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Answerman - Why Is Daisuki Shutting Down?


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jr240483



Joined: 24 Dec 2005
Posts: 4369
Location: New York City,New York,USA
PostPosted: Wed Aug 09, 2017 9:16 pm Reply with quote
angelmcazares wrote:
To me the biggest reasons why Daisuki never went anywhere are apathy and incompetence. With the heavy hitters backing and owning Daisuki, couldn't they just cherry pick great shows without the need to pay for the licenses, like Funimation, Crunchyroll and Sentai? I suspect that I am wrong and Daisuki still had to compete for licenses.

To me it is absolutely moronic to compete for licenses when your service is owned by companies that produce anime. I never cared for Daisuki, but aren't some of these lazy and incompetent people from Daisuki going to run Sony Pictures-Funimation? I hope they don't run Funimation into the ground.


which is the reason why people are really worried about this transaction. i wouldnt have a problem with it if sony had acquired sunrise and the remnants of bandai ent or even acquire the entire bandai brand, including namco. it would at least given out some hope that some sunrise series would be released sooner and given an english dub version like some gundam series as well as buddy complex instead of funi giving it the sub only treatment.
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Zalis116
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Joined: 31 Mar 2005
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 09, 2017 11:18 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
Daisuki also tried hard to push its huge back catalog of content. However, most older shows don't stream in very big numbers, and certainly not in big enough numbers to keep a service going. Its initial line-up of shows included series like Prince of Tennis and Gundam ZZ -- fine shows, but not exactly ones that get Western fans worked up into a lather.
Funny, to hear the anti-industry crowd tell it, CR and other legal streaming sites are allegedly inferior because they mainly focus on popular/newer anime, and lack obscure/older titles for the hardcore fans. Daisuki's demise should put that fiction to rest, though a look at the "Most Popular" lists on any bootleg streaming site would also tell the same tale.
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SWAnimefan



Joined: 10 Oct 2014
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 09, 2017 11:28 pm Reply with quote
If I read this correctly, these companies rather license their works to Crunchyroll, Netflix, etc, than saving it for their own streaming site? Right there screams incompetence in business decisions.

Poor advertising practices, not getting the word out was also bad business practices. I suspect they didn't want to spend a lot on advertising, but it doesn't cost much to have gamers, podcasters, and Youtubers spread the word. Heck, even getting the Seiyuu to toss in some product placement in webmericials wouldn't hurt as well. And to end the trifecta, the poor streaming service. If you can't provide a decent service to the few loyal customers you have, it's not going to end well.

All in all, if they spent the time to do it right, it could've been a valuable contender and provide a much needed income, directly to the anime businesses, than getting a fraction of the income in sharing it with others. For their sake, I hope they aren't going to give up and within a short time, try a relaunch with the much needed improvements.
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Freyanne



Joined: 06 Nov 2014
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 09, 2017 11:45 pm Reply with quote
The only time I used Daisuki was when they that that 2 week exclusive thing for Season 3(?) of Kuroko no Basket, but even then it got to a point where I just waiting the extra two weeks to watch it on Crunchyroll because I disliked using Daisuki so much.

I almost went back to Daisuki in order to watch Gundam IBO Season 2, but the second I found out I could watch it the same day on Hulu I quickly changed my mind.
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belvadeer





PostPosted: Thu Aug 10, 2017 2:21 am Reply with quote
EricJ2 wrote:
From the sound of it, looks like the theories of "What Japan subjectively thinks a US anime streaming service is" were spot-on.
Most US anime fans (some... ^_^ ) don't have "Bedroom shrines of plastic anime figures", as Japan literally believes all anime otaku to have, and even for those who do buy hard merchandise, RightStuf, CR, ThinkGeek and Funi already had the market sewn up.
And that's leaving aside their 00's-Bubble ideas that a Japanese hit title would have the EXACT same fan-popularity in the states as it had at home, for exactly the same reasons, so it was just a matter of marketing it with the same presumptions and expecting the same TV ratings.


It sounds like Japan's usual backward ignorance when it comes to understanding or dealing with westerners. It's like they think we're some starved fish ready to bite at the first sign of their bait because they seem to believe we barely get any of their goods here or something.
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sputn1k



Joined: 29 Sep 2016
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PostPosted: Thu Aug 10, 2017 8:09 am Reply with quote
The company likely never made any significant profits, if any at all.
Involvement in anime production, which Daisuki had for a few, is not a cheap endeavor, especially if your investment is centered around overseas streaming of the title, which then was not even done exclusively on their site. This means that, for the most part, customers decided to watch their content on sites they were already using or even subscribed to, rather than visiting Daisuki for their fix. As their only source of income was in-video ads on their site, losing customers to other sites is quite a blow. Of course there is a secondary source of income based on rights sales, but in healthy set-up the sales of rights do not earn you as much money as ads/subscription fees.

