WTF EX

I’m not here to attempt to sway your thoughts any which way on whether it’s OK to download licensed stuff. We all have our own well-formed opinions by this point, and whether or not they have the basis in any sort of professional experience or simply life experience, they can be hard to change once we get set in our ways. Instead, I’d like to share just a small dose of what kind of sentiments are out there, and what “the man” needs to do (has to do? should do? maybe should consider doing?) if they want to cement that sticky audience that will stand by their side, support their products, and make sure they actually have a business model going forward.

I suppose it’s kinda funny that the example I’m going with is the DragonBall franchise, and specifically that in North America as distributed by FUNimation.

Let’s ignore any and all thoughts I have about FUNimation as a company from my fan perspective. That is entirely irrelevant to this discussion. This is a business conversation, a new media conversation, and a marketing conversation… all things I have knowledge of and expertise in completely independent of my hobby/fandom.

I ran a quick search on Twitter this morning for “dbz” just to see what was out there. In addition to the pain of seeing such a huge audience and struggling with getting our site and podcast into their consciousness (insert Cartman “HOW do I REACH these KIDS…?!” quote here), I could clearly see the business side being discussed… without these kids even knowing they’re talking a little inside baseball. Here are just a few examples of what I saw:

@Ryan_Toro_69 DBZ season nine. Thirty bucks. 39 episodes. Final season…..WAT DO I DO?!?

@FHD210 Downloading Dragonball. Never saw that one, only DBZ and GT. And Cities of the Underworld: fascinating documentaries

@OnslaughtSix I am now awake! Dragonball finished, which is an amazing feat after how long I’ve been trying to download it. On to DBZ!

@iEgg Just got a sudden urge to watch the Android Saga in DBZ… <3 DBZ! LOL! Anyone know where I can watch it online free?

While it may be a small sample size that does not statistically speak of the entire population, I felt from a quick looksie-through that it was representative enough for the purposes of this discussion. Note how only one of the four was considering paying for the privilege of watching the series. The sense of entitlement is overwhelming, and is completely accurate to the overall aura you get browsing around the internet.

That’s not to say that FUNimation isn’t catering to those people. With announcements like the recent agreement with Toei Animation to stream new episodes of One Piece for free, and near-simultaneous with their Japanese broadcast (subtitled in English)… FUNimation has certainly been a leader in this field, and is throwing their weight around as one of the few remaining domestic anime juggernauts (which essentially equates to them and Viz) to get the times a-changin’.

FUNimation is certainly offering up a decent chunk of anime for free viewing via locations like their YouTube channel, but I’d argue that the DragonBall franchise is one series that they are not taking seriously. Perhaps CEO Gen Fukunaga’s age-old quote about making so much “Poke-money” off the series remains true, and they don’t need to address it. Perhaps Toei’s involvement makes it impossible to explore every avenue that needs exploration. Regardless, if the above Twitter quotes are any indication, fans want to watch the series, they want to watch it now, and if FUNimation isn’t there to provide this service, then the pirating will continue.

I’m not naive. I may not have any desire to get into the scene and find it thoroughly disgusting from top to bottom, but I know what’s out there. I know how many groups are subbing DragonBall Kai. I know that groups have taken Dragon Box masters and have released dual-audio MKVs with the original Japanese track and FUNimation’s English dub. I know about the custom subbing projects on the invite-only torrent trackers. Again, if FUNimation isn’t going to step in… the fans are going to take control of the property. It’s already near that point, and there will come a concrete point in time when FUNimation won’t be able to regain control.

At the end of the day, I have one main suggestion for FUNimation: give your fans more incentive to support you. Your Twitter account is a great start, but the responses I see are half-hearted pandering and senseless corporate-talk. Look at companies like United Airlines — they have even created their own (albeit silly) new phrase, “Twares” (think of them as something like “discount fares distributed via Twitter”), to provide an amazing incentive for that “sticky audience” to… well… stick around.

FUNimation is losing as much control over the DragonBall franchise as they are making money off the DBZ season boxsets. Their 15-year-old licensing nightmare with KidMark (now Lionsgate) is destroying their ability to capitalize on people wanting to go back and explore the rest of the series. Their lack of online, streaming episodes is driving people to go to inordinate lengths to sack away terabytes of digital pack-rat-ery.

We all know that the domestic anime industry needs an overhaul, and one that might not come in time to save it. I may be incredibly biased in my perception, but it seems to me like DragonBall goes above and beyond the “anime industry” and is simply a cartoon that people remember watching as kids, and want to re-experience. As much as the fandom side of me finds incredibly disgust with the DBZ season boxsets, they were exactly what the doctor ordered on the brick-and-mortar side. Unfortunately for FUNimation, brick-and-mortar grows increasingly irrelevant with each passing day.

