Mother's Basement Discussion

He talks about Disneys utter failure at selling anime to their audience, to the point they event release anime under a Japanese name when even the Japanese version already wrote what the name would be in English(Heavenly Delusion).

Starting off with the complete lack of talk about one of Toriyamas works he was involved in(Sand Land) even when the man had pass recently and both countries and celebrities talked about his passing.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on Apr 26th 2024 at 8:28:41 AM

With the "Do the want these series to fail" question he is kinda forgetting that a company isn't a single mind running things. There are many different executives with different ideas, so it is entirely possible there is one guy who wants anime on the platform and he's in charge of buying the licenses but there is a different guy who thinks anime is worthless and he is blocking all marketing for it. And a bunch more guys that think this is a fine compromise and its cool to let the shows "succeed or fail on their own", ignoring how much they're setting them up for latter rather than former.

Edited by Adannor on Apr 27th 2024 at 12:31:37 PM

Lack of marketing a very common problem in the streaming era, but this is the first time I’ve seen it land on anime specifically. Honestly, it’s depressing.

Does Disney+ do much marketing for any of it's licensed titles? I know I've heard other cases of people being surprised to find things on there

A friend has suggested that Disney is mostly funding animation for their Japanese branch while putting in the bare minimum for western localization.

BTW is there a lit of dubs that were lost after the Funimation acquisition?

Not just dubs. Even subbed anime. And I don’t think so. Anime News Network did do an article recommending anime to watch before you can’t get through official means anymore as a result though. Shows like Samurai Flamenco(Studio Manglobe shutdown), etc.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on Apr 27th 2024 at 9:20:46 AM

I mean, immediately after asking that he says "obviously they don't". It's very strange to assume that the question is literal. Of course Disney isn't intentionally trying to sink it. The point is that their handling is so incompetent that it verges on deliberate.

Probably Salty that Anime is being more warmly received by younger people then their current slate of Animated films, TBH.

that is prolly always the case. There will always be the sort of teen thinking that anime is "inherently" more mature than western animation, esp Disney.

Its prolly them doing better than Marvel/Star wars that got their ire.

Though I think part of it is less "stay in your lane" and more "pick your battles", like if they focus more on anime spinoffs of their existing IPS first Star Wars Visions, Marvel, even stuff like Kingdom Hearts and Kiara Princess might be viable) and Ghibili dubs, they might have a better grasp on how to market them for when they do decide to branch out

...I don't really see any reason to assume it's more complicated than Disney Japan grabbing worldwide rights when they see an interesting show, and Disney elsewhere not seeing the point

for one, if it was just that, they wouldn't had gone to the effort of dubbing the shows. (after all, even of the JP does like the English language, they would prefer their native tongue more and a second dub is an extra cost for something that didn't need the help int he domestic market there)

Its the kind of thing that that is close enough to fir Grey's Law more than Hanlon's Razor and where active sabotage shouldn't be discounted so quickly.

I doubt this is a multi-region thing - for as big as Disney is they tend to operate surprisingly unilaterally. If it was just Disney Japan pushing for this then we wouldn't be seeing these anime on the American version of the app.

What's likely happening is you have a guy or a few people working on D+ licensing that are super into anime and have convinced enough higher-ups that they need to have current anime on the service if only to attract Japanese viewers. And those higher-ups know enough to know they really should be in that space...but don't know enough how to actually operate in that space let alone market within it. And on top of that it honestly wouldn't surprise me if those higher-ups are overall uncomfortable with trying to market the anime they're acquiring - Iger's huge emphasis on "brand integrity" includes him being a huge stickler for family-friendly entertainment (one of the only good things Chapek did was rip the band-aid on bringing in adult material) and we're going to ask Iger's Disney to know what the fuck to do with Undead Unluck of all things? Let alone everything else they're pulling in? Shit, part of Geoff's praise of Summer Time Rendering is that it's "more than just its Panty Shots" with the video including a Panty Shot.

So Disney, putting up the money to obtain all this anime but having no clue what to actually do now that it has them, is doing the worst thing you can do to seasonal anime: they're putting it up on the server and are just letting Jesus take the wheel on it and hoping the shows will just sort themselves out. And sorry, that's not how it works, every season is a rat race for anime viewers and you need to market like mad because otherwise anime viewers won't hesitate to drop you and will likely never come back.

So that's why they kept Hulu around.

Tbh if I were in charge I'd just make them Hulu thing alongside the less family friendly material (and hire people versed in the space for promoting it ofc)

I'd also do the same for mcu and esp Star wars stuff, but Disney is banking on those as the killer app so that seems less likely.