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Bandai was of course of the major companies involved in the anime boom of the late '90s and early '00s, and introduced many, many people to the wonders of giant robots with the delightfully insane Gundam Wing. Unfortunately, that means they were burdened with the Gundam license, which caused them a lot more problems than good. What do I mean? Well, after Gundam Wing's surprise success, someone at Bandai Japan decided that Universal Century Gundam needed to be as big a hit in America as it was/is in Japan, so they could sell a jillion dollars of model kits to American kids, despite the fact this was totally insane and never going to happen.
Bandai Japan demanded that Bandai Entertainment get the original '70s Mobile Suit Gundam series on Cartoon Network, despite the fact it was 20 years old, looked 20 years old, and was waaaaaaaay too boring for young American audiences. Cartoon Network, not being insane, refused. Bandai Japan then paid CN to run the original Gundam anime, thus fucking up the Toonami block for years -- because once CN got paid to run an anime, the CN executives weren't going to run any anime without getting a check for it first. If you've ever wondered why an anime that would seemingly have been perfect for Toonami never, chances are it's because the licensor couldn't afford CN's asking price.
It gets worse. Bandai Japan forced Bandai Entertainment to bid on its anime licenses, including Gundam. This is insane for several reasons: 1) Bandai Japan was never giving any of its anime licenses to anyone other than Bandai Entertainment. 2) Since Bandai Japan owned Bandai Entertainment, they would tell them what to bid. Which meant in order to "win," Bandai Entertainment had to bid slightly higher than everyone else, which inevitably meant they overpaid for their own products. 3) Because they'd paid a steep licensing fee, BE was forced to charge more and sell an unreasonable amount of product in order to break even -- and then, when they inevitably didn't, Bandai Japan would get pissed. It was a vicious, stupid cycle, and that's before you start trying to sell a 20-year-old cartoon to modern American kids.
I'm not trying to blast Bandai Entertainment here; there were a lot of great people who worked there, and they made a lot of great products. I was just trying to illustrate how fucked up the American industry was/is -- and the sad truth is that Geneon was even more screwed up than Bandai. Anyways, this pretty much leaves Viz and Funimation as the entire U.S. anime market -- the Shonen Jump stuff and everything else. That's sad. It was probably inevitable, but it's still sad. (Via Japanator)
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179 comments
I don't give a crap about anime or Gundam, but I LOVE a good tale of capitalism gone bad. This is the kind of situation that should be studied diligently in MBA courses because it's the kind of thing that destroys careers and slowly poisons economies.
A movie about this madness would get my ticket money, except they'd have to change all the names so as not to get sued.
Good observations about the dysfunctional management that was going on, though regarding players in the market Sentai Filmworks can't be overlooked. They're grabbing a diverse array of titles and are actually much more involved in anime than Viz is or has been in quite some time.
The sad thing is that Mobile Suit Gundam was actually not always a bad idea for Toonami. Next to Ronin Warriors and ThunderCats and maybe even Robotech, it would not have been so out of place. In the 90s Cartoon Network was a place that put G-Force (Gatchaman!) on the air. After Wing though, and after the time it hit, it was time to look forward and not back. Which would have happened if not for meddling.
I dunno, I love anime but I don't want it on adult swim. I like the american-style comedy lineup they use, and if they show anime it's always the dub. I may be old fashioned in this respect but I still think dubs are as shitty as they were fifteen years ago.
"Bandai Entertainment" as in Bandai U.S.A.? Wew, I grew REALLY scared there.
As a big-time Gundam fan, I just don't get why it's so difficult to show some Gundam after Gundam Wing. Gundam SEED and (specially) Gundam SEED Destiny are great series; and even Gundam 00 is a great series for a non-gundam fan to start from as it is its (yet another) own timeline. Gundam 00 is on my top three gundam series (08th MS and 0083 being the other two) and it has enough Wing vibe to catch with old US fans.
Finally, I don't get Bandai Japan either. I used to work for Animax here un my country (HQ for the latin american channel, who is co-founded by Bandai in Japan) and they didn't even know all the cool stuff the channel does in other countries (like amateur anime competitions), and didn't even know the difference between Shojo and Shonen...
That Gundam Wing was a hit here and the original was not is proof that the American Anime fan is a complete and total idiot. Goodbye and good riddance BE, you raped the Gundam name, now you reap what you sow.
That sucks. I think Bandai brought out some of the series I really liked - I know I was starting to get into all the older Gundam stuff, and one of the big things I really dug was Saber Marionette J.