I’d love to help ya’. Hit me up at @vegettoex. I’ll probably end up making baseless and impossible demands like re-calling all currently-existing DVD sets and replacing them with Dragon Box masters in an equally-appropriate price-per-episode ratio that the old sets used, not to mention hiring our own community to localize future English dub and video game scripts just so we can stop some of the information nightmare nonsense we live with every day… but hey… that’s a hardcore fan for ya’.

Over in my Twitter feed I occasionally share some of the more hilarious or enthralling comments I’ve seen about our podcast (and even just Daizenshuu EX as a site in general). I figured I would throw a few together in one place for easy reference.

With no real qualifying description on where the hate comes from, and yet being a member of our forum for over a year at that point, Adam / JAPPO wrote on 23 March 2008:

Ummm….. thanks?

(oh and yes I am. I hate daizex, for the record).

With a little bit of reasoning behind it (but not doing the additional reading to show that we do in fact agree with their statement), ShadowRaditz89 wrote on 12 April 2009:

I don’t like Daizex, they are too opinionated and refuse to acknowledge when they are wrong.

…

Toei Animation officialy lists it as an OVA. Because Daizex disregards this, I don’t acknowledge them as a reliable source.

With some snide-looking eyes, Amerowolf wrote on 10 February 2009:

Thanks to rachetcomand for the news tip, oh, and Daizex, but you know…MFG is better than those guys. >_>

Under fire from other IGN board members, pmc64 wrote on 07 April 2009:

i don’t have an account there. I don’t think anyone there likes the dub anyways. Haven’t you ever listened to the podcast? they loathe the dub.

With their head on straight, jjgp1112 responded:

Mike himself said that Dub fans make up a good amount of the board, and has a strict policy against acting like assholes toward Dub fans and Funi fans like how you do all the time.

In yet another example of people thinking what they want to think and hearing what they want to hear, King wrote on 09 March 2009:

I know Daizex will burst for anything that the japanese will pump out, even though the japanese kind of did the same thing like the U.S did…BUT IN JAPANESE VERSION.

Thankfully, Jacob was around and actually listened to what we said when he responded:

Not really. As the usual panel (plus!) explain in the latest podcast, just because it’s a Japanese production they won’t give it a pass. They’ll give DBE one viewing to be fair, just they did FUNi’s orange boxes and will Kai, but if the product is displeasing…

We smiled a bit when Brent contributed to a post on Bethesda’s Blog on 30 January 2009:

I listened to the MKast podcast while Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe was still in development, and I listen to Daizenshuu Ex’s and Major Nelson’s podcasts every-so-often.

We were a little confused when MDUNNER28 originally wrote this on 30 March 2009, but then they kept talking about our show with each subsequent post, so I suppose they learned to like us…?

Episode 170 of Daizenshuu EX is available. If you can get past the hosts’ goofy elitism, it’s a pretty good show.

Based on this comment (along with a few others) that vashkey made on 11 April 2009, Meri and I did a little aside on Episode #0174 of the podcast to once again re-iterate that just because something’s Japanese, it doesn’t mean it gets a free pass, it doesn’t mean we will automatically like it… and in fact, by the way… we aren’t completely in love with it. Once again, people hear and read what they want to hear and read.

It’s almost ironic though if you keep up with the daizex website. They bash the Funi remaster so much, but they’ve been praising Kai. I watched the first couple of episodes of the Funi remaster before watching Kai and alot of it is the same when it concerns cropping. In alot of scenes if not all Kai matches up the Funi remaster perfectly. Daizex’s predisposition is pretty obvious.

We were tickled with our description as “nifty” when Seleria wrote on 11 March 2007:

Hinode gave me a link to this nifty site called Daizenshuu EX, where there are scans of Dragon Ball artworks by other famous mangakas.

Over on the “Profile” page of Rumic World, Harley wrote:

this is a Dragon Ball site I browse through fairly often. I’m not a huge Dragon Ball fan, but I like to visit well made series-specific sites.

On their links page, Kanzentai wrote:

One of the best old school sites and it’s probably the only one left! This is one of my personal favorites because it has such unique information, and the largest DragonBall music database ever!

Hey… thanks, guys!

All in all, it’s incredibly interesting to see the types of responses and comments that are out there (and the style in which they are written). Every single last bit of feedback should be taken to heart in some capacity, but when you have been doing this sort of stuff as long as we have been doing it, you start to recognize which ones are legit and constructive, which ones just didn’t do their homework, and which ones are just not worth your time. There are so many more that I have seen over the last eleven years, and I wish I could have saved more of them. I’m sure they’re still out there on the internet somewhere, and I’ll come across another batch for another blog entry at some point in the future.

