[HN Gopher] Anime retailer Right Stuf has been acquired by Sony/... ___________________________________________________________________ Anime retailer Right Stuf has been acquired by Sony/Aniplex Author : davidhaymond Score : 36 points Date : 2022-08-04 17:33 UTC (5 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.rightstufanime.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.rightstufanime.com) | dragontamer wrote: | Hmm. | | A lot of my favorite anime still come in from Hidive / Sentai | Filmworks. I really enjoyed "Ya Boy Kongming" for example. And | Sentai Filmworks are the current owners of When they Cry (2006) | and Fate/Stay (2006). | | I'm definitely worried about consolidation wiping out the | competition. Then again, I hope people can give Hidive / Ya Boy | Kongming a try. Its basically an idol anime crossed with Chinese | Romance-of-the-Three-Kingdoms / Zhuge Liang as the manager, and | my favorite anime this year so far. Give the first episode a try, | there's ~3 songs in there. If the songs match your musical | tastes, you'll probably enjoy the show. And yes, that's a Liu Bei | reference. (Liu Bei visits Zhuge Liang 3 times before the young | tactician agrees to join Liu Bei's cause. This parallel's young | Eiko's journey as an idol, as she sings three times before Zhuge | Liang is convinced to help her). Its actually an excellent mix of | subtle Three Kingdoms stories with a good idol anime. | | Crunchyroll/Funimation merging, and Sony/Aniplex all being | involved here is convenient for sure, I like a lot of what they | do. But anime has a lot of niches, and one mega-company will | inevitably have blind spots over time. Most of my favorites are | in Crunchyroll / Funimation and even Aniplex (Ex: Oddtaxi, | Madoka, Dragonball Z/Super). | ihuman wrote: | Hidive and Sentai Filmworks aren't independent, either. AMC | Networks (the channel, not the movie theater) bought them about | half a year ago. | davidhaymond wrote: | Ya Boy Kongming looks fantastic and I absolutely plan on | subscribing to HIDIVE later this year. I have a lot of Sentai | Blu-rays and I hope they continue to license good shows. | superchroma wrote: | I suspect that with the consolidation of players in the anime | streaming and merchandise spaces in the west, we will see western | values increasingly pushed into the medium, as many voices are | unified into fewer bigger ones with increasing financial | influence. | | I'm not particularly excited for this as the big players have | already demonstrated themselves to be conservative and censorious | when it suits in other areas. I think we're on the edge of the | hollywood-ization of the medium. Crunchyroll has already been | apparently involved in the production of a bunch of programmes, | and was directly responsible for High Guardian Spice, which I | think few people have anything nice to say about. | _notathrowaway wrote: | I don't buy it. For better or worse Japanese studios have | proved time and time again to not really care about the west. | Just look at how expensive and hard it is to import their | (usually not localized) stuff. Japan lives in its own isolation | bubble and western values are of no concern to most Japanese | people. | antonymy wrote: | Netflix and other streaming platforms have made inroads into | anime production committees, but you are correct in that so | far very little overall impact is seen in the industry. The | Japanese domestic market is still the chief driver of demand | for new anime, and success overseas doesn't seem to really | inspire a response from most of the anime industry. I | wouldn't say they're "isolated", since the market has been | penetrated by the west, it's more like they're indifferent to | western money. | | I think Aniplex is in a position to change this, but the | difficulty is going to be luring the studios since money | doesn't seem to have as big an impact as one would expect. | ThrowawayR2 wrote: | That seems rather out of touch? The vast majority of TV | broadcast anime series every season are licensed for | simulcast by streaming services in North America and that has | been the case for several years now. At a casual glance at | the TV tab of | https://myanimelist.net/anime/season/2022/spring , I think at | least 2/3 are licensed by western streaming services. There's | enough revenue that they can't afford not to care. | ihuman wrote: | They're already proving your point by immediately removing 18+ | items from the store https://www.rightstufanime.com/removed- | items-faq | krapp wrote: | That might be true if "western values" (whatever that's | supposed to mean) were a primary determining factor in what | anime Westerners chose to watch, and if it were still the 1990s | when things like cigarettes, guns and