If all I have to look forward to from now on in the way of US Anime is Dragonball, One Piece, and Naruto, then fuck it - I'm done with it. I knew something was up when I didn't even feel like going to Otakon this year. Whole industry's gone insane.
No... Turn A Gundam? Not even the second half of the remastered original series?
...
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
>>"...and that's before you start trying to sell a 20-year-old cartoon to modern American kids."
Your smugness is showing. "Modern" American kids had already been sold - and were already enjoying - animation that was not recent. Toonami's main staple, the "Dragonball" franchise, was itself animated in the mid-to-late 1980's: "Dragon Ball" in 1986 and "Dragonball Z" in 1989. "Speed Racer" did pretty decently with kids as well, during its run on Cartoon Network in the mid-90's.
That said, I personally think that UC Gundam might have been more successful in the US had its marketers started with a series that had a tone more similar to that of Gundam Wing (since Wing had proved popular and all).
Well, I'm sorry to say this: serves them right. This is all the bad karma accumulated for refusing to give the green light to Banpresto to localize their Super Robot Wars games, save for a very few tie-ins. Even with the whole licensing issues, Original Generations and OG Gaiden for the PS2 should have none of that due to it, oh I dunno, BEING ALL ABOUT ORIGINAL CREATIONS OF BANDAI! Have you forgotten that you released that to the GBA and all the patent and copyright lawyers were all hunky dory about the fiasco, you little TWATS?!
They have a cow made of money ready to be milked for all it's worth, and yet they refuse to do that and only sell the money milk to select few individuals outside of Japan who can read Kanji. To that, I say, "NYAH! -sticks out tongue- Serves you right, Bandai!"
Sorry for the bit of mean-spiritedness. I've been jilted by Bandai one time too many.
I guess I can't really speak to Bandai Entertainment. The only DVDs I had bought from them is my copy of Haunted Junction. And man, do I love Haunted Junction. OH MY GOD!
Er, what was I saying? Oh yeah, the loss of any distributor in the anime market is never a good thing. Fewer choices makes for a poorer potential selection of titles.
Glad I got my copy of Disappearance for Xmas. But what am I going to do for my Hellsing Ultimate fix from now on?? Dammit! (Hellsing dub >>>> sub IMHO)
WTF???!!!! WHYYYY??? (on my knees, pounding the ground) WHERE'S...MY....TURN-A....GUNDAM...MUTHA-F******S...(repeat-infinity)
Well until anime gets it in their F-Ing heads that lolita and guro and crap like that does not fly in this country its no wonder. THEY NEED TO CLEAN UP OR GET OUT!
Good f-ing riddance. If they would just stop it with the crazy shit things would be much better.
Fuck yeah 08th MS Team!
Also I'm glad someone mentioned SEGA further up the comments. Very apt comparison, methinks.
I'm sorry, but you can not have called Gundam Seed Destiny great by any meaning of the word. While most gundam series are great, GSD is a terrible terrible series. It is the only anime series that has ever taken a dump on my soul.
Wait, what?! No second half of the 0079 remastered?!?!? I just bought the first series collection and watched it the other day. I thought Bandai just cancelled Nichijou, Turn A, and some samurai show. Bandai's facebook channel had the cover art of the second remastered collection with Char's Zaku leading a Zaku squadron, but then again Bandai had a trailer for Turn A...groan...jeez Bandai might as well cancel Unicorn while they're at it so they can complete the trifecta of decisions to make american mecha fans cry. Shame about Bandai Entertainment going the way of Bandai Visual.
In other news, I wonder how this is going to affect Bandai's European anime publishers, Beez Entertainment. They cater to the UK, France, Germany and the Netherlands with their releases, so fingers crossed they survive this. At least they reprinted Cowboy Bebop, Eureka Seven and Planetes, if they do collapse then at least I'm set with some of their best shows.
This has well and truly killed Gundam in the US. Mecha shows never make enough money there in the first place, and when the flagship series of real robots can't break the market, then everything else is screwed. So much for cheap releases of Gundam Unicorn. So much for the Vancouver dubbing industry. Thanks for all the memories Bandai USA.
I guess piracy is my only option for watching new Sunrise shows, Bandai's executives clearly don't want MY money.
I'm trying to think of a UC Gundam series that had a tone more similar to that of Gundam Wing...
ZZ? Victory??? uh.... ......... Stardust....? IGLOO? Am I getting close...?
