: 2633
PostPosted: Fri Dec 26, 2014 1:25 pm Reply with quote
Disappointed about Maison Ikkoku's chances. Crying or Very sad

When the DVD Boxes were out I could only really afford the manga or them and I chose the manga.

I don't regret getting the manga at all and that would still be my choice if I could only afford one or the other. But today I would definitely buy the DVD sets if they were ever re-released.
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jsevakis
Former ANN Editor in Chief


Joined: 28 Jul 2003
Posts: 1684
Location: Los Angeles, CA
PostPosted: Fri Dec 26, 2014 1:32 pm Reply with quote
CatSword wrote:
Nickelodeon DID try to get involved in the anime craze. In fact, they played a variety of anime on their early morning blocks like Belle and Sebastian and Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics many years ago.


Old syndicated Americanized dubs were not marketed as anime. They were just used as filler in the early days.

Quote:
And as the story goes, they had a whole deal lined up with ADV for Sgt. Frog; however, after ADV went under for some reason FUNimation saw no interest in continuing the deal.


Could not confirm or get the whole back story on this rumor, so I did not include it.

Quote:
Disney...well, Disney, uh, tried? Naruto: Shippuden would have likely had more success for them had they placed it on the main channel instead of their digital subchannel, but I have a feeling they were a bit queasy about the violence.


This was well after the "bubble era" which was the scope of the question. That said, there was no way Disney would've ever put it on their main channel, for the reasons stated in the article. It was put on Disney X D as it was a new channel that was trying to position itself as being for boys (Disney Channel skews heavily female), and Naruto was an existing show with a strong male fanbase. Then Disney bought Marvel and they had all the male-skewing properties they could eat.

Quote:
They also aired the Stitch anime on the same subchannel for four days. Yes, four days. In an early morning timeslot during the school year. Sandwiched in between reruns of series older then the kids supposed to be watching them. Rolling Eyes


Stitch is obviously a Disney property.
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Petrea Mitchell



Joined: 12 Jan 2007
Posts: 438
Location: Near Portland, OR
PostPosted: Fri Dec 26, 2014 1:46 pm Reply with quote
Jake, I'll have you know that Nickelodeon did air The Mysterious Cities of Gold back in the day.
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jsevakis
Former ANN Editor in Chief


Joined: 28 Jul 2003
Posts: 1684
Location: Los Angeles, CA
PostPosted: Fri Dec 26, 2014 1:48 pm Reply with quote
gettin well-actually'd all over the place today
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walw6pK4Alo



Joined: 12 Mar 2008
Posts: 9322
PostPosted: Fri Dec 26, 2014 1:53 pm Reply with quote
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and Urusei Yatsura was never a huge seller for AnimEigo.

Tsk tsk. Well, hopefully Japan can at least produce some uncropped 4:3 BDs for the film series, even if they'll likely not be licensed here. Maybe Discotek could jump on it, they've had success with resuscitating old anime, and six films in a boxset much simpler than 195 episodes.

Quote:
If you can spring it, I say go for the 4K displays.

Was just in a Best Buy eying a 40 inch 4K Samsung for $699. Expensive now, hopefully it'll drop. The salesman was saying that he thinks 3D is gonna up and vanish next year, and another one told me that Curved screens were likely doomed as well, but 4K does have an obvious and viable advantage that makes sense going forward. For all of the stupid gimmicks they throw on TVs, it's just the only one that really matters and where all sets will eventually go regardless.

If you need a quick and easy HDTV, most places will offer 1080p sets from major brands for $299, and that's for 40 inches. It's never been better to get some decent average joe HDTVs. Even if they're not the high end models from those brands (fewer connections in the back like 2 HDMI instead of 4, build quality not as good), you're also not out a whole lot of money for them.
Quote:

As for the frame rate interpolation...

I have it set to be turned off for when I connect my computer or BD player, but I leave it on for cable because most of what I watch is live (sports, news, talkshows, rich people doing expensive things on AWE, Science Channel and History, etc.) Otherwise, I'm just used to it when I watch my shows on HBO.
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invalidname
Contributor



Joined: 11 Aug 2004
Posts: 2450
Location: Grand Rapids, MI
PostPosted: Fri Dec 26, 2014 2:20 pm Reply with quote
As Hollywood adaptations go, I'll admit I'm pinning my hopes on the Soul Reviver adaptation announced this year, only because:

  1. I know absolutely nothing about the source material, so I'm not tied to it in any way, and won't be disappointed if it's significantly altered in the adaptation process
  2. Zwick and Hersovitz have done really good things in a lot of different genres (feature films Glory and The Last Samurai, but also TV like thirtysomething and My So Called Life)

If anything, the fact I've never heard of the source manga makes me interested: what's so compelling here that two seasoned pros thought it was worth optioning?
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EricJ2



Joined: 01 Feb 2014
Posts: 4016
PostPosted: Fri Dec 26, 2014 2:26 pm Reply with quote
walw6pK4Alo wrote:
Quote:
and Urusei Yatsura was never a huge seller for AnimEigo.

