Was Fist of the north star released in the US around that time? Kinda suprising... so what did we all watch in the early 70's and late 80's? I know the guy who voiced Speed Racer brought a lot of japanese animation that did really well in the US. Speed Racer and Astroboy come to mind. I guess Speed Racer was a big one... Gatchaman. Hard to compete with He Man and Thunder Cats right? lololol
<Warning, Awfully wordy History lesson on the American Anime localization industry. Most of this is from memory since I grew up with this industry. So I might not be 100% accurate. So if anyone has any corrections, feel free to add them.>
Lets see...
1960's we got Astroy Boy, Kimba the White Lion and Gigantor.
1970's we got Battle of the planets | G-force (Gatchaman), and Star Blazers (Spaceship Yamato)
1980's we got Voltron (Beast King GoLion) and Robotech (Macross, Southern Cross and Genesis Climber M.O.S.P.E.A.D.A)
1990's saw a dramatic Increase in the amount of Anime released in the US. The release of Akira (both Manga and Movie) in the US opened the flood gates and created demand for JP animation products. There was more to it. Like the speculator market in the comic industry pumping money into the comic, RPG and Video Game industries. But you can pin down the years 1991-95 as the Genesis of Western interest in Eastern animation. Akira, MD Geist, Project Aiko, Fist of the North Star, Ninja Scroll and even Angel of Darkness where huge sellers in America.
What's Kinda sad however, is the early pioneering companies of Streamline, USRenditions, Central Park Media and Animeigo where all fated to die a slow and meandering death at the hands of the industry they helped to create. (Viz was surprisingly immune. More on that later) Initially, there was more then enough IP to go around. Cheap too. Back then, all you needed was to License the rights to a popular movie or OAV, translate and subtitle it (Streamline kinda skimped on this part), then release this to VHS. (Laser Disc if you where really swanky.) There was little to no production cost unless you dubbed. And streamline had Fist and Akira. They could afford to "splurge" a little. (Streamline dubs do sound like shit though)
But then Japan got greedy. They started charging ridonkulous prices for even crap IP's. Not counting what they where asking for series like Gundam and Macross. (Ever wondered why the original, unedited, unspliced together version of Macross took so god damn long to be released when streamline basically inherited the rights to Robotech from Carl Macek? This is the reason.) So the 4 big companies had few choices.
Animeigo and USRenditions went the rout of dubbing their back catalog instead of acquiring new IP. And the Dubbing was more horid then you would expect. It was like voice over reading instead of voice over acting. And the Macross II dub was particularly lulz worthy. Streamline went the "Just acquire more till it gets better" approach which landed them such "stellar" series as Babel II, and Wicked City. (Never heard of them? You aren't alone.) And CPM pumped money into the JP industry to create new IP. We got Genocyber out of that, but that's pretty much it since they nearly bankrupted themselves.
But while the big 4 where Death rattling around 95-96, two new companies entered the fray. Manga Entertainment and AD Visions took the industry by storm by deciding to take it a step further from "uber violent cartoons" and went the rout of "Uber violent cartoons with sex". (AD Visions more so) Manga started off picking up the same type of crap IP's that Streamline was. But they sold them at a discounted rate. Where as the industry standard was around 30 dollars American per VHS cassette, Manga dropped it down to $9.99. With Series like Violence Jack being their big sellers. Meanwhile, AD Visions sold Porn. (This is back before Hentai even meant porn.
) LA Blue Girl and Angel of Darkness being ridiculously popular. ADV managed to cash in on the Newness craze of Hentai that violent Anime had in the early 90's.
And they made money hand over fist. Finally putting the final nails in the coffin for the Big 4 when Manga and ADV acquired the Ghost in the Shell movie and the Evangelion series respectively. With Manga taking it a step further with the release of Ninja Scroll and the Street Fighter Movie. Manga made an ass ton off that last one. Coming off the Shitacular Live action SF movie, Manga released the Dubbed version of the animated SF movie as an "alternative" to crap. Actually having some half way decent dubbing and replacing the soundtrack with various hard rock and metal bands (Korn, KMFDM etc.) the movie went over extremely well. Add to that the fact that the GitS movie was the Highest selling DVD of 97-99(forgot which year it was) Manga was Way on top.
