What do you think can improve the anime industry?

[schuch,mx]

Hello, my names Mike and I'm currently working towards creating a new streaming service to host this amazing art form. I love anime and just want it to be the best experience possible for all those involved.

There are a few reasons why I want to do this, one is the studio's are kind of struggling and I want to support them so we get higher quality anime. Another is that the current leaders in the streaming/community management department are lacking any real innovation. Back when crunchyroll was first founded, it was revolutionary. No one had created a service like this other than those who were just downloading anime and they wanted to bring this world to everyone and allow them to also support its creators. But, no one has really innovated since they have.

So, what I'm asking you guys is; what would you like to see in the industry change? How would you improve it? What are its flaws? I'd enjoy hearing everyone's opinion on this topic so I can get a better understanding of everything. Don't worry if it's already been said or if it feels redundant to say. I've put a lot of thought into this and before I launch this project, you guys may point out something I either missed, overlooked, or didn't even think of!

Thanks for hearing me out.

[XII360]

10 hours ago, schuch,mx said:

Hello, my names Mike and I'm currently working towards creating a new streaming service to host this amazing art form. I love anime and just want it to be the best experience possible for all those involved.

There are a few reasons why I want to do this, one is the studio's are kind of struggling and I want to support them so we get higher quality anime. Another is that the current leaders in the streaming/community management department are lacking any real innovation. Back when crunchyroll was first founded, it was revolutionary. No one had created a service like this other than those who were just downloading anime and they wanted to bring this world to everyone and allow them to also support its creators. But, no one has really innovated since they have.

So, what I'm asking you guys is; what would you like to see in the industry change? How would you improve it? What are its flaws? I'd enjoy hearing everyone's opinion on this topic so I can get a better understanding of everything. Don't worry if it's already been said or if it feels redundant to say. I've put a lot of thought into this and before I launch this project, you guys may point out something I either missed, overlooked, or didn't even think of!

Thanks for hearing me out.

not sure what's there to improve in anime, its pretty good enough as it is, aside from bad CGI's that's almost always in anime (though there are some exceptions on how CGI went good on anime)

though to be fair, i wouldn't know how to fix bad CGI either

[the_twig]

12 hours ago, schuch,mx said:

Hello, my names Mike and I'm currently working towards creating a new streaming service to host this amazing art form. I love anime and just want it to be the best experience possible for all those involved.

There are a few reasons why I want to do this, one is the studio's are kind of struggling and I want to support them so we get higher quality anime. Another is that the current leaders in the streaming/community management department are lacking any real innovation. Back when crunchyroll was first founded, it was revolutionary. No one had created a service like this other than those who were just downloading anime and they wanted to bring this world to everyone and allow them to also support its creators. But, no one has really innovated since they have.

So, what I'm asking you guys is; what would you like to see in the industry change? How would you improve it? What are its flaws? I'd enjoy hearing everyone's opinion on this topic so I can get a better understanding of everything. Don't worry if it's already been said or if it feels redundant to say. I've put a lot of thought into this and before I launch this project, you guys may point out something I either missed, overlooked, or didn't even think of!

Thanks for hearing me out.

So the big faults with other paid streaming sites are:

• Bad players
• Not simulcasting
• Overpricing
• Small libraries
• Difficulty navigating

We don't really know what goes in to making a player, but make sure it uses HTML5, has intuitive scrubbing (some faults we've seen before are being unable to return to 00:00, having to drag the time bar rather than just click where you want to go, and not being able to skip to an unloaded portion of the video. Some also don't show you the timestamp of the point you're skipping to, so you have to guess.), supports at least 720p, if not 1080p, and has decent servers to prevent buffering.

Simulcasting is really important if you're trying to break into the airing anime market. Most of the anime community want to watch episodes weekly, when they come out, rather than binge watch them when they're over. Even if they are the latter group, they can just binge watch after the last episode has been released.

Most other paid streaming sites cost between $7-$9 USD per month. We wouldn't recommend straying too far from that price range. Also, don't lock your site to any who haven't paid, just give them incentives like no ads, an extended library, or early access to simulcasts. Make sure that a decent chunk of the money goes directly to the industry. That's basically the only reason that people pay money to watch anime instead of pirating it. If you want to really encourage this, you could try being completely transparent about how much of the money goes to the industry. That, in itself, is a really strong incentive to use your site.

Make sure that your library covers a lot of bases. You don't just need the big popular shounen action series, you need romances, dramas, comedies, and slice of lifes too. If you can nab some of the less popular, but highly rated shows too, that would be fantastic. We probably wouldn't pay for anything with less than 100 shows spread across a mixture of genres, and even that we'd be sceptical about. Also, if you don't offer any dubs, that's a serious chunk in your market. Lots of people like dubs.

Please, please, please use an anime search engine that allows you to filter by genres. It's such a little thing, but god damn does it help. A few other nice filters are year/season aired, and dub/sub available. Outside of that, make sure that it's easy to find things like the full list of available anime, currently airing shows, and popular/highly rated shows.

Here are a few other things that would just be nice to have:

• The option to change between a light and a dark mode
• The option to choose between English names and romanised names
• A forum
• An intuitive comments section (if you don't want to program your own, Disqus works pretty well, and is fairly easy to moderate too)
• Some kind of 'Pick of the week' to give some less popular anime the spotlight
• An anime news feed linking to a site like ANN

[Decimo]

I think the biggest issue that the industry has to go against is piracy. It's accessible to most people and more importantly it's free. I honestly have no idea how to approach this hurdle. Sure, you can tell people to "support" their favorite franchises by paying for Crunchyroll and other streaming services, but how much of that daily subscription you're paying for is going back to the creators? I think buying blu-rays and dvds is a good idea, but to a lot of people, including myself, it isn't cheap. Most people don't buy merchandise, which is a shame. I saw a video Digibro posted a while back suggesting a patreon for studios to make, but only Studio Trigger has created one. If you can find a way or reason to persuade people into using your service over alternative methods, that would be a huge step forward.

I think the streaming market is already very competitive as it is, but I wish you the best of luck on your project. 

[Beocat]

I agree with a lot of what @the_twig said. Especially small libraries. Also, too many smaller genres don't get representation (magical girls, reverse harems, space operas), certainly not nearly enough. I would like to see more come over. Must work well on consoles (I use consoles to stream because I prefer to watch anime on my tv) and be easy to navigate. Would like to see a feature that has specifically kid friendly anime listed. Will think on it more after the movie....

[Palatine]

On 8/29/2018 at 7:09 AM, Beocat said:

I agree with a lot of what @the_twig said. Especially small libraries. Also, too many smaller genres don't get representation (magical girls, reverse harems, space operas), certainly not nearly enough. I would like to see more come over. Must work well on consoles (I use consoles to stream because I prefer to watch anime on my tv) and be easy to navigate. Would like to see a feature that has specifically kid friendly anime listed. Will think on it more after the movie....

I wouldn't say that about magical girls. But reverse harems and space operas, sure.