Tsk tsk. Well, hopefully Japan can at least produce some uncropped 4:3 BDs for the film series, even if they'll likely not be licensed here. Maybe Discotek could jump on it, they've had success with resuscitating old anime, and six films in a boxset much simpler than 195 episodes.


I remember when the battle for Maison Ikkoku was literally the battle for anime on DVD in the late 90's:
Viz was the last company still offering anime on 2-episode dub-or-sub VHS singles for $35, and the fans and technology had long since moved on.
There were "rogue" Maison fans within 90's-00's Viz at the time, but studio stubbornness dictated "They didn't buy the tapes, they don't like the series."
Which memo stayed around by the time they released the DVD version, and while they released the first DVD box of already-dubbed VHS episodes on mainstream shelves, "hid" the new dubs of the remaining series away as a website/Amazon exclusive.
(Thus causing the final Vol 8 to become the sought-after Holy Grail of every anime collector.)

Urusei Yatsura, OTOH, was hampered by the fact that AnimEigo was LITERALLY a garage company. Their homemade attempts at dubs back in the early days ensured that the series wouldn't get a TV dub for mainstream shelves or broadcast (although they managed a nice more professional dub for the movies), not to mention the VHS series got up through Vol. 20, and then had to reboot from scratch when DVD hit. Followed by at least two to three years of "limbo" as rights kept it out of production, and by the time they came back to finish the series on DVD in '00, the little garage AnimEigo who'd started anime on mainstream US video was now permanently Rip-Van-Winkled out of the loop of more established professional companies like Pioneer and ADV, and couldn't get their stuff onto mainstream store shelves if they tried.
If any fan from after the mail-order-VHS days remembers Lum at all nowadays, they remember her from CPM's Beautiful Dreamer dub airing on Sci-Fi Channel, because that company was able to get a professional English dub into the circuit. Which is one reason reason we're hoping Viz won't be so stubborn or hard-assed THIS time around.

(Oh, and yes, that little.....problem of new fans running screaming from the first season, and older fans saying "No, really, it gets better!")

jsevakis wrote:
gettin well-actually'd all over the place today


(flashes membership card in the "Well, Actually" club: spoiler[(points for whoever gets the Python reference)])

Well, actually, it's just an overdose of that bane of the Longtime Fan, having to explain why there are longer-historied reasons why "It's not fair, why won't they do a big-budget Bebop and put anime back on cable, like they did before SyFy started showing Sharknado movies and Nick started trying to copy Adult Swim?"
The usual answer being, well, actually, execs are dolts, cable is dying, Disney only got Doraemon because of the Olympics, and people on the West coast still believe the Lion King is a version of Hamlet. We haven't moved too significantly on from being The Only Ones Who Know This Stuff.

And there's only, y'know so many different ways you can explain that, like saying that we only got DB: Evolution because another studio thought there was only two seasons, didn't know there was another series, and thought they were competing with Peter Jackson's Tolkien.
(I mean, I wouldn't mind seeing Miike Takahashi's "Ace Attorney" at least come over here on disk, and that's not even anime! )


Last edited by EricJ2 on Fri Dec 26, 2014 3:11 pm; edited 3 times in total
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Paiprince



Joined: 21 Dec 2013
Posts: 593
PostPosted: Fri Dec 26, 2014 2:43 pm Reply with quote
Urusei Yatsura was also rife with Western pop culture references and cameos. Not sure how AnimEigo circumvented that, but most companies still alive would just not even bother for that alone. We've long gone past the age where companies can just censor and bleep whatever is a legal no-no for the most part (and I'm glad we have.)
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EricJ2



Joined: 01 Feb 2014
Posts: 4016
PostPosted: Fri Dec 26, 2014 2:50 pm Reply with quote
Paiprince wrote:
Urusei Yatsura was also rife with Western pop culture references and cameos. Not sure how AnimEigo circumvented that, but most companies still alive would just not even bother for that alone. We've long gone past the age where companies can just censor and bleep whatever is a legal no-no for the most part (and I'm glad we have.)


AnimEigo invented what was a thunderbolt for US anime at the time, the "Index cards".
Fans loved these, as it meant you could get the jokes, and while we might be able to get references to oni, Iscandar or Setsubun today, back in the 90's, we needed a little help, and AE was "one of us" enough to explain the jokes and keep them funny for Americans.
(They later switched to "disclaimer" subtitles for a few refs, and putting the Index-Card ref-explanations as a bonus menu item on the DVD's.)

ADV later did the same thing with their "pop-up" notes for Excel Saga and Azumanga, but dropped it from the "no-frills" boxsets.
Still, nowadays, there's not as much need for cultural explanations today if Sgt. Frog refs a classic anime like Yamato or GE999 (even if Funi decides they should write their own "funnier" jokes), or if Doraemon does a whole episode around a Japanese-fairytale reference.