The stake owners probably grew wary of losing money this way over time, leading to Bandai salvaging the operation for the time being, by buying out the other stakeholders and "eating" the debt. The other option likely would have been a catastrophic failure of the entity, which might have involved anime rights being used as collateral to pay for debt incurred with non-anime entities. E.g. the bank, the landlord, some shipping company, etc. could have ended up receiving rights to titles in place of money in a collapse.
"Gracefully" killing the company off, e.g. putting it into a dormant state, lets Bandai recover all the rights (at some cost) and keep them in circulation and they remain a usable asset in the future.

Similar tactics have actually already been previously used in order to make sure that rights to titles are not used as collateral or have to be returned to the original owner in case of a bankruptcy - both in Japan and by overseas publishers.
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Kadmos1



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PostPosted: Thu Aug 10, 2017 10:18 am Reply with quote
While one can easily criticize the business folk, let's not forget the staff who did a lot of the grunt work. They likely tried to do the best with what was given or available to them. It would be nice if they can find more work soon.
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QuarkboySam



Joined: 26 Sep 2005
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PostPosted: Thu Aug 10, 2017 2:07 pm Reply with quote
One of these days one of the people who know the inside story to the motivations and machinations of Daisuki and "Anime Consortium Japan" (which I believe is not disappearing even though Daisuki the streaming site is) will come out and give a nice long podcast about what really went down.

About how a lot of this was the work of one man with a grudge.

Here's a tidbit for people's curiosity. The codename for this project before its launch was:

"Dejima"
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Tempest
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PostPosted: Thu Aug 10, 2017 8:11 pm Reply with quote
I can't talk about Daisuki or ACJ.

But I think it's worth everyone remembering that most anime are owned by production committees that are then owned by a group of different companies.

Let's say Company A (this could be any licensee, ADV, Bandai Entertainment, Central Park Media... any company :-p) want to license an anime.

Now lets say that anime has 5 companies in it's production committee. Companies 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5.

Imagine then that company 5 is an investor in Company A, but companies 1 - 4 are not. Company 5 has a vested interest in Company A's success, and therefore might want the anime to go to Company A (although there are several reasons they might not). Companies 1 & 2 are however dependent of the profit earned from the anime, so they want it to go to the highest bidder. Meanwhile, company 3 is a toy manufacturer, and company 4 is the manga publisher. They are mostly interested in making sure that the anime reaches as many people as possible in order to increase the brand value.

So companies 1 - 4 have no vested interest in Company A, and, unless Company A is offering the highest MG and/or the most viewers, they will vote against licensing to Company A.

As for Company 5... even it might not chose to license to Company A. The people making the licensing decisions are responsible for bringing the most sales possible to their division. Cutting the costs at another division, or subsidiary, doesn't get them promoted. Either that, or their equity in Company A might not be worth harming their more important licensing division. Sure they'll give Company A a bit of preference, but at the end of the day, if another licensee offers MUCH more money, the license fees might, over time, be worth more than the equity. Finally, the current management at Company 5 might think that the people who invested in Company A made a mistake and they now have no interest in throwing good money after bad.

The above are just examples of why licenses don't always go to subsidiaries.

Viz has a very good relationship with it's parent companies (and all 3 parent companies are part of the same corporate group) and even Viz doesn't get 100% of its parent companies' properties.

If you read the old Bandai Entertainment postmortems, you'll see that BEI, which was a wholly owned subsidiary of the Bandai group, still had to bid on titles from other Bandai group companies (like Bandai Visual).

But yes, it is a shame that production companies invest in a platform and then don't support it 100%


-t
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leafy sea dragon



Joined: 27 Oct 2009
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 11, 2017 1:50 am Reply with quote
EricJ2 wrote:
From the sound of it, looks like the theories of "What Japan subjectively thinks a US anime streaming service is" were spot-on.
Most US anime fans (some... Anime smile ) don't have "Bedroom shrines of plastic anime figures", as Japan literally believes all anime otaku to have, and even for those who do buy hard merchandise, RightStuf, CR, ThinkGeek and Funi already had the market sewn up.
And that's leaving aside their 00's-Bubble ideas that a Japanese hit title would have the EXACT same fan-popularity in the states as it had at home, for exactly the same reasons, so it was just a matter of marketing it with the same presumptions and expecting the same TV ratings.


That's a good point--I guess they thought people would buy from wherever was closest, but I knew at that point, there were plenty of places, both online and off, to find these items, and typically at lower prices. I always suspected there was a Daisuki markup because it also paid for their online service.