What Bandai should have done was show American kids, Gundam X because 1.) It's an alternate series and thus more easily digestible than getting your degree in UC with six different programs 2.) It had Wing asethics (character designer was the same, and the mecha designs for Leopard and Airmaster look like Heero and crew could have piloted them) 3.) It's animation was better than Wing's and obviously better than MSG's animation from 1979.
But I think a visible downgrade in animation quality from Wing to 0079 might have turned some kids who were into the former off of the latter.
One more thing that occurred to me about Gundam in America: Endless Waltz ended with the Gundams never being used again. So when Wing fans saw there were more Gundam series airing after Endless Waltz, not knowing about the history of the franchise in Japan and Wing being an alternate universe and such, they might have concluded that any new Gundam series was going to be a crappy sequel/remake/reboot violating the ending of Wing. They'd be somewhat right, except they were completely backwards about which was the original and which was the reboot.
I think it's not "Gundam" that the American kids warmed up to so much as "giant robots doing cool shit like blowing the planet up". The proof is Gurenn Lagann and how huge its followings got in the States.
This is the same company that released the SRW OG: Divine Crusaders series on two episodes per disc, $80 each, and with no dub.
IT'S ALMOST LIKE THEY DON'T WANT ME TO GIVE THEM MY MONEY!!!
But on the plus side, it does filter in all those borderline softcore porn anime about girls with big titties, high-pitched voices, and zero personality other than going "moe moe" for "Oniichan!". -shudder-
Hmmm... me thinks you've been watching the wrong anime...
They don't show that kind on TV.
And I didn't see any loli or guro in Gundam Wing. Although I did want Relina's little sister to die... the little bitch.
Okay. I'll bite. Let me counter-Troll you with this:
"All Western animation are nothing but kiddie shows that tries to force good morals onto kids with stupid catch-lines like 'Knowing Is Half the Battle'."
U mad? -trollface-
You are not alone there friend. Gundam SEED Destiny... the only show so terrible that one of the main writers contracted a brian tumor working on it.
Rob just said they ceased all immediate production, and I thought the second collection was coming out sometime in Autumn. We'll see, but I would not be surprised if Bandai is just going to drop Collection 2 stone dead. So much for a continued standard definition release of Unicorn: not all of us own Blu Ray players.
Funimation has managed to pick up an insane number of titles, so I'm going to bet on it having the pockets to shell for Bandai and decent localization.
It wasn't that - I think it was that Wing had more of an emphasis on relatively competitive combat amongst the mecha, rather than the more "one white Gundam destroying hordes of cannon fodder" that a lot of the other series represented.
Really, G Gundam should've been perfect, but I think the overall insanity of that series hurt it in the end. Great fun, but not the most marketable.
i have to disagree, FT, and award only 3 out of 5 farting yodas. i mean, i don't think he made his funny feelings about guro and the like clear enough. plus, where does he talk about how loli gets his penis tingly? i was waiting and waiting for this post to peak but it just didn't cum. a good start but a sad finish :(
Well, for me it was great to see how all the peace built in SEED was slowly being eroded and manipulated in Destiny. Of course Shinn is a pain, you could say the same thing about KAmille in Zeta...Zeta is a tour de force, 00 is great (although the end movie is HORRIBLE. It's more a Macross Frontier movie than a Gundam movie with all the alien stuff) as it does two things: turns Gundam into a post 9-11 setting, and shows the real impact of tacticians like Sumeragi.
Most Gundam fans think Z is best, of course.
But anyway, as someone who hasn't gotten to either of the SEED series yet, I'm honestly interested in why you think SEED Destiny is "especially" great. (With Matt and maybe 00 Raiser invited for the standard "horrible" by comparison.)
Well, as I said, hardcore Gundam fan here. I even enjoyed the hell out of Z when I started playing "who's gonna die now" bingo.
I'll get both Adult Link and Child Link in Playboy Bunny suits to, ahem, "motivate" him, my Dark Lord. XD
i think we're all in agreement that this was amusing but that we need to improvements too. myself, i think this troll needs to spend a little more quality alone time with their genitals, get to know their body and its rhythm. when a troll and their urges are in synch it really comes out in the quality of the work.
I'd give him 2 out of 5 Flaccid Blue Na'vi Penises, my Dark Lord. While the content was amusing, it still hits too close to home. I was once a lolita fan, you see, but then I saw the doujinshi of Link being gang-raped by burly Hyrule farmers, and the rest was history. XD