I just saw this report over on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website talking about the cancellation/removal of land-line phones in favor of cell-phone-only service. We are apparently at a point where one-in-five American homes have removed their plain ol’ telephone service in favor of exclusively using cell phones. The wife and I have been this way since 2004 when we moved into our first apartment, and continue to be this way in the new house. In addition to that, we also canceled our cable television service shortly before moving, and continue to operate with no traditional television service.

You know what? Things are just fine.

In terms of telephone service, it makes complete sense to abandon the land lines. While the quality of cell phone calls still leaves a lot to be desired, it suffices more than enough for my phone conversation purposes, which typically do not last longer than one minute unless I am calling my parents. If I am on the road or otherwise out and cannot be reached, my simply not answering the phone is exactly the same thing as someone calling me and not being home to pick up the phone. Combine that with text messages that completely replace voice mail in terms of disseminating tiny bits of information in quick, easily-digestible form… well, you’ve got a winner.

As for television, it is equally fine without it. We have enough things to keep us busy after the move that we have no time to just sit around and mindlessly watch television, anyway. Once things settle back down a little bit (which they are already beginning to do), we still have more than enough viewable-passive-media to keep us entertained until the ends of time without needing to obtain anything else. Throw video games into the mix, and I have a hard time understanding why I would ever actually need cable service on my television. In fact, the word “television” does not accurately describe that 50″ Kuro in my living room now, since everything from that to the “old TV” to the computer monitors are really nothing more than display surfaces of varying sizes and aged technology. Whether it’s a video game, a DVD, a Blu-ray, episodes downloaded online and burned to DVD+RW for viewing on the PS3 or 360… all of these display surfaces act in exactly the same way without needing to pay someone to be constantly broadcasting a live signal to them which I have no interest in tuning into, anyway.

I will admit there is a strange sort of “learning curve” to not being able to just sit down, hit a power button, and expect an in-progress video. Everything must be manually initiated. In the long run, I prefer this. Beyond the cost savings, I find that I gain precious minutes here and there that might otherwise be spent mindlessly flipping channels before realizing there is nothing to watch and starting up some other activity. Now-a-days, I just go right into whatever that “something else” would have been.

I’m constantly reminded of that Seinfeld episode where Kramer wants to cancel his mail. Can we do that, yet?

Hey, everyone. It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything up over here. As you can probably guess, the move to the new house has put a temporary slowdown on updates across the board for me. I’ve put a couple quick things up over on vgconvos, and I was able to record episode 20 of lo-fidelity with Jeff, but everything else is still settling back down into normalcy.

Making it even worse was coming down with a cold over the weekend. However, my sickness benefits you, because it gives me something to blog about. See… when I’m sick, I like to watch terrible movies. There’s nothing more comfortable to me while blowing my nose and drinking endless glasses of water than curling up on the couch with a cat and denying myself the privilege of watching something genuinely worthwhile. Yesterday, those two movies were Hancock and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.

These will not be long, in-depth, helpful reviews. Remember my state of mind while watching them.

Hancock was interesting for half of its length. Once the big “plot twist” comes in (and is literally thrown through the wall of a house), it immediately becomes garbage. Similar to the most recent Hulk movie where I found Banner a more interesting character wandering around South America trying to keep himself under control (rather than Hulk-ing out and smashing things), I found Hancock a much more interesting character trying to deal with his public image and vices. The same could be said about characters like Batman, and in more recent American comic book film cash-ins, Iron Man. The faults and demons of these characters are far more interesting than the BANG ZOOM CRASH aspects. Sure, coming around the same time as Iron Man and having a superhero with a drinking problem is a little strange, but Tony wasn’t flying through the sky drunk dropping cars on buildings. All in all, it wasn’t a terrible movie, but lost its purpose and soul by going the flash route midway. As one last point, I would like to say that all children in this movie (especially the very first one you see, and the main child throughout the rest of the movie) were terrible actors beyond belief.

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer was almost entirely garbage, on the other hand. I wish I remembered more about the “first” (well, prior) movie, but I saw it in theaters when it came out, and I have a difficult time remembering anything about movies I’ve seen, anyway. I know comic fans had a problem with Galactus being a giant space cloud, but knowing next to nothing about the series, I found it an acceptable change (unlike “the giant squid”, where I have problems with both the original and movie-changed ending). The overall story, however, was laughable. The acting was only acceptable, with Jessica Alba being exceptionally terrible, yet again. The cheese factor goes above and beyond comical to ridiculous with scenes like the bachelor party dancing (do kids think this stuff is funny, ‘cuz I sure don’t…?). I would like to say more about the movie, but despite seeing it less than 24 hours ago, I am already forgetting nearly everything about it.

I certainly don’t regret watching either movie. They were the perfect type of ridiculous (if not “stupid”) popcorn action movies I look for when I’m sick and need to take my mind off of just how terrible I feel. What about you all? Have you seen either movie and have some thoughts you’d like to share? How about things you like to do when you’re sick?