In those days, I lived in a what was at the time termed a geek house consisting of about six to nine fellow nerds, and one of the few events that would bring us together (aside from a rousing evening of D&D) would be when our Laotian friend Soulath would come back from one of his trips, VHS tapes in hand. When it looked like we'd have to purchase a second full-size bookshelf for all the tapes, Napster was hitting its hey-day, and we began burning the various found treasures from our second-rate DSL connection to VCD. This was our form of data compression. A bookshelf can hold a lot more jewel-cased CDs than it could hold VHS tapes.
What's interesting is that while I can still hold my own in a one-up manship contest with the anime fans of today, as many hat get their anime from Adult Swim or from off the shelf DVDs, and are just now discovering the series that I fell in love with nearly ten years ago. True anime fans still get their digital crack from direct from Japan (these days, usually via BitTorrent, embedded video sites, or home grown forum communities). Fan-subbing is still a thriving sub-culture, and while it was as recently as three years ago endorsed by Japanese producers as "creating a market for anime in America," these same producers in ever-increasing numbers are turning on the fan-subbing community.
What brings on this sudden wave of nostalgia? A glaringly large hole in the social marketplace, that's what. TechDirt tipped us off today to what the Anime News Network published in an open letter to the industry. In the article, Justin Sevakis decries what the Japanese producers have done (or perhaps more accurately, what they haven't done) to erode the business.
The decline of the anime industry and the influence of fansubs on said decline is probably the most talked-about issue in the scene today. The pros have discussed it worriedly amongst themselves for years, but only recently are they speaking out about its damaging effects. Every time they do, and we post about it here on ANN, there's a firestorm of debate about exactly how bad fans should feel about downloading. Occasionally, industry people will pop in to argue for more guilt.
I understand the panic going on. I've seen the numbers myself. They're terrifying. It's not uncommon now for a DVD to not even make back the cost of the dubbing, let alone the license fee. When only a few years ago it was commonplace for shows to get licensed for $70,000 or more per episode, today a show can be licensed for less than half of that. And they're still not profitable.
That's the situation that anime is facing. Not only do I think it offers a clear window to what RIAA and MPAA member studios and labels are facing soon, I also believe that it is an immanently solvable situation. Sevakis does as well. The fan-subbing culture for years has screamed social media in almost every way we currently classify social media: embedded video, online discussions, chats, collaborative work, sharing, tagging ... I could go on, but you get the picture (note to Johnny Come-Lately's: amazed that this sort of thing happened before Facebook came along? Tom and Mark Z. didn't invent social media, they just invented the term social media).
Instead of quashing it and blaming it for their problems, they need to utilize it. In the Web 2.0 world, we call that crowd-sourcing. Japan doesn't need to be afraid of it - it's not as if online video isn't making enough money. Advertisers can't get enough of the stuff. We just learned the other day that the major networks are raking in money hand over fist re-purposing their on-air content for online play, and the advertisers love the returns on their investment. Our archives here at Mashable! are overflowing with the various success stories various groups have had monetizing online video. Let's not forget that anime fans are an intensively niche group. Targeted advertising and increased CPMs, anyone?
Will they do it, though?
I can't help but draw mental comparisons between America's print comic industry here, too. They, as an industry, have also been particularly slow to adopt New Media, showing clearly that the "even distribution phase" of technology adoption is far from over. Only recently have DC and Marvel really forayed out into significant online offerings, and both have teamed up to fire shots across the bow of the bleeding edges of their niche's social media.
It may be far too late for the studios backing the RIAA and MPAA to turn their ship around; they've more or less declared outright war on the consumer. The Japanese animation studios still have a choice, though. They can either adapt and profit greatly, or declare war on the fans, and go out of business.
Those are the choices, Japan. Your move.