Offical Neon Genesis Evangelion Info/Update Thread

[SpaceDandy]

Bruh. You pleb, that's not why. It's because it's a hot seller IN JAPAN. As such, the Japanese licensor would charge an insane amount of money for international rights.

That's definitely not true. And whoever told you that is either clueless or just lies.

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by SpaceDandy

That's definitely not true. And whoever told you that is either clueless or just lies.

Prove it. Nothing you posted makes any sense, and is very illogical when you actually think about it for a second.

If I'm wrong, then I'll gladly admit it if actual truth is shown.

[kk1]

Originally Posted by SpaceDandy

That's definitely not true. And whoever told you that is either clueless or just lies.

You are wrong https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List...dia_franchises

Home entertainment and box office is over $1 billion, only stuff like Gundam, Pokemon, One Piece and DB beat it for anime in those categories.

[Naiera]

[SpaceDandy]

Originally Posted by professorwho

Prove it. Nothing you posted makes any sense, and is very illogical when you actually think about it for a second.

If I'm wrong, then I'll gladly admit it if actual truth is shown.

Being a hot seller doesn't imply it'll sell in the west. You know this by yourself. Sure that works for Dragon Ball Z, Pokémon…*but it actually stops there. It certainly does not hold for say, Eva. An Eva Rebuild movie cost something like 40k€ to licence in Germany. It's literally nothing compared to other anime movies. For example, Wolf's Children cost Kazé France 50k€ which was considered a lot at the time. I can tell you no European distributor paid anywhere close to this price to get any of the rebuild movie. I don't see any of the -expensive to licence- stuff in that list kk1 gave. It's not because Shinsekai Yori sold less than 500 discs in Japan that it cost a penny to licence. It's not because EVA is a billion generating licence in Japan that it'll cost millions to the western distributors. However, if they do see many people being obnubilated about the price it may cost they'll definitely jump on that possibility.

Eva is popular yes, it's still a niche thing compared to many animes in the west. Unlike in Japan where it's the thing.
it's kind of the opposite with Cowboy Bebop if you think about it. It's a honest seller in Japan but in the west, it's THE anime. And that title I can tell you is not cheap to licence.

Originally Posted by kk1

(…) Home entertainment and box office is over $1 billion, only stuff like Gundam, Pokemon, One Piece and DB beat it for anime in those categories.

You just proved nothing. Sales in Japan ≠ Sales in the rest of the world and you should be aware of that (I hope…). Merchandising of anything Eva is huge in Japan. It's not in Europe, neither in the US. The manga sold barely in Europe either (bla bla it sucks, no it doesn't) for example. The EOE Manga Entertainment released started to be sold out only in 2014 or so in France while being released (and licence expired) for years since the last DVD were printed.
You can say whatever you want about EVA's popularity in Japan, it doesn't hold here.

Btw, Netflix paid a fortune for Eva, not because Khara asked for such amount but rather for commercial reasons, like they did with Friends. Khara had no plans to licence NGE before the last movie but the Netflix offer was too good to pass. They're not going to make money out of it. It was just so people would "talk" about Netflix. Idk for other countries but Netflix is literally letting expire every anime licence they've got as of now. I don't see it being a proper business plan if NGE got anime fans in (or people casually interested in it, who would have tried other anime titles). More that Netflix hoped too much from it and got burned. But that's what they get for inflating the price themselves.

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by SpaceDandy

Being a hot seller doesn't imply it'll sell in the west. You know this by yourself. Sure that works for Dragon Ball Z, Pokémon…*but it actually stops there. It certainly does not hold for say, Eva. An Eva Rebuild movie cost something like 40k€ to licence in Germany. It's literally nothing compared to other anime movies. For example, Wolf's Children cost Kazé France 50k€ which was considered a lot before then. I can tell you no European distributor paid anywhere close to this price to get any of the rebuild movie.

Eva is popular yes, it's still a niche thing compared to many animes in the west. Unlike in Japan where it's the thing.
it's kind of the opposite with Cowboy Bebop if you think about it. It's a honest seller in Japan but in the west, it's THE anime. And that title I can tell you is not cheap to licence.



