Talon87
01-31-2012, 06:35 PM
This ANN article (http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2012-01-30/adv-court-documents-reveal-amounts-paid-for-29-anime-titles) reveals the amounts ADV paid for twenty-nine different properties. Many of the amounts paid are surprisingly low; however, when you look at the names attached to the company's most expensive purchases, you will surely cringe. It would seem that ADV's financial woes are the result of rushing to license properties that ended up being complete busts both in Japan and in the USA and that, if only they'd waited for the series to at least get through halfway completion before submitting a bid for them, they might have avoided financial ruin. Then again, perhaps this is nothing more than a "damned if we did, damned if we didn't" scenario for ADV: perhaps waiting was not an option for them and they had to license titles lest they be picked up by the competition first? I don't know. But when I see the comparatively small amounts they paid for some of these titles, and then I see the comparatively large amounts they paid for other titles, I can't help but to wonder, what were they thinking!? >_<
Title: Utawarerumono
Date: 2006/08/01
Purchase Fee: $109,201
This one makes sense to me. Utawarerumono was a highly-praised eroge at the time and the excitement surrounding its anime adaptation was palpable. The only reason I didn't watch it was because I was busy with other animes and school. When I finally did get around to watching it, though, I was astonished to find a cute but rather mediocre story. And sure enough, the hubbub around it had all but died off by this point. Today, no one even mentions the name Utawarerumono in the same sentence as "one of the best eroges of all time" unless there's a "not" thrown in there. =P ;-) But for only $110,000, it's easy to see what ADV was hoping: at $80 a pop for the complete series, that's 1,365 purchases. A very tiny number indeed. That's like saying "we need one in every 227,104 Americans to buy this in order to break even." If even one in every 50,000 Americans were anime DVD purchasers in 2006, then it's easy to see why ADV though this purchase would make sense. Sadly, it probably didn't pan out the way they would have liked it to.
Title: Pani Poni Dash
Date: 2006/06/30
Purchase Fee: $138,666
This is another purchase which makes perfect sense to me. Again, the year is 2006 and anime is at its peak in popularity. Pani Poni Dash was, is, one of the most fan-loved comedy series of all time. I've run into no shortage of fans who enthusiastically recommend it to me and who list it among their Top 5 Animes of All Time lists. The price seems reasonable, the show was sizzling hot, and the economy was strong. So what went wrong?
Nothing may have gone wrong. After all, these are just licensing costs. ADV isn't necessarily bemoaning the fact that they licensed Pani Poni Dash. However, if I had to guess, Pani Poni Dash probably did not sell very well either. And the reason for that is perhaps that it was mostly popular with the fansub crowd and that this was one of those sad cases where, unfortunately, fansub crowd =/= DVD purchaser crowd. If so, then this was just bad luck on ADV's part.
Title: Sgt. Frog (a.k.a. Keroro Gunsou)
Date: 2006/11/10
Purchase Fee: $408,000
Now we're starting to get to the root of ADV's bankruptcy. Here's our first colossal disaster of a purchase: Keroro Gunsou. As much as I loved Keroro Gunsou, I've gotta say: there was no way that this show was ever going to sell in the American market. The show is just way too Japanese. The show relies far too heavily on parodying Gundam, something most American anime fans know little about, as well as on other aspects of Japanese pop culture. Also, and as much as I love Keroro Gunsou I've gotta say it, the show gets old. You can only repeat the same jokes so many times before they get stale and there's only so far you can suspend your disbelief before it just becomes stupid that Keroro's platoon haven't been called back to their homeworld for a military tribunal. But what really kills me here, and what really makes this a bad purchase, is that Keroro Gunsou is simply too long. Even if that licensing fee was for the whole goddamn series and not simply one or two seasons (in which case, ADV might have been thinking "What a steal! :D" to themselves), the problem is that, as a fan, you'd prefer not to buy a series until it's all out. And this is because we've all either been burned personally or else heard horror stories from others who've been burned by an anime company when they start buying the DVDs to a series only to find out that the license has been canceled and no more DVDs will be coming out. (I experienced this with Rozen Maiden myself, though thankfully another company swept in and finished what Geneon started. Might've even been ADV. :lol: :oops:) Because of these horror stories, fans are naturally averse to buying a show one DVD at a time. They'd rather have complete boxsets. And for a series like Keroro Gunsou, one which had over 150 episodes in 2006 and which would go on to have 358 by time it finally wrapped up in April of last year, this just wasn't feasible. ADV couldn't promise fans a complete boxset and, as a result, fans didn't purchase the series. The moral to be learned from this story is, don't license long series unless you know they're going to sell well over here. Naruto and Bleach are safe thanks to Cartoon Network. Keroro Gunsou, not so much.
