The Slayers Problem, or Why CPM is Evil a Public Service Announcement from Boy Scouts ½ =============================================== Avoid any prouducts by Central Park Media. Central Park Media is a company that has the domestic rights to some very nice anime, but unfortunately they make poor DVDs and refuse to be held accountable for their own mistakes. The most recent and most fowl of these mistakes is a contraversy that has erupted around their release of a box set of the first season of the television Slayers. This set has two rather bad problems. The first, and lesser (yet still quite bad) problