Anime Parodies

[usamimi]

Well, even though Disney owns Marvel now, Disney kinda just lets them do whatever...I don't think they directly control the majority of the company (kinda like they own Pixar, but they just let them mostly do whatever). Plus Disney probably just likes to pretend that it doesn't exist, seeing as if they made a big stink about it, people who have no idea that kind of stuff is out there would then discover it, yadda yadda.

[_D_]

Nope, Disney owns them lock, stock and barrel. Otherwise, they could not have done the Phineas & Ferb "Mission Marvel" season finale a couple weeks back, crossing P&F and Spider-Man, The Hulk, Iron Man and Thor. But who makes the final decision as to what gets done is open to conjecture and Disney's board and chairman aren't saying much...

[usamimi]

Nope, Disney owns them lock, stock and barrel. Otherwise, they could not have done the Phineas & Ferb "Mission Marvel" season finale a couple weeks back, crossing P&F and Spider-Man, The Hulk, Iron Man and Thor. But who makes the final decision as to what gets done is open to conjecture and Disney's board and chairman aren't saying much...

When I said Disney doesn't control them, I meant they basically let the people who we're in charge before they bought it still oversee everything. Obviously, yeah, they own all of Marvel. But when the buyout happened they had Marvel assure people that not much was really changing, that Disney wasn't gonna swoop in and Disney-fy the company or the Marvel universe. That's what I was trying to get across.

[yusaku]

I think that Disney should have bought ADV films because ADV was having some distribution problems. Now a lot of their stuff has been bought by the Right Stuff International. Yet, I am seeing the same distribution issues that plagued ADV. The Right Stuff does not have any their stuff in Walmart. I do not see Best Buy, Barnes and Nobles, Border's Books, or any other large retail outlet carrying a large selection of their movies. Viz never did a good job pushing Maison Ikkoku. It has now disappeared off the shelves completely. This is the same case for Haibane Remnei and Niea Under 7. These are very good titles that have not had good exposure by ADV, VIZ, or Right Stuff International. I am certain that if Best Buy beefed up its Anime titles they would have a lot more business. Most anime fans would buy more electronic gear if more of what we wanted in the store was available to us. By the way, why did Best Buy stop carrying Utena!

[usamimi]

Walmart is only interested in carrying new, hot DVDs that are sure to sell (which us why they carry Naruto, Bleach, and Inuyasha, since those have been on TV and people like them.) Though occasionally I have seen less popular anime there (I bought the first and only box set of Urusawa's Monster from Walmart, oddly enough...as well as several seasons of Yu Yu Hakusho). Maison Ikkoku has disappeared because it practically went out of print the moment it was finished, sadly.
As for Best Buy, they cut down on anime because it wasn't selling. Think about it: your typical young nerd that goes to Best Buy is usually the same type of person who just downloads anime online and never buys it. I've bought anime from Barnes & Nobles before, but they will ALWAYS be booksellers first, no matter what. I don't think that The Right Stuf is suffering too much because really--they're a big online retailer. People buy from them directly, which is why you don't see a ton of their stuff in physical shops (though I do see their stuff in most convention dealer rooms). And they have a huge online presence that Adv never had. Their titles sell well, possibly even better than when Adv had them.
You still don't see a whole bunch of anime in some mainstream big stores because its still viewed by many companies as a niche market (which it basically still is) so they don't want m to take a gamble on them. Some stores have decent anime selections, though: for example, my local Hastings has a whole anime section right across from the manga, and both fill the entire aisle. (I know Hastings isn't has wide-spread as Walmart or B&N, but there's tons of them down here, so that's something at least.)

[yusaku]

It is kind of sad that today's nerds do not make the connection between enjoying anime and supporting the developers. What they are doing is making the industry shrink and the quality of new titles far inferior to older titles. Look what has happened to the music industry.

We got a large group popular but talentless musicians and singers. The singers do not dance they make body gestures. The lyrics are awful. A lot of the musical score is drum machines and sequencers. The industry is cutting costs because people are stealing the music. I remember A Time of Eve anime that I saw on crunchyroll.com that was only six episodes. I bet it was because people kept pirating the studio titles and they did not make good enough sales to keep making new anime.
These new nerds need to listen to the older wiser otaku; and these kids need to value morals to give support to those who help us all to dream.

[greg]

Well, music has gone downhilll for quite a while now. Ever since my high school days, I've always only liked indie label music, so I've never really noticed a music decline.

Movies are certainly in decline, too. My friend who used to work in hollywood says that the reason the writers all suck these days is not because the old writers aren't around anymore, but that they don't get work. To sell a movie to a production studio, you don't sell it on the script. You sell it on what the movie's poster will look like and go from there. Thus, the spazfest crap gets churned out while thoughtful, intelligent movies have fallen by the wayside.

The North American anime bubble has burst, and Best Buy knows it. I rarely ever bought any anime from BB though, even back in the day. I did score the Nadia box sets, Here is Greenwood, and Grenadier there (among some others). But really, BB has failed to impress me when they stopped being a true electronics store and started resembling the crappy stores like Ultimate Price or whatever. No longer could you walk in and buy a computer motherboard and CPU, a network card, a video graphics processor, or anything like that. No more rows of merchandise stacked high. They changed their stores' format into a showroom full of wide open spaces, sparse shelves, no more computer components, etc. That was more of a disservice to "nerds" than any anime marketing decisions.

I've always preferred to buy anime online. Now that I live overseas, Right Stuf and Amazon are my only retailers. ADV collapsed under its own weight because they were getting too big. Frankly, a lot of their stuff the brought over wasn't any good. They were rather skilled at cleverly marketing crap titles and making them look cool, but eventually, the bubble burst and they were trying to take on too much.

Right Stuf seems to have a good thing going. They offer excellent customer service and prices, and as long as they understand economies of scale, I think they should do well.

[_D_]

The parts thing for computers is just a sign of the times. Desktops are dead except for the gamer nerds who want to blow heavy money on liquid cooled monsters with ridiculous specs. That said, there are plenty of parts stores like Tiger Direct in both the US and Canada that have B&M stores. NCIX, etc. also do well, if parts buying DIY is your bent. But laptops and tablets have killed the venerable desktop market other than for those that need them. I rarely turn on my desktop after having gotten my Asus i5 last year. The desktop is just unnecessary now...

[usamimi]

Well, I dunno about the desktop being completely "dead". Nitro and I use a desktop for video editing, even though we have a laptop and smartphones. It's just easier for us, I guess.

[yusaku]

The desktop market is really dying right now because laptops have sufficient processing power to do most tasks. Since most people use gaming consoles the need for a powerful computer is not necessary. It was either gaming, video editing, or audio processing that pushed people towards desktops. Now even a bottom of the line laptop can do some of the heavy lifting previously done only by desktop systems.

I am running Cubase Elements 7 and Audacity as music production software and both programs work on my laptop. Now of course, I am using a low sampling rate coupled with no more than five audio tracks. I am new at composing music and a beginning cellist. I only need very basic audio capture and my laptop gets the job done. Now a desktop could do a better job. You will always get more computer for your money should you purchase a desktop instead of a laptop.

I want a separate computer to use in my music studio. The storage unit I am using for a music studio has a wall outlet outside the unit. I could run a desktop, but it would be 100% dedicated to music recording and immobilized inside the storage unit. I do not know if I want a computer that only has one use and difficult to move around.