Title: Ah! My Goddess 2 (Ah! My Goddess: Flights of Fancy)
Date: 2007/02/07
Purchase Fee: $516,000
Oh boy. :| Here's Mistake #2 ADV made: licensing the poorly-received sequel to an already lukewarm-received first season to an otherwise super-duper-famous franchise. ADV saw the words "Ah! My Goddess" and equated them with instant cash. No. :doh: No, no, no! >_< Ah! My Goddess Season 1 was so boring that I didn't even bother to watch Season 2! But from those who did, I have heard little in the way of praise. Sure, it had sexy Adult Skuld. Sure, it had Urd's mother. But for the most part, AMG S2 was an underwhelming follow-up to AMG S1. There was just no way it was ever going to recover enough cash in the states to warrant a licensing fee of $516,000. At even a modest price of only $50 for the entire second season, that means they'd still have needed 10,000 customers. (Compare that with the less than 1500 from the earliest example in this post.) And that's just to break even! Never mind discussions about turning a profit! :| Yeah. This was a very bad move on their part. But it only gets worse ...
Title: Guyver
Date: 2006/06/01
Purchase Fee: $746,665
Title: Pumpkin Scissors
Date: 2007/03/31
Purchase Fee: $780,000
Okay. This is the first of two mega-disasters on ADV's part. These first disasters are of the following sort:
a series has a lot of hype surrounding it pre-release, so ADV decides to scoop it up before the competition can
the company making the anime asks for top dollar for their property
ADV stupidly caves in to their demands and the company who made the show laughs all the way to the bank
the show then airs ...
... and it's a colossal failure. :| Everyone hates it. Critics, fans, everyone. The show barely even sells in Japan, never mind elsewhere.
These problems could have been avoided if ADV had done one thing: waited to license. Their fear that the competition was going to scoop up all the good stuff led them to not only license a dog turd but to pay top dollar for it too. You paid $780,000 ... for Pumpkin Scissors? >_< You honestly believed whatever bullshit the studio's representatives fed you about Pumpkin Scissors being the world's next Evangelion? >_> You thought for even one second that Pumpkin Scissors could sell more than six Utawarerumonos could? What were you thinking!? :| At a modest price of $50 for the complete series, Pumpkin Scissors would have needed to sell 15,600 copies just to break even. That number may not sound like a lot, but consider that to break even Utawarerumono (which was a hot property in 2006) would have only required one-tenth that number of sales in order to break even and you start to see the disaster in ADV's thinking. The same arguments that apply to the licensing of Pumpkin Scissors also apply to Guyver.
And now, finally, ADV's biggest mistakes of all ...
Title: Tokyo Majin
Date: 2007/05/01
Purchase Fee: $780,000
Title: Kurau: Phantom Memory
Date: 2006/12/04
Purchase Fee: $960,000
This is the second of the two mega-disasters ADV made. The first kind was when ADV got suckered into paying top dollar for a show that was wildly popular before it had even aired but ended up being a dud upon airing. But this second kind is what really takes the cake. These are the titles which ADV paid top dollar for ... and that no one has even ever heard of. :| I'm sorry, Tokyo What Now? Kurau Whozzawhatchit? :| What are these? Has anyone even heard of these shows? I didn't watch Guyver or Pumpkin Scissors but I've at least heard of them. But Tokyo Majin and Kurau ... these are just *FWOOP!* going completely over my head. Never heard of 'em. What does this mean then? It means that ADV paid upwards of one million dollars for a property that ...
