So upon Bandai Visual USA’s announcement of True Tears and Shigofumi, I calculated the per-episode price of each 13-episode series– six 2-episode discs at $39.99 each plus one 1-episode disc at $29.99 = $269.93, divided by 13 = $20.76 per episode. I later talked about Right Stuf’s release of Emma as being more reasonable and was brought back to a per-episode price, and it came up again on IRC with Blood+.

So I started wondering: how much does an episode of anime generally cost? In search of this answer, I went through all January US anime DVD releases and calculated the price per episode of each release (excluding movies and special editions). I DID leave in a Geneon release for comparison, as well as a couple of other cancelled releases (like Hikaru no Go).

Now, keep in mind that this is really NOT enough samples to get a really solid view on all the companies. I mean, sure, ADV, FUNi, VIZ, and Bandai Entertainment each put out a good chunk of releases, but BVU only had two, Geneon only had one that I could find enough info on to include, and TRSI only had one period. Media Blasters and Manga Entertainment also both had only two each, and Manga’s were both box set re-releases (which, of course, tend to be much cheaper).

The average price of a single anime episode, though, was $5.65. The most expensive company was, of course, Bandai Visual USA (at an average of $16.66 per episode– but again, only two releases in January to work with). The cheapest was Manga Entertainment, who again only had box set re-releases that averaged to $1.99/ep; Bandai Entertainment was in second with $4.70/ep.

The cheapest anime was the Medabots box set (if I got the number of episodes right) at $1.35/ep; second place was Noein at $1.84/ep. The most expensive were, again, BVU’s releases, MS Gundam IGLOO and Super Robot Wars OG Divine Wars, both at $16.66/ep.

The average per-episode price for box sets and rereleases was $3.19/ep; for new releases it was $7.05/ep.

Let me reiterate that this is all pretty unscientific– I really should go through, say, all of 2007’s releases to provide a more accurate picture. (Maybe I’ll get to it someday.) But this is a bit of a taste, I suppose. If you want to see my spreadsheet you can grab it here.

About goddamn time! MangaCast spotted some new VIZ licenses on Amazon.com, including the fantastically badass smuggler dramedy Black Lagoon, as well as another work by Vampire Knight’s Matsuri Hino called WANTED, two Arina Tanemura manga– Time Stranger Kyoko and one called Kanshaku Tamano Yuuutsu (no relation to Haruhi; “Short-Tempered Melancholy”) and the manga of Rosario to Vampire. Oh, and another Akira Toriyama work: Cowa!

Also licensed: Ayumi Komura’s Mixed Vegetables, Hisaya Nakajo’s Sugar Princess, and Youzabara Kanari and Kuroko Yabuguchi’s Gimmick!. MangaCast also has covers for previously-announced (I think) titles Cat Eyed Boy, One Pound Gospel, and of course, Slam Dunk.

The American Library Association has released its list of Great Graphic Novels for 2008, and ADV, TOKYOPOP, Del Rey, Go! Comi, CMX, VIZ, Dark Horse, Vertical, and Digital Manga Publishing all took home prizes this year.

For Del Rey it was Pumpkin Scissors 1, Alive 1 and 2, and Mushishi 1 and 2 (natch).

TOKYOPOP got honors for King of Thorn 1 and 2, VIZ’s Love*Com 1 and Kekkaishi 7 and 8 are mentioned, and ADV’s Yotsuba& volume 4.

CMX wins for Emma, of course, volumes 1-5. Dark Horse took home one for the well-received shoujo manga Translucent, and Vertical’s prize is for To Terra 1-3. Digital Manga Publishing got awards for Flower of Life, by Fumi Yoshinaga (who is an amazing mangaka, best known for her BL– unfortunately for her non-BL titles like Flower or Antique Bakery, which are phenomenal).

I think Go! Comi wins for the actual number of books mentioned: Train+Train 1-3 and After School Nightmare 1-5, a total of 8 books (versus Del Rey and CMX who got 5 each).

And finally, the well-regarded manga Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms by Fuyimo Kouno also made the list.

Also of note: Mark Crilley’s extremely manga-inspired graphic novel series Miki made the list for three volumes, and the first volume of SoHee Park’s manhwa Goong gives some last-second acclaim to the defunct ICE Kunion.

Original source: ALA
Secondary source: Blog@Newsarama

Anime News Network has gotten a report from ADV that the company has laid off 13 employees across the board of their operations (of about 100 employees). They also say that they’ve hired a few new people, though.

The change of staff levels is apparently supposed to reflect their priorities, but it’s not like they’re telling us how many people they’ve got in each department, so I guess we don’t get to know what their priorities are, for now.

So, I think all the FUNi, Geneon, and ADV layoffees should go start their own company. Or at least go have a big layoff party.

Variety Asia had a chat with Director of Marketing Manami Iiboshi regarding their live-action program. Not much new information is given, but some of the talk about the challenges of the line is interesting.

From ComiPress comes this article from the Asahi Shimbun, which places much the blame credit on the shoulders of VIZ head honcho Seiji Horibuchi.

Okay, they’re probably right to some extent– they brought over a fair few of the titles that got people into manga, like Ranma 1/2. But honestly? I’d credit the anime and manga explosion largely to the Internet. Still, a neat article– Horibuchi has some interesting history. Homeboy was a hermit with his buddies for a year and a half? Groovy.

A fun link via Canned Dogs: this Japanese blogger is severely unimpressed with VIZ’s English release of the first Shakugan no Shana novel, complaining that in this English version male lead Yuji says “ugh” 41% of the time, “What?!” 25%, and that the rest of his lines are almost all other exclamatory statements.

This is just kind of an amusement, but it IS interesting how light novels wind up translated out here– I haven’t read a single one that wasn’t ridden with typos and grammatical errors. I’m inclined to suspect that it’s because most of these light novel publishers primarily publish manga, and let’s face it: there’s a lot more text to edit in a novel than a manga, so the errors slip through more frequently. Though for a complete nitpick like me it’s a little irritating.

Then again, regular novels here in the US often manage to get published with errors, too…

Sorry for the lack of posting yesterday, folks, but I am now in San Diego for Comic Con. There’ll be panels for TOKYOPOP - whose booth is HUGE, I swear to god they’re housing their staff in that thing - VIZ, FUNimation, ADV, Seven Seas, Broccoli, Del Rey Manga, and Dark Horse (though I expect they’ll be focusing more on their non-manga offerings). Yen Press will also be giving a launch panel, which should be fun even though it overlaps with the Kevin Smith panel slightly.

As of just now when I re-checked the schedule, the only big panel today is VIZ (though a TOKYOPOP rep will be at the GoComics mobile phone comics panel so I may pop in there too).

Tomorrow’s the big day, though: TOKYOPOP, Dark Horse, Broccoli, Seven Seas, and Yen Press and Kevin Smith. Saturday’ll be FUNimation, Del Rey Manga, and ADV, and Sunday is poor l’il CMX, all alone. It *looks* like I’ll be able to make it to all of these panels, so expect full coverage! Depending on how the Internets are at the convention center, I may also live-blog them on the forums.

I’ll get to the news as fast as I can, after a few more thoughts/predictions… Read the rest of this entry »