Tag Archive for 'Haruhi'

Price Per Episode — The Great Devaluing of Anime

Posted on June 24, 2010 by Jamie Spong in the field of Anime.

I am angry again.

The second series of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is being released in the United States. This is a good thing. The licensees, Bandai Entertainment USA, are giving it the same care and attention that the first series received, including a proper, full-cast English translation. This is a great thing.

And the whole 14-episode series can be had for under £40.1

This is a brilliant thing.

There are some people, however, who have chosen to throw a wobbly over this last point.

If you’ve seen the series, you’ll be familiar with the Endless Eight storyline. The characters are trapped in a time loop for eight episodes. Instead of running the same episode eight times, the producers handed the same source material to eight different teams, who each produced a similar yet slightly different episode. These were broadcast over a period of two months. Viewers complained that it was a waste of schedule. Now, people are complaining that it’s a waste of money.

I used to measure the value of anime videos in terms of “price-per-episode”: the price of the video divided by the number of standard 25-minute episodes included. Overall, this isn’t a fair measurement system — it doesn’t take into account bonus features, quality of translation or distribution medium — but for the purpose of this blog post, it’s as good an indicator as any.

So. £40 for 14 episodes. That’s about £2.85 per episode. “But Endless Eight was just the same episode over and over again,” you cry. No it wasn’t, I reply, but let’s go with it anyway. The Endless Eight are now one. £40 divided by seven episodes. £5.70 an episode. That’s not too bad, I reckon.

But it is here that we discover the problem. Apparently, £5.70 per episode is too bad.

All of a sudden, anime is just too expensive. People are up in arms about the recommended retail price of Haruhi series 2 — how DARE they charge this amount of money for this amount of content! — despite the price of anime in the UK and the USA now being cheaper than ever. It was just a few years ago, in fact, that I bought my first four-episode volume of My-HiME for £20. If people are complaining about spending more than a quid or two on a single episode, English-speaking anime fandom has surely lost its way; for years, £5 per episode was considered a fair asking price for a professionally-produced anime translation. (I’m sure that older fans will tell me how it was “even worse” in their day.)

But even that’s not enough.

Just a couple of weeks ago, I bought copies of the Magipoka boxsets. As it doesn’t have a proper English release, I had to import them from Japan.

4 episodes to a set, plus one DVD-exclusive bonus short episode each.

All together, I got about 13-or-14 episodes’ worth of content. All together, it cost me £242.70.

£242.70. That’s £18 per episode.

Let’s look at a more contemporary example. The first volume of the popular new anime series Angel Beats! just went on sale in Japan. It’s done incredibly well; even in its first day on sale, over fifteen thousand copies were sold.

The first volume contains 2 episodes and costs ¥5250. Assuming that you don’t want to splash out on limited-edition bundles or Blu-ray discs, you’re looking at £20 per episode. No translations. No bonus features beyond an equally untranslated commentary track. No frills.

Angel Beats! isn’t even that expensive. K-ON! is dearer. Haruhi Series 2 is dearer still. Don’t believe me? See for yourself.

You see, in Japan, when you buy an anime DVD for the domestic market, you’re not just paying for the right to watch a couple of episodes on your television. You’re funding the series. Next to sponsorship deals, domestic DVD sales are the main source of income for anime producers.

Some English anime consumers complain that the prices of anime DVDs should be brought in line with the average costs of locally-produced television series sets before they’d consider buying them. This point of view doesn’t take into account the fact that British and American television shows tend to be commissioned by a broadcasting corporation or suchlike, while anime producers have to pay the Japanese TV stations to get their shows on the air. It’s only through merchandise and DVD sales that the average anime series can break even, let alone make a profit.

Needless to say, with English-language anime DVD prices as cheap as they are, the anime producers themselves don’t see overseas earnings as being particularly significant. Don’t get me wrong — every officially-licenced English-langage DVD purchase results in royalties going back to the original producers — but your purchase also subsidises license costs, translation costs, marketing costs and so forth on the English-speaking side. Imagine how the revenue shares for each purchase are split. Imagine how little each party must receive.

Sadly, this undervaluing of anime is happening among the licensees themselves. Companies like FUNimation release slim boxsets for peanuts and dump anime series on their website for viewing at no charge to the consumer. While you may think that a copy of Kanon for £13.03 (54p per episode!) is a good thing, consumer demand for cheap-as-free anime will soon cause the major companies to stop making profits, declare bankruptcy and cause the Great Cheap Anime Bubble to implode spectacularly. That’s my theory, anyway.

Let’s step back and take this all into account. A 14-episode series can set you back up to £300 if you live in Japan. In North America, however, you get the same content for only £40; maybe even less. Even in the glory days of £5 an episode, you were paying 25% of the original asking price. Now the English price-per-episode is less than 15% — or, in the case of the 54p-per-episode Kanon, less than 4%2 — of what a Japanese fan would pay. And that’s not even taking into account all of the lovely extra features, like, for example, a full English translation, that you don’t get in the Japanese release.

So, Haruhi fans, what’s it going to be? £320 for the regular edition of series two? £382 for the limited edition of series two? Or £40 for a special, English-language 14-episode collection with bonus features, lovingly put together by people who love the series just as much as you do?

If you’re still not convinced, I can’t force you. If you don’t think that it’s worth the asking price, don’t watch it. If you’ve got better things to spend your money on, spend your money on them instead. You don’t have to watch anime, you know. ㋼

Prices for Japanese DVDs were taken from CDJapan. XE and Wolfram|Alpha were used for currency conversion and calculation.