Japan failed to advertise for them (i.e. it did not penetrate into the average fansub fan's consciousness)
failed to deliver in Japan ('cause if they had delivered, you can bet that word of mouth would have spread them around)
ADV themselves failed to advertise in the States
1 + 2 + 3 = guaranteed failure. Who's going to buy a show if they've never even heard of it? :? If it's one thing anime fans won't do, it's drop $80+ on a series that they've never even heard of. Regular people may buy crap videos on a whim but that's because crap videos sell for like $5. People don't randomly buy a series for $80, take it home, find out it was horseshit, and then smile and say "That's okay! :) I have more money where that came from!" Not most people, anyway. This is just ... ugh. :doh: This is why ADV went out of business.
Title: Utawarerumono
Date: 2006/08/01
Purchase Fee: $109,201
This one makes sense to me. Utawarerumono was a highly-praised eroge at the time and the excitement surrounding its anime adaptation was palpable. The only reason I didn't watch it was because I was busy with other animes and school. When I finally did get around to watching it, though, I was astonished to find a cute but rather mediocre story. And sure enough, the hubbub around it had all but died off by this point. Today, no one even mentions the name Utawarerumono in the same sentence as "one of the best eroges of all time" unless there's a "not" thrown in there. =P ;-) But for only $110,000, it's easy to see what ADV was hoping: at $80 a pop for the complete series, that's 1,365 purchases. A very tiny number indeed. That's like saying "we need one in every 227,104 Americans to buy this in order to break even." If even one in every 50,000 Americans were anime DVD purchasers in 2006, then it's easy to see why ADV though this purchase would make sense. Sadly, it probably didn't pan out the way they would have liked it to.
Title: Pani Poni Dash
Date: 2006/06/30
Purchase Fee: $138,666
This is another purchase which makes perfect sense to me. Again, the year is 2006 and anime is at its peak in popularity. Pani Poni Dash was, is, one of the most fan-loved comedy series of all time. I've run into no shortage of fans who enthusiastically recommend it to me and who list it among their Top 5 Animes of All Time lists. The price seems reasonable, the show was sizzling hot, and the economy was strong. So what went wrong?
Nothing may have gone wrong. After all, these are just licensing costs. ADV isn't necessarily bemoaning the fact that they licensed Pani Poni Dash. However, if I had to guess, Pani Poni Dash probably did not sell very well either. And the reason for that is perhaps that it was mostly popular with the fansub crowd and that this was one of those sad cases where, unfortunately, fansub crowd =/= DVD purchaser crowd. If so, then this was just bad luck on ADV's part.
Title: Sgt. Frog (a.k.a. Keroro Gunsou)
Date: 2006/11/10
Purchase Fee: $408,000
Now we're starting to get to the root of ADV's bankruptcy. Here's our first colossal disaster of a purchase: Keroro Gunsou. As much as I loved Keroro Gunsou, I've gotta say: there was no way that this show was ever going to sell in the American market. The show is just way too Japanese. The show relies far too heavily on parodying Gundam, something most American anime fans know little about, as well as on other aspects of Japanese pop culture. Also, and as much as I love Keroro Gunsou I've gotta say it, the show gets old. You can only repeat the same jokes so many times before they get stale and there's only so far you can suspend your disbelief before it just becomes stupid that Keroro's platoon haven't been called back to their homeworld for a military tribunal. But what really kills me here, and what really makes this a bad purchase, is that Keroro Gunsou is simply too long. Even if that licensing fee was for the whole goddamn series and not simply one or two seasons (in which case, ADV might have been thinking "What a steal! :D" to themselves), the problem is that, as a fan, you'd prefer not to buy a series until it's all out. And this is because we've all either been burned personally or else heard horror stories from others who've been burned by an anime company when they start buying the DVDs to a series only to find out that the license has been canceled and no more DVDs will be coming out. (I experienced this with Rozen Maiden myself, though thankfully another company swept in and finished what Geneon started. Might've even been ADV. :lol: :oops:) Because of these horror stories, fans are naturally averse to buying a show one DVD at a time. They'd rather have complete boxsets. And for a series like Keroro Gunsou, one which had over 150 episodes in 2006 and which would go on to have 358 by time it finally wrapped up in April of last year, this just wasn't feasible. ADV couldn't promise fans a complete boxset and, as a result, fans didn't purchase the series. The moral to be learned from this story is, don't license long series unless you know they're going to sell well over here. Naruto and Bleach are safe thanks to Cartoon Network. Keroro Gunsou, not so much.