But ADV wasn't far behind. If anything, their rape of Eva fans must have garnered them an ass ton of money. (2 episodes per $30.00 vhs Cassette... fuck you ADV ┌∩┐(◣_◢)┌∩┐). So I was insanely happy that Manga Landed the EVA movies from them.
Meanwhile, in TV land. Anime was making a comeback onto morning television. The (Surprising) success of Power Rangers paved the way for new IP's to be brought to network television. Heavily edited, laughably dubbed versions of Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball (|Z) made their way into the no-man's land of the 6 in the morning time slot. These shows, arrived and died within a year. And probably would have stayed that way if not for the fact that Cartoon Network needed some fresh material for their channel. This was the time when they showed constant reruns of Scooby Doo, the Flintstones and Bugs Bunny. And when they did go off program, it usually ended up as Space ghost, Galtar and the Golden Lance and Birdman reruns. (couldn't even afford thundercats, lulz.) So picking these shows up cheap from Funimation and DIC seemed like a good deal.
And christ was it ever. Even though CN and Adult Swim have gone on record saying they hate Anime. Neither of them would be anywhere today without it. (Especially AS, which got it's start from combining Space Ghost Coast to Coast with less edited DBZ and Gundum Wing.) DBZ itself funded the acquisition of even more titles on CN's Toonnami block and eventually, more series on Adult swim. Culminating in them finally having a budget to release some original programming. (Dexter's Lab and Powerpuff Girls owe there existance to DBZ... fuckinglulz)
2000's Everyone here should be aware of what the NA Anime localization industry is like now. Some key points however.
- Companies that could fund acquisitions with profit from other industries they where involved with started localizing. This included Bandai and Sony.
- Manga and ADV where|are (ADV still around?) dying the slow meandering death the big 4 died a decade previous. With acquisitions drying up and competition with companies that seemed to have a bottomless pit of money to fund there localization ventures not making their prognoses look good.
- Funimations and (can't believe this) Viz Video(of all fucking people) are currently the top dogs of the industry. Like CPM-Streamline and Manga-ADV before them. They're the big guns that get the big IP.
- Viz was the "Ranma 1/2" company for the longest time. They acquired little of note otherwise and I can't for the life of me figure out how the hell they landed series like Naruto, Bleach and Death Note... They've been around almost as long as Streamline and CPM. By all measures, they should be just as dead. I guess attaching themselves to Shonen Jumps teet for 2 decades must have been a good strategy.
- Funimations is to today what Streamline and ADV was to back then. A company that can go fuck themselves. ┌∩┐(◣_◢)┌∩┐. Though they are getting better.
- Funimations is partly responsible for the Epic Explosion of Fansubbers on the net. There was some real gripes about authenticity to be had for series as far back as Astroboy and reaching a head with Sailor Moon and DBZ. We had no "by way of comparison" in the 60's to 80's unless you actually saw the shows in Japan. Even the massive butcher Jobs GoLion and Macross got ran pretty much under the radar. I mean, back then, how would you know? But the release of movies and OVA's direct to video here in the states gave people a general feeling of "Hey... wait a minute..." when the Standards and Practices Cudgel came down on SM and DBZ. The fact that Funimations kept doing this sorta shit all the way up to One Piece... So people turned to the internet for Authenticity in droves. And the Fansubbers, Who started off just porting shows the Big companies couldn't afford to localize, (See above for the death of the big 4) where more then happy to fansub material as it was being released in Japan.
- Fansubbing caused the Localization industry to cut some serious corners to turn a profit. It was bad enough when they jacked up prices just to cover licensing costs. But when they drop DVD features and Surround sound to keep their bottom line... This is really a leap frog scenario though. Fansubbers fansub to keep things authentic >> Localizers drop features to make more profit on the sale >> Fansubbers gain popularity because you are paying more for less with localizers >> Localizers put out less because they have a smaller bankroll...
- These days, the big 2 are moving to an online model just to keep up with the fansubbers. AS and CN dropped their Anime lineups in favor of some of the worst fucking TV I have seen in years. (Still some gems but christ...) and fansubbers are actually being attacked by Japanese companies that suddenly came down with a severe case of giveashit. It
starting to look has looked like since 2009 that Western releases of anime are gonna be coming from sites like Hulu and Crunchy Roll. (That latter one is ironic as all hell.) with viz and Funimations doing the localizations.
