Why does anime cost so much?

[Malificus]

Anime is an adult's animation preference. Most if not all responsible adults have a job. Said job generates income to afford said anime.

But of course, not all anime is for adults. A lot of anime is targeted at children, and Most nine year olds don't have jobs.

[oldwrench]

I just got back from Anime Detour. I did get a chance to talk with Matt Greenfield (co-founder of ADV) about the cost of dubbing. He said it is a very small percentage of the cost of producing anime, like one or two percent. It veries with the anime and the difficulty in translation and scripting. It is amazing the amount of effort they put into making a quality product. The real cost of anime is licencing. The cost of a good series is in the millions. Many of the good animes that we want brought over here are held up by licencing. They have separate licences for the animation and the music, lots of work to licence things. For some of them they want outrageous licence fees. Pressing the disc is cheap, but recovering costs and making a profit on sales to our rather limited market can be difficult. ADV and others don't have the marketing clout of Disney.

I got to have brunch this morning with the guests, Matt Greenfield was at my table, along with Kris "Phade" McCormic (I had a picture taken to prove it) and Carrie Savage (voice of many anime characters, Rakka of Haibane Renmei being my favorite). They are great people, Matt is a vast storehouse of anime knowlege. I'll try to post some about my experience on the convenions forum when I have time.