I would also guess that Japanese otaku also look for the lowest price, or at least avoid sellers with huge markup, but maybe not...?

Kicksville wrote:
I didn't use their service much, but I will never say a bad word about Daisuki, because I won an RG Zeta Gundam model kit from their opening prize giveaway. RIP.


Darn it, I never won anything when I entered. (You'd have probably gotten more out of that model kit than me though, as I'm a total klutz and I'd ruin it trying to put it together.)

belvadeer wrote:
It sounds like Japan's usual backward ignorance when it comes to understanding or dealing with westerners. It's like they think we're some starved fish ready to bite at the first sign of their bait because they seem to believe we barely get any of their goods here or something.


Or they see the hyperfans who learn the Japanese language and move to Japan and think that every western anime fan is like that. Or they come to conventions and think that we eat, sleep, and breathe anime. Well, some people do that, but not enough to sustain itself solely through them.

All in all, though, I think it's because these companies focus on the Japanese market the most, because that's where they're located and they see the most direct results doing so, whereas overseas markets are probably handled by some distant department elsewhere that might not get a lot of time and resources to do something.
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Kadmos1



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PostPosted: Fri Aug 11, 2017 9:05 am Reply with quote
QuarkboySam wrote:
One of these days one of the people who know the inside story to the motivations and machinations of Daisuki and "Anime Consortium Japan" (which I believe is not disappearing even though Daisuki the streaming site is) will come out and give a nice long podcast about what really went down.

However, that person will be perhaps limited in what they can reveal. One has to remember there are possible conflicts of interest or privacy rules they may still have to adhere to.
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Shiroi Hane
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Joined: 25 Oct 2003
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 11, 2017 10:19 am Reply with quote
QuarkboySam wrote:
Here's a tidbit for people's curiosity. The codename for this project before its launch was:

"Dejima"

OK, now I have Evangelion music thumping on my head.
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EricJ2



Joined: 01 Feb 2014
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 11, 2017 3:27 pm Reply with quote
leafy sea dragon wrote:
belvadeer wrote:
It sounds like Japan's usual backward ignorance when it comes to understanding or dealing with westerners. It's like they think we're some starved fish ready to bite at the first sign of their bait because they seem to believe we barely get any of their goods here or something.


Or they see the hyperfans who learn the Japanese language and move to Japan and think that every western anime fan is like that. Or they come to conventions and think that we eat, sleep, and breathe anime. Well, some people do that, but not enough to sustain itself solely through them.


That's pretty much what they DO see, and the government's Cool Japan push thinks any trendy young American will squeal and come running at the very mention of Yuri on Ice or Attack on Titan, just because it's getting the biggest hardcore-fan attention from the tourism and convention crowds.

In the old Otaku no Video OVA from the birth-of anime 80's, a "typical early US anime fan" from the club days of 1987 was depicted as an expatriate/exchange-student who (in a comic mistranslation) had moved to Japan to be closer to anime, and like all US fans, believed Lum was the holy be-all and end-all of anime.
Well, okay, they were right about that one Razz , but it shows that things haven't exactly changed in thirty years, when Japan only gets one deceptive view of the US anime market and isn't curious about any less available opportunity to see any other.
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Sakagami Tomoyo



Joined: 06 Dec 2008
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 11, 2017 11:58 pm Reply with quote
SWAnimefan wrote:
If I read this correctly, these companies rather license their works to Crunchyroll, Netflix, etc, than saving it for their own streaming site? Right there screams incompetence in business decisions.

On the contrary; distributing using their own service exclusively when they'd make more money using someone else's service would be incompetence in business decisions. Running a streaming site is a means to the end of making money, not an end in itself. Tempest goes into a lot more detail, but that's the short version.
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SWAnimefan



Joined: 10 Oct 2014
Posts: 634
PostPosted: Sat Aug 12, 2017 6:30 am Reply with quote
Sakagami Tomoyo wrote:
SWAnimefan wrote:
If I read this correctly, these companies rather license their works to Crunchyroll, Netflix, etc, than saving it for their own streaming site? Right there screams incompetence in business decisions.

On the contrary; distributing using their own service exclusively when they'd make more money using someone else's service would be incompetence in business decisions. Running a streaming site is a means to the end of making money, not an end in itself. Tempest goes into a lot more detail, but that's the short version.


Only depending on costs to run a streaming site with maintenance and updates versus the profits earned from the streaming revenue of another company. So unless someone has access to those numbers, it can be either case. But given the article stated their best titles went to others and the site only ran lesser known titles, well that ain't exactly a brilliant business strategy.
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