You just proved nothing. Sales in Japan ≠ Sales in the rest of the world and you should be aware of that (I hope…). Merchandising of anything Eva is huge in Japan. It's not in Europe, neither in the US. The manga sold barely in Europe either (bla bla it sucks, no it doesn't) for example. The EOE Manga Entertainment released started to be sold out only in 2014 or so in France while being released (and licence expired) for years since the last DVD were printed.
You can say whatever you want about EVA's popularity in Japan, it doesn't hold here.

YOU just proved nothing. Look, if you had a license that was popular and sold very well in your country, you'd want to sell the international rights at a high price even if the property in question might not be a huge seller overseas. It's COMMON SENSE.

Yes, the license holders want to make as much money as possible, but at the same time, they don't really care much anymore if it'll be popular overseas as, with modern productions, international licensing can make back the entire cost of a show... multiple times over. I don't remember if it was Kabaneri or HeroAca, but something like HALF A MILLION DOLLARS was paid for each episode just for North American rights. That's easily enough to make back the entire cost of a 12 or 13 episode series.

A good example of this backfiring was a show called Heat Guy J. It was directed by Akane Kazuki, the director of The Vision of Escaflowne, a show that sold very well for Bandai in North America. Geneon saw that Akane was making this new show so they paid a huge amount of money for the show to bank off of the popularity of the director and his previous work- Escaflowne- and sadly for Geneon US, it did not sell that well.

Think of it like this. Let's say Star Wars was owned by a smaller American company and they want to release it overseas. It's popular as sh*t here, so the license holder wants a pretty penny for international distribution, because it may do well overseas, and may not. If it does, the high price they were paid for the license combined with additional revenue from overseas markets adds up to insane profit. If it doesn't do well overseas, that's okay, as the price that was paid by the international distributors was enough to pay for the production.

This is common sense. If you still think I'm wrong, you, or anyone here, can post facts with sources to prove me incorrect.

Btw, Netflix paid a fortune for Eva, not because Khara asked for such amount but rather for commercial reasons, like they did with Friends. Khara had no plans to licence NGE before the last movie but the Netflix offer was too good to pass. They're not going to make money out of it. It was just so people would "talk" about Netflix. Idk for other countries but Netflix is literally letting expire every anime licence they've got as of now. I don't see it being a proper business plan if NGE got anime fans in (or people casually interested in it, who would have tried other anime titles). More that Netflix hoped too much from it and got burned. But that's what they get for inflating the price themselves.

You're right. Netflix did pay a lot for Eva so they could have buzz surrounding it. But, Netflix is a big a$$ corporation who can pay those prices. What I'm talking about is the rights for disc.

[SpaceDandy]

It's international business, Japanese are not stupid. They know Love Live or Infinite Stratos won't do as good as in Japan than in the rest of the world. Ugh. That's even more common sense. We're talking about a niche market in every country vs a cultural national thing.

Also taking Star Wars, a title that sold well internationally vs Evangelion, a title that got popular to some extents around the world is plain dumb. Again, global cinema vs niche thing. NGE sold so poorly in some countries ADV didn't even bother releasing it themselves when they got the chance! What's Germany? Spain? Portugal?


You're referring to MHA. And it wasn't profitable to Funi.

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by SpaceDandy

You're referring to MHA. And it wasn't profitable to Funi.

Doesn't matter if FUNi made a profit, the Japanese licensor did. As for Star Wars, it was a "what if" example- I thought I made that clear.

Here's a quote from Justin Sevakis' article, The Anime Economy. Despite being written almost a decade ago, almost all of it holds true;

When a company like Funimation or Section 23 decides to buy the rights to an anime title, they first pay an up-front license fee, also known as a "Minimum Guarantee" (MG). This can range from a few thousand dollars per episode, up to tens of thousands. These fees are treated like net revenue from Japanese DVDs -- royalties are paid, and then it goes to the production committee.

In the ridiculous money-losing days of the anime boom, these fees often went up well over US$70,000 per episode. That's half of the cost to make the whole show! (This is why, for a brief time in the mid 00's, Geneon USA and ADV Films occasionally found themselves on the production committee. It was easier, since they were paying most of the costs anyway.) But those days are long gone, and the Japanese producers have stopped depending so much on license fees, which have dropped to a much more sane amount. They still would love to have that money, it's just not enough to make or break a show anymore.