(If you meant parody-license use, we're looser with our regulations than Japan is, so less would have to be "bleeped".
When Slayers Evolution-R had to do running jokes about not being able to show N*** onscreen due to being owned by another company, the US dub was still able to use a similar voice actress and nudge us in the ribs about what we "weren't" supposed to know.
We're allowed to get the jokes over here.) Cool

jsevakis wrote:
Quote:
And as the story goes, they had a whole deal lined up with ADV for Sgt. Frog; however, after ADV went under for some reason FUNimation saw no interest in continuing the deal.


Could not confirm or get the whole back story on this rumor, so I did not include it.


I'm not sure of the rumor that it was headed for Nickelodeon specifically, but I remember, like Disney's Doraemon promos, ADV's exec in interviews promoting Frog's cross-Pacific mainstream humor that would appeal to US 10-yo.'s: "I mean, he wants to conquer the world, but has to finish one last robot model first, what kid couldn't understand that? Very Happy "
The "some reason" that sank ADV before it could happen was the Japanese licensing company pulling all their licenses from ADV, including Frog, which was the beginning of the end for the company, including any hopes of cable deals.

invalidname wrote:

If anything, the fact I've never heard of the source manga makes me interested: what's so compelling here that two seasoned pros thought it was worth optioning?


Like Tom Cruise fighting aliens, manga has a better chance of getting filmed than anime, because every executive knows, anime is for geeks, but manga is cool, artistic and trendy, and in comic stores next to the graphic novels, just like Dark Knight! Rolling Eyes
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JonLa



Joined: 01 Feb 2010
Posts: 55
PostPosted: Fri Dec 26, 2014 3:31 pm Reply with quote
Hmm, I don't remember it being that Viz "hid" the later volumes of Maison Ikkoku as retailer exclusives, it was that by then the mainstream stores weren't ordering it and it was probably selling very poorly. At least they got them out!

I'm pretty sure after that there were several series that sold poorly that just got cancelled by Viz, so kudos to them for finishing the series.
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EricJ2



Joined: 01 Feb 2014
Posts: 4016
PostPosted: Fri Dec 26, 2014 3:41 pm Reply with quote
JonLa wrote:
Hmm, I don't remember it being that Viz "hid" the later volumes of Maison Ikkoku as retailer exclusives, it was that by then the mainstream stores weren't ordering it and it was probably selling very poorly. At least they got them out!


No, it was hid, since Viz was already debating whether they should even continue the series with new dubbed episodes with a new/reunited voice cast, beyond just releasing their twenty or thirty old existing 90's-dubbed VHS episodes from the vault for collectors.
(You're probably confusing it with the whole "Why didn't they buy it on tape??" thing the first time around.)

There was enough fan interest and sales for the "old" episodes to continue, but not enough that Viz felt confident enough to conquer their own stubbornness and put the new future volumes on store shelves.
So, it was RightStuf'ed to death. Sad

(Speaking of which, does anyone know what's going on with Viz and Ranma 1/2? Vol. 5 showed up for March as a "Limited Edition", but not sure if there's a regular.)
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GATSU



Joined: 03 Jan 2002
Posts: 15324
PostPosted: Fri Dec 26, 2014 4:04 pm Reply with quote
I would say there's a slightly higher chance with Maison Ikkoku coming back than there is for UY, just because it's shorter. But Anime Sols could hypothetically fund UY. Anyway, if the Sentai peeps brought back Patlabor, then maybe just maybe they'll consider one of those shows.

Quote:
The better question is why Cartoon Network DID show anime when none of their competitors went for it.


Because CN isn't specifically targeting tweens, like the Disney Channel and Nick. They don't have to worry about offending soccer moms as much. I mean can you imagine Adult Swim-type programming on those other channels?

Quote:
because nobody wants to be the jerk that said no to something that later becomes a huge hit.


But they find a reason to be jerks, anyway. Rolling Eyes

Quote:
This time the Americans call the shots: the original creator and publisher more or less give up any control over their property when a major studio buys the rights.


That's what's ridiculous. Almost never happens with American comic books.


Last edited by GATSU on Fri Dec 26, 2014 4:55 pm; edited 1 time in total
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PurpleWarrior13



Joined: 05 Sep 2009
Posts: 2026
PostPosted: Fri Dec 26, 2014 4:21 pm Reply with quote
Maison Ikkoku is Rumiko Takahashi's masterpiece that unfortunately has always struggled here. It's a damn shame. We're lucky we got the whole series dubbed and released in SOME way. However, we DID get the whole manga released here unflipped a decade before Ranma, so that's something. Razz

Speaking of Ranma, there were rumors of a Hollywood live action film being optioned in the late 90s, which obviously didn't happen. Same with that Sailor Moon film from Disney with Geena Davis.

Nick was interested in Sgt. Frog from what I hear, but backed out when ADV's financial troubles became apparent. By the time FUNi got the show, Nick (and everyone else they talked to) was no longer interested. A shame since Sgt. Frog is a great show with some easy marketability.
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