  1. At time of writing, the complete series set can be pre-ordered from RightStuf for $58.74 (postage inclusive), which comes to about £39.24. [↩]
  2. Eight Japanese DVD volumes at ¥6300 each ≈ £375. Incidentally, the Blu-ray disc edition is ¥62580, or £466.83. [↩]
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English Haruhi Light Novel Uses a.f.k.’s Fan-Translation

Posted on March 30, 2009 by Jamie Spong in the field of Anime and Printed Matter.

The Melancholy of Haruhi SuzumiyaPrecisely three years after the animated adaptation first graced televisions and monitors the world over, the original The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya light novel1 is being released in English. But this isn’t the first time that English speakers have been able to read a copy in their native tongue.

As I’m sure many of you will know, the now-legendary animated adaptation of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya received a really rather spiffing English-language fan translation by a group known simply as “a.f.k.” way back when it was originally broadcast in Spring 2006. What many of you may not know is that the text of the first Haruhi book (and the first couple of chapters of the second one) was also given a full fan translation by the very same people.

At the end of the final fansubbed episode, the members of a.f.k. were credited. It seems that the mastermind behind this adaptation is a fellow who goes by the handle “Strato”, who we can assume was also responsible for the similar novel translation, which could be viewed on a website linked to in the credits. Ever since North American publishing house Little, Brown Books for Young Readers (a division of the Hachette Book Group) announced that they had the license to publish an English edition, the a.f.k. translation has been removed from the website and replaced with a message promoting the upcoming release. And this is all well and good: once an English-language license has been announced, the unofficial translation is often voluntarily removed from circulation.

From the end of Haruhi Episode 14. Note the credits on the bottom-left and the URL on the bottom-right.

From the end of Haruhi Episode 14. Note the credits on the bottom-left and the URL on the bottom-right.

Now, with the finished product just hours away (at time of writing) from official release, some lucky folk have received their copies early. As I’m still waiting for mine to be posted, I have to make do with a free promotional excerpt being offered on the official website. Giving it a read, I notice that it’s quite similar to the a.f.k. version I read a while back. Very similar, in fact. Hey, I recognise that line! I think to myself. Those idioms, that writing style… They didn’t, did they?

They did. Barring some cosmetic changes and an amount of copy-editing, the official English-language release of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya uses a.f.k.’s fan-produced translation.

Here's the opening text from the sample on the Hachette Book Group website…

Here's the opening text from the sample on the Hachette Book Group website…

…and here's a.f.k.'s edition of the same. Bear in mind that this translation was released in June 2006, nearly three years before the English print version.

…and here's a.f.k.'s translation of the same. Bear in mind that this edition was released in June 2006, nearly three years before the English print version.

It’s not quite word-for-word, but the similarities are undeniable. Although translations of the same work, by their nature, are inevitably going to be similar, this one’s just too uncanny to be pure coincidence. They even use the same backronym for “SOS Brigade” that a.f.k. used (the “Save the World by Overloading it with Fun Haruhi Suzumiya’s Brigade”) as opposed to the (in my opinion, superior) translation from the anime adaptation’s English DVD release (the “Spreading Excitement All Over the World with Haruhi Suzumiya Brigade”). As I said, I don’t have the full, finished product to hand, but the people that I’ve discussed this with on Twitter who do have the novel agree that they’ve got to be the same translation.

So, does this mean that Hachette are making a dirty profit from the sweat of a fan’s brow? I don’t think so. In this day and age of Internet Vigilantism, a publisher would never try and pull something like this off; they’d be found out immediately. This very post is proof of that. No, it’s much more likely that Strato himself (or at least his translation) was brought into the project with his full consent, and was edited for accuracy and readability as such. This appears to be the current consensus, anyway. It’s all speculation at this point, but it makes sense: The link from the Haruhi episode mentioned earlier now leads to a short “press release” which notes that someone named Joe Monti (who may or may not be a member of a.f.k.) will be overseeing the program. I reckon that if the time was taken to credit that person on that particular website, then he ought to be involved with the group somehow. I’ll update if any new details come to light.

For the sake of comparison, the original a.f.k. novel translations can still be found on the Internet Archive (and the Hachette sample to compare it to can, at time of writing, be found in PDF form on their website). If you’re still not convinced, try comparing both editions to the (in my opinion, inferior) fan translation at Baka-Tsuki; by looking at this edition, you can see just how divergent different translations can be.

This being that sort of blog, however, I am obliged to stress that you really ought to go out and buy a copy of the book (or at least rent it, if your local library’s “hip” enough) if you want to read it. The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is released on the 1st of April in the USA in both paperback and hardback editions. I expect that your local import comics retailer should have it in stock shortly; elsewise, try RightStuf (noting the US$10 international postage) or Amazon.

Many thanks to my Twitter followers—particularly @animealmanac and @animevice—for helping me with my research. I’d've liked to’ve included the original conversation here, but WordPress got confused with all of those <span>s I got from copying and pasting the individual tweets. There’s probably a better way. One day I’ll learn what it is and then update the post accordingly.

  1. Light novels are, in general, quick-and-easy reads aimed at the sort of person who does not read a lot of books but who is into anime, manga and the general fandom—not unlike myself, in fact. As such, these books are often (if not usually) based on—or adapted into—manga, video games and animated series. Although printed to a cheaper standard than mainstream books, light novels are not necessarily synonymous with Western pulp literature, but there is a great degree of similarity: Like pulp magazines, light novels are commonly serialised in periodicals such as The Sneaker. [↩]
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