Just like the production of the show itself, paying a license fee up front is basically a bet: essentially the distributor is wagering that they can sell enough copies to recoup that license fee. And in fact, until they do, they don't have to pay anything more to the licensor. That's why it's called a "minimum guarantee" -- it's the minimum amount that they would be on the hook for a given series. In the event the show makes money, the licensors get a royalty after that -- typically 20-30%.

And so, for the first few thousand copies sold, money from a DVD doesn't go directly to the producers of the show, but instead goes towards refilling what the distributor already paid for it, as well as their production costs (which can range from a few hundred dollars for a barebones subtitled DVD, to over US$10,000 per episode to produce a dubbed Blu-ray.) Every show that never recoups its money makes it harder for them to pay the MG for the next series.

That was from Part 2, about disc releases.

In the current age of internet streaming where people want stuff subbed ASAP, where piracy is more accessible than ever, and there are fewer companies releasing anime than there used to be (due to takeovers and bankruptcies), these factors most likely make the prices higher- the market has grown, and competition between companies for home video and streaming rights has risen prices high.

Part 3 of his article is about streaming, and is probably the only area that shows its age, as a lot has changed in regards to streaming even since 2012.

Must read article.

[BoscoTheMan82]

Eva not selling in the west thing, are you serious? Eva has always sold and made ADV a lot of money years ago. It started on Dub or Sub VHS for $30 a pop all they way through the many DVD releases, it was ADV's cash cow. Don't understand how you can say it never sold well.

[GasmaskAvenger]

there is a massive demand for EVA here in the US.

just look how much second hand copies of the OOP full series sets and EoE go for.

[InuYashaCrusade]

Originally Posted by GasmaskAvenger

there is a massive demand for EVA here in the US.

just look how much second hand copies of the OOP full series sets and EoE go for.

Prices haven't come down very much since the Netflix release. I'm still seeing copies frequently go for $200 bucks. EoE appears to have 1:1 bootlegs floating around on eBay though. Speaking of EoE, the quality of that disc is horrendous.

[Mikezilla3k]

Originally Posted by InuYashaCrusade

Speaking of EoE, the quality of that disc is horrendous.

Not to mention the translation is equally as terrible as the video quality. I pity the poor fool who payed more than 5 bucks for that disc.

[The Collector FX]

Originally Posted by GasmaskAvenger

there is a massive demand for EVA here in the US.

just look how much second hand copies of the OOP full series sets and EoE go for.

I think the appetite for Evangelion is big, but I wouldn't call it "massive". Reason I say that is because much of the younger generation of anime consumers (ages 9 - 16 as of 2019) have no idea what Evangelion is aside from the rebuild films. (1:11,2:22,3:33)

I wish we knew how many viewers have tuned in to watch Evangelion on Netflix so that conversations like these might be a little more grounded in how much demand there is for Evangelion in North America.

I think a healthy amount of people who are in their mid 20's to mid 30's would be willing to purchase Neon Genesis Evangelion if it ever released on Blu Ray, but I don't think it'll sell to the point where everyone in the front office in Japan face-palms for having waited so long to finally realize it's a hot seller where warehouses can't keep up with the demand.

If they released a sub $200 LE Boxset, I'm sure it'd sell out. I'm also sure it'd sell a few to four thousand standard BD copies in a year - but nothing bonkers crazy...

[Shingster]

Can we take a moment to just appreciate the use of the word "obnubilated" in a Blu-ray.com debate?

The way I see it with the licensing cost of NGE is that it makes sense to look at negotiations for international rights as essentially a discussion about what the value of a property is to its Japanese owners. What value do they place on Neon Genesis Evangelion? It doesn't really matter what level of interest is shown towards it in Germany or wherever, the show means A LOT to its Japanese owners and they are going to price it accordingly. That doesn't mean it will necessarily be given this bank-breaking price tag, but they're gonna want resepctable money one way or the other.

[Raye]

Originally Posted by InuYashaCrusade

Prices haven't come down very much since the Netflix release. I'm still seeing copies frequently go for $200 bucks. EoE appears to have 1:1 bootlegs floating around on eBay though. Speaking of EoE, the quality of that disc is horrendous.

