We're a niche market, so just go recoupulate
by Sam Spencer IV

Originally Posted: 28 June 2000

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(Note to Reader: Read the WHOLE thing before you come to ANY conclusions)

At this time, in America, the otaku, a proud and noble being (at least after a few days in the salon and about a year on Weight Watchers), is still not a common site. The type of person who enjoys watching a Japanese show subtitled in English is not as easy to find as the kind of person who likes to see things explode. Ergo, you have a ton of DVD's from the movie Armegeddon and not a single one of Subbed DBZ (yet). If you go to, lets say, FYE at the mall, you see about 200 Animé DVD's (at most) that have the subbed feature. Around you you have about 20,000 other DVD's. Now what was that term again?

Niche market. The otaku market is small and unimportant compared to the average 6-13 year old market (US dubbed Pokémon), the average 14-18 year old market (Family Guy), etc. So we are a NICHE MARKET. Or at least that's what FUNimation wants you to think. . .

We aren't really a niche market, now are we. We know a ton of people who watch fansubs. SCREW FUNI! We are important, we buy a lot of stuff, FUNimation will colapse without us. Let's just buy fansubs and not care about the damn DVD's. If it takes them this long, lets get mad and overthrow them! We can buy out FUNi! We can go to Fort Worth and take them over, reprogram Chris Sabat and Gen a la "A Clockwork Orange" and make animé and DBZ the way they are supposed to be done! Muhahahahaha

Sorry if the last paragraph brought your hopes and testosterone (or estrogen for you female DBZ ladies ot there) levels up. FUNi is right. Every person in North America who owns DBZ fansubs could die right now, and FUNi would lose maybe 5% of what they make now. The DVD's would sell about as well as projected. FUNi's problem is not that they don't want to help us, it's that they don't know HOW. The DVD's might be a step forward; we'll just wait and see. But the bad dubbing, editing, music, and all the rest that we harbor this rancor against FUNimation for is not because they hate us, it's because they don't know better. I am 100% sure that the DBZ dub Greg Werner saw in his dreams when he started the 3rd season petition, or the dub MrE thinks about when he plots new ways to expose Toriyama's work to the world, or the dub I dreamed about when I first saw and ad for American DBZ, you know: one with the Original soundtrack, voices that fit the characters, a pure translation (NOT a script), and no editing would be one of the greatest successes in US TV history if they could be exposed to the masses. But this is always a problem with brilliant work.

Take the last 2 years in the life of Director/Actor Kevin Smith. One of the best movies of last year, DOGMA, was not seen in most theaters because it was considered to be a threat to Disney. Miramax dumped the film down to Lion's Gate equalling very low distribution. Kevin's brillant animated series, Clerks, based on his 1994 film that ruled Sundance that year, has been canceled after only two episoded (ABC didn't promote the show, and advertizers backed out because of the racey content). You KNOW DB/Z/GT could "pollute" the minds of "our precious children" to the point where "us as mothers have to stand up to protect our culture from this smut". (Just a side note here. I know I've said it a thousand times, and so have you: Japan has this "smut" all around them, but they don''t have their kids killing each other.)

So how do we deal after realizing our unimportance? NOTHING. We have a nice group of people, and a few jerks. Do you you want to add hordes of Americans to this mix, including, but not limited to:

Screaming Pokékids.
WWF fans who salivate at Motoko in "Ghost in the Shell", not noticing the symbolism in her nudity.
Your neighbors.
That kid you ride home on the bus with that copies everything you do.
Your teacher.
Your girlfriend. (Ok, most of us would like that).
Your Classmates.
YOUR PARENTS.
YOUR FAMILY.
Your Preacher (And so when you go out of this church on this beautiful day that the Lord has made, let us not forget the good deeds of Gokou who set an example for all of us when he spared the life of the misguided Freezer.)
And so on.

I know that animé accross the nation might sound like a good idea, but if you think about it, most of us just like having a hobby, this thing in common between our friends, that most people just don't get. Besides, we don't want to get to a backlash point once a few kids at Blockbuster start renting from the animé section, see a girl get raped in Ninja Scroll, the mom sees it, etc. and everyone gets screwed. Japanese imports are always big here (the entire video game industry besides sports), and someday the US will be ready for animé, but not yet.

Of course, being a big market has its advantages, and evey animé you could dream of will come to the US if most of our people were otaku. EVERYTHING would get subbed. You coud turn on the TV and watch something subbed. I agree, this would be total bliss. Like a dream come true, really, until your copy of DBZ episodes 288-291 on DVD, now popular enough to have a price tag of 14.99, is sold out everywhere you go.

In closing, even though we don't like being treated as a Niche market, what is better: To still be a Niche market and to be treated as one, or to be treated as Major market but have all it's disadvantages? Only you can decide. I can't for you. But I will tell you that I love my niche.

Contact: ssj4sam@aol.com