LGBT relationships were | routinely cut out of anime for Western release. But looking at | the MyAnimeList page for Summer 2022 anime[0] I don't see signs | of the "hollywoodization" you're talking about. The selling | point for these services is immediacy, not censorship. | | [0]https://myanimelist.net/anime/season | aidenn0 wrote: | I think the point GP made is that it doesn't matter what | anime Westerners choose to watch, it matters what anime the | fewer number of players want to license. | | [edit] | | I personally don't think that will be an issue because I | don't see Netflix turning down an anime that Crunchyroll | refuses to carry... | a1369209993 wrote: | > I don't see Netflix turning down an anime that | Crunchyroll refuses to carry | | Oh hey! I have a litmus test handy! Got a citation for | Netflix carrying "Ishuzoku Reviewers"? | aidenn0 wrote: | I didn't realize there was an anime adaption of that; I | read the first few chapters of the manga a while ago and | my impression was that it was a "sex comedy" that was | neither sexy nor funny; does it get better? | | In addition; Per wikipedia, Tokyo MX and SUN both | canceled their airing of it as well, so it's not strictly | _western_ sensibilities that it is failing. | dotnet00 wrote: | At the moment the extent of it is mostly that sometimes dubs | or subtitles are changed by overeager translators trying to | leave their mark, in the process changing the meaning or | intent of the dialog. Rough examples that come to mind are | changing jokes that can potentially be interpreted as sexist | or even less justifiable cases of changing dialog for the | sake of adding in meme language like "sus". There are also | cases of trying to get rid of features of japanese like | honorifics because of the samewhat strange assumption that | western audiences can't be expected to understand them, | despite them being pretty normal to the anime community. | Personally I also miss the approach that older fan subtitles | used to have of including TL notes for things that don't | necessarily translate cleanly, it was a nice way to respect | the original material. | | For now, it doesn't really have too much of an effect since | Crunchyroll and Netflix's subtitles already don't really have | a good reputation. But it's certainly a sign that if they | could get away with it, they'd definitely do more. | superchroma wrote: | Right, but immediacy is already solved. The streaming side is | solved by platforms already, and the translation side is | solved by having a sweatshop of translators and maybe | eventually algorithms to help, too. We've had immediacy for | some time now, already. | | Moving on, I don't think you will see changes prominently on | anichart or MAL anytime soon; the point is that it's gradual | and more subtle than that. Crunchyroll was already involved | with 60 productions apparently. Conceptually, in a | hypothetical "worst case", they could have been influencing | artistic choices for each of those programs. We do know they | did one: High Guardian Spice is a particularly explicit | example of an anime deliberately constructed to western | progressive specifications. A lot of people are rather unkind | about it, but that's really immaterial; what it really is is | a clumsy first attempt at end-to-end control of the anime | pipeline from script, to production, to distribution. They | didn't find a winning formula with it, but they'll keep | trying because there's too much money on the table. | | So, I do think that this change in tone is imminently about | to happen. Weatern values have already been injected in other | forms in localized content too, e.g. in our uptightness about | certain types of expressions of sexuality (e.g. that which is | perceived to be pervy; e.g, the infilling of "boob-windows" | and covering of midriffs in localized games), and with | activist translators who deliberately whitewash phrases they | find problematic and also who select progressive translation | choices over neutral ones. | | The bottom line to me is that the money men have zero | interest in the integrity of the mediums in which they | dabble. As you note, there's precedent; in the 90's, it was | 4kids dubs which routinely butchered shows, sometimes | extremely. The nature of the interference will change with | the standards of the day, but the fundamentals don't. | quartesixte wrote: | What might happen is a return of the original Anime market and | (hopefully) more steady pay for animators. | | The Japanese domestic market is dominated mostly by Manga, | Light Novels, Visual Novel, (and now Gacha games) anyways, with | Anime mostly being a cherry on-top for those things. | Occasionally there will be a good adaptation or a good original | Anime product but the