I sold my Platinum non-thinpak set and Manga release of End of Evangelion mainly because I'm optimistic that we will get a legit physical western release of the series in due time. Compared to the Japanese Blu-rays, the DVDs didn't feel like they were worth holding onto before they dropped in value. (Heck, practically every DVD, with very few exceptions, at this point looks obsolete.) The EoE release, however, was downright awful to look back upon. I thought about keeping it until I saw just how much better the Blu-ray release is. The subtitle styling alone is hideous.

[InuYashaCrusade]

Originally Posted by The Collector FX

I think the appetite for Evangelion is big, but I wouldn't call it "massive". Reason I say that is because much of the younger generation of anime consumers (ages 9 - 16 as of 2019) have no idea what Evangelion is aside from the rebuild films. (1:11,2:22,3:33)

I wish we knew how many viewers have tuned in to watch Evangelion on Netflix so that conversations like these might be a little more grounded in how much demand there is for Evangelion in North America.

I think a healthy amount of people who are in their mid 20's to mid 30's would be willing to purchase Neon Genesis Evangelion if it ever released on Blu Ray, but I don't think it'll sell to the point where everyone in the front office in Japan face-palms for having waited so long to finally realize it's a hot seller where warehouses can't keep up with the demand.

If they released a sub $200 LE Boxset, I'm sure it'd sell out. I'm also sure it'd sell a few to four thousand standard BD copies in a year - but nothing bonkers crazy...

Something to keep in mind is that the younger generation of anime fans aren't out there buying physical media like we were 10-20 years ago. A majority of viewers see that something is on Netflix and that is good enough for them. Eva aired on Adult Swim and that was the primary way that we viewed anime and found out about what was new and upcoming in the fandom. Nowadays, kids and teens go to Netflix or Hulu when they want to watch something.

Who knows though? The Rebuild films on DVD and Blu-ray were sold out nearly everywhere for a solid month or two after the Netflix release. That shows interest outside of streaming. Maybe NGE would frequently be up there in the top sellers list on Amazon or maybe streaming would hinder sales numbers. Regardless, the option to have a physical release available for purchase should absolutely be available for a series like this.

[SpaceDandy]

Originally Posted by BoscoTheMan82

Eva not selling in the west thing, are you serious? Eva has always sold and made ADV a lot of money years ago. It started on Dub or Sub VHS for $30 a pop all they way through the many DVD releases, it was ADV's cash cow. Don't understand how you can say it never sold well.

There's a difference versus not selling, doing okay and selling like pancakes. NGE was a good seller but it never was huge like you guys imply. Also again, some shows sells better in some countries than other.

These are words I've not said. You're just interpreting thing binarily with your threshold. It may have sold well in the US, it certainly did not in Germany as i stated, but I bet you didn't read. You guys have to understand that even if America's first according to some jerk, you're not the center of the world.

Also there's one thing you guys seems to miss. Eva sells fairly well, the price of the licence is according to that. It's not done on a "selling it at $250 a pop" basis. Otherwise shows like Bebop would be at that price point, yet they aren't (or for unexplainable reasons, i.e. AL's """""collector's set""""). BUT if you keep saying you're up for this price, some distributor will jump on this train. And that is exactly my point and what should be the subject of this debate.

[The Collector FX]

Originally Posted by InuYashaCrusade

Regardless, the option to have a physical release available for purchase should absolutely be available for a series like this.

100% agree.

[Kyle15]

Did someone seriously just claim Eva isn't a hot seller and never was and is "niche" in a niche? Too obvious Poe's Law. Sorry!

[SpaceDandy]

My main point was about the artificial price increase. Being a hot seller doesn't impy it should be sold at $250 a pop.

And yes, Eva isn't a huge seller in Europe for example. It's doing good in the anime niche, that's it. You can can call me out on this as much as you want, you may as well just go and ask a distributor how much they pay for each Rebuild movie and how much money they make on those, you'd be surprised.
But of course, none of you will dig into this and just call it a day.
Maybe I should do too.
But the point is again, there's no justification to an artificial price increase, whatever the price of the license is. Unless you guys ask for it, your local favorite distributor will do it for you.