Netflix bets on Japanese anime to battle Disney and Apple in streaming wars

Netflix bets on Japanese anime to battle Disney and Apple in streaming wars(japantimes.co.jp)

30 points by devicetray0 6 years ago | 9 comments

Important point missed by this article is that if Netflix really wants to compete with anime they need to massively improve their subtitles. Every subtitled show I've seen on Netflix has been awful to watch because of basic errors.

I feel like fans will really be put off by this unless they up their game considerably.

slavik81 6 years ago | |

Long ago, when "Attack on Titan" was _the_ anime series everyone was excited about, Netflix had the last two episodes out of order. It was pretty bad. Episode 25 is supposed to end with a big twist that Episode 26 begins to explore as it closes out the season.

I was so confused while watching. Eventually I figured out it was the wrong episode, but the twist was completely spoiled. The thing that made me really disappointed, though, was discovering a Reddit thread from several months earlier about the problem.

It left a terrible impression. They just didn't seem to care.

bradknowles 6 years ago | |

Another problem they will have is that they’re going to have to work really hard to pull in enough content to fill their buffers, but as you go farther afield with Animè, you will find more and more cultural ... oddities ... that are baked into the premises which simply won’t work at all with most western audiences.

And a lot of that will be made according to different cultural norms regarding the depiction of sexual activity or sexual themes.

Crunchyroll only starts to scratch the surface there, but probably > 75% of that would never be seen as acceptable on Netflix.

sandoooo 6 years ago |

great, expect the same socjus drivel that's right now killing hollywood's legacy IP, dressed up for a new medium with prettier art but the exact same sorry excuses for storytellers. It'll last just long enough to suck in the industry's best and brightest and push the current crop of cash-strapped studios off a fiscal cliff, only to leave everybody high and dry when the number-crunchers finally realize that the core audience - nerdy young men - would rather gouge their eyes out with a spoon than watch this shit, while the diversity pushers clamoring for it never planned to watch it in the first place.

rchaud 6 years ago | |

The level of concern in this post about something that would be a minor nuisance to almost everyone else, is remarkable.

It reminds me of a classmate in my political science class (now more than a decade ago) who emailed everyone a passionate blog post about how the Captain America cartoon show turned a generation of Americans against economic progress.

nyolfen 6 years ago | | |

yes, shocking that someone might feel strongly about their interests and subculture

rowanG077 6 years ago | |

You just described what happened to Star Wars perfectly.

mc32 6 years ago | |

But the shows are for audiences in Asia (at least according to the article) and usually most of Asia outside China (and to a lesser extent SK) look at Japan favorably in terms of culture, so I don’t see them messing with the stories.

panpanna 6 years ago |

I think Netflix would see better returns if they invested in something more mainstream and kid friendly like Nick Parks work (e.g. Shaun the sheep).

Either way, I'm pretty sure Walt Disneys greed will in the end bite them in the ass since big companies like Netflix now have a reason to invest in small studios.