Funimation CEO Discusses Anime's Future with "Variety"

**Silverstone** · 04-01-2008, 05:45 AM

Quote:

Variety.com, the website affiliated with the Daily Variety entertainment trade paper, discusses the future of the anime industry with CEO Gen Fukunaga of the distributor Funimation in a March 28 article. Fukunaga describes how his company attained its 27% anime DVD marketshare through market research and a willingness to adapt. "We look at Japanese ratings, sales of the manga (Japanese comics) and the DVD; fan polls in the various magazines. On the U.S. side, we look at the Internet chatter anecdotally, but there are ways of counting what people are downloading illegally. There are sites that'll rank the counts of downloads, and then we look at fan polls. So there's lots of data."

According to Variety.com, DVDs are still the biggest slice of the anime business, but Fukunaga expects that legal download sales will overshadow Funimation's sales of apparel, toys, and other merchandise. The article also quotes IFC channel's executive vice-president Evan Shapiro, who notes that anime companies offer their titles to television companies for relatively inexpensive rates, since television exposure boost DVD sales. CEO Milton Griepp of the ICv2 retail news source adds that anime is becoming more mainstream even as rapid industry changes are causing DVD sales to drop and smaller companies to totter financially. All three agree that the anime's relatively tech-savvy audience are pointing the way for the rest of the entertainment industry.

Hmmmm

**Benawolnow** · 04-02-2008, 05:53 AM

Anime's future...hmm...

To be honest I think that animes future could end up um..."weird". It would be weird if in a few years from now they invent like "internet polices" o.o that would be interesting...

**Silverstone** · 04-04-2008, 01:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Benawolnow

Anime's future...hmm...

To be honest I think that animes future could end up um..."weird". It would be weird if in a few years from now they invent like "internet polices" o.o that would be interesting...

Internet police... BAH last thing we need

**Benawolnow** · 04-04-2008, 04:22 AM

Technology is advancing rapidly so idk maybe " the internet police" could really be a real prediction.

**mangime** · 04-05-2008, 06:55 PM

pfft, true fans buy the damn dvds

**Benawolnow** · 04-08-2008, 04:53 AM

No such thing as true or untrue fans...sometimes people can't buy it or sometimes people don't want to wait a fricken year for those people to sub dub do what ever they need to get it out.

*GoldenWolf* · 04-08-2008, 04:56 AM

and many animes are never dubbed =( if it wasn't for subbers I would've never seen Ayashi no Ceres which is honestly one of the best animes I've EVER seen, Viz Media bought it and planned to dub it, but never did -_-

**Oppai** · 04-08-2008, 08:18 AM

Little kids like naga doesnt have the money to afford dvds. All money is spent on website.

**TakKi** · 04-08-2008, 04:49 PM

Yeah, c'mon, not buying a dvd doesn't make you a bad fan. Plus, as has been said - many anime's can't really be bought that way.
By the way, Silver, I think you've really earned the title 'Newsman'

Keep up the good work.

**Silverstone** · 04-08-2008, 04:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TakKi

Yeah, c'mon, not buying a dvd doesn't make you a bad fan. Plus, as has been said - many anime's can't really be bought that way.
By the way, Silver, I think you've really earned the title 'Newsman'

Keep up the good work.

+1 The fact that you go out of your way and take a risk to watch anime means you're a fan. And where we live can greatly limit our access to purchase anime on dvd's, etc.

Thank you TaK! I'll try my best