industry's been suffering a little bit. | This new cash infusion might be healthy and allow for enough | animators to be paid a livable wage that lets them go off and | do crazy adventurous things as they advance in their careers. | norwalkbear wrote: | Monopolies and industry consolidation should be illegal. If only | Congress would do its job. | aidenn0 wrote: | I'm old enough to have ordered anime from their catalog, back | when your choices for Anime were driving to a big city that had a | specialty store, getting it from a catalog, or copying fansubs on | VHS tapes. | | [edit] | | I forgot "random anime tapes that got thrown in the children's | section of your pre-blockbuster VHS rental store." as another way | to find anime. | teg4n_ wrote: | Why the hell are they punting erotica to a different store. God I | hate this major corporation puritan bs. | revscat wrote: | It's universal, too. I don't get it. | trothamel wrote: | It seems to be enforced by the credit card companies and | processors, who likely charge more to process transactions | for companies that involve pornography. (Probably due to the | spurious chargebacks.) | qball wrote: | >It seems to be enforced by the credit card companies and | processors | | Who are an unofficial arm of the US government. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point | [deleted] | ihuman wrote: | If that's the case, then why was Right Stuf able to sell it | before? | yieldcrv wrote: | Can we make them public utilities too so that they can't | discriminate? | HeyItsMatt wrote: | Nothing to do with transaction risk. Congress and the | executive branch have a myriad of ways to harm a large | business if they don't get what they want. | | Visa's issues with religious fundamentalists started in the | Tipper Gore days. During the Bush presidency it was nearly | impossible for a porn site to get a US payment processor. | btown wrote: | It's common to joke about the puritanism coming from the major- | corporation side of these acquisitions, but in fact | Funimation's ex-CEO Gen Fukunaga, years before Funimation was | acquired by Sony, himself founded a Christian film studio and | hired former Senator Rick Santorum to be CEO [0]. The two | companies shared office space [1] and at least one common staff | member outside of leadership. | | Of the venture, Santorum said in 2013, "This is a tough | business, this is something that we're stepping out, and the | Devil for a long, long time has had this, these screens, for | his playground and he isn't going to give it up easily." [2] | | [0] https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/answerman/2014-01-24 | (second Q&A) | | [1] https://www.dallasnews.com/news/2013/08/02/rick-santorum- | chr... | | [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R63yutg7cjo | superchroma wrote: | Sony has been strongly against it for some time. They have | previously demanded that game studios like XSEED censor their | games to allow a western playstation release (e.g. senran | kagura's "intimacy mode") as part of an effort to clean up. A | cursory search reveals this had happened to a number of titles. | I've seen many examples of Nintendo doing the same. | | Apparently they're also targeting extreme violence too, which I | hadn't heard about. | https://www.gamepressure.com/newsroom/playstation-censorship... | | It's disappointing that Sony et al feel that they have a right | to control the user in this way, albeit unsurprising. | Fundamentally, consoles aren't open platforms, and principled | user rights advocates shouldn't support them. | lovich wrote: | > It's disappointing that Sony et al feel that they have a | right to control the user in this way, albeit unsurprising. | | Do they have to produce content they don't want to have a | hand in making? | superchroma wrote: | They can make - aka pay for - whatever games they want, but | in terms of allowed software, ideally the platform should | be an open system instead of one with a hard whitelist. | That would be best for user freedom and autonomy. I'm not | discussing the online store side of things either, they can | run that as they wish, and that can be their whitelist for | all I care. | | Countries have laws and ratings systems that govern | content. We don't need to be subject to the patronizing | whims of corporations to boot, creating useless, single- | purpose, locked-down hardware and moralizing on our behalf. | dymk wrote: | A hand in distributing, not making | jandrese wrote: | I remember having to slice open part of the catalog to get to | the adult section. That must have been 20 years ago now. I'm | actually impressed that they managed to survive the transition | to streaming. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-08-04 23:00 UTC)