Title: Ah! My Goddess 2 (Ah! My Goddess: Flights of Fancy)
Date: 2007/02/07
Purchase Fee: $516,000
Oh boy. :| Here's Mistake #2 ADV made: licensing the poorly-received sequel to an already lukewarm-received first season to an otherwise super-duper-famous franchise. ADV saw the words "Ah! My Goddess" and equated them with instant cash. No. :doh: No, no, no! >_< Ah! My Goddess Season 1 was so boring that I didn't even bother to watch Season 2! But from those who did, I have heard little in the way of praise. Sure, it had sexy Adult Skuld. Sure, it had Urd's mother. But for the most part, AMG S2 was an underwhelming follow-up to AMG S1. There was just no way it was ever going to recover enough cash in the states to warrant a licensing fee of $516,000. At even a modest price of only $50 for the entire second season, that means they'd still have needed 10,000 customers. (Compare that with the less than 1500 from the earliest example in this post.) And that's just to break even! Never mind discussions about turning a profit! :| Yeah. This was a very bad move on their part. But it only gets worse ...
Title: Guyver
Date: 2006/06/01
Purchase Fee: $746,665
Title: Pumpkin Scissors
Date: 2007/03/31
Purchase Fee: $780,000
Okay. This is the first of two mega-disasters on ADV's part. These first disasters are of the following sort:
a series has a lot of hype surrounding it pre-release, so ADV decides to scoop it up before the competition can
the company making the anime asks for top dollar for their property
ADV stupidly caves in to their demands and the company who made the show laughs all the way to the bank
the show then airs ...
... and it's a colossal failure. :| Everyone hates it. Critics, fans, everyone. The show barely even sells in Japan, never mind elsewhere.
These problems could have been avoided if ADV had done one thing: waited to license. Their fear that the competition was going to scoop up all the good stuff led them to not only license a dog turd but to pay top dollar for it too. You paid $780,000 ... for Pumpkin Scissors? >_< You honestly believed whatever bullshit the studio's representatives fed you about Pumpkin Scissors being the world's next Evangelion? >_> You thought for even one second that Pumpkin Scissors could sell more than six Utawarerumonos could? What were you thinking!? :| At a modest price of $50 for the complete series, Pumpkin Scissors would have needed to sell 15,600 copies just to break even. That number may not sound like a lot, but consider that to break even Utawarerumono (which was a hot property in 2006) would have only required one-tenth that number of sales in order to break even and you start to see the disaster in ADV's thinking. The same arguments that apply to the licensing of Pumpkin Scissors also apply to Guyver.
And now, finally, ADV's biggest mistakes of all ...
Title: Tokyo Majin
Date: 2007/05/01
Purchase Fee: $780,000
Title: Kurau: Phantom Memory
Date: 2006/12/04
Purchase Fee: $960,000
This is the second of the two mega-disasters ADV made. The first kind was when ADV got suckered into paying top dollar for a show that was wildly popular before it had even aired but ended up being a dud upon airing. But this second kind is what really takes the cake. These are the titles which ADV paid top dollar for ... and that no one has even ever heard of. :| I'm sorry, Tokyo What Now? Kurau Whozzawhatchit? :| What are these? Has anyone even heard of these shows? I didn't watch Guyver or Pumpkin Scissors but I've at least heard of them. But Tokyo Majin and Kurau ... these are just *FWOOP!* going completely over my head. Never heard of 'em. What does this mean then? It means that ADV paid upwards of one million dollars for a property that ...
Japan failed to advertise for them (i.e. it did not penetrate into the average fansub fan's consciousness)
failed to deliver in Japan ('cause if they had delivered, you can bet that word of mouth would have spread them around)
ADV themselves failed to advertise in the States
1 + 2 + 3 = guaranteed failure. Who's going to buy a show if they've never even heard of it? :? If it's one thing anime fans won't do, it's drop $80+ on a series that they've never even heard of. Regular people may buy crap videos on a whim but that's because crap videos sell for like $5. People don't randomly buy a series for $80, take it home, find out it was horseshit, and then smile and say "That's okay! :) I have more money where that came from!" Not most people, anyway. This is just ... ugh. :doh: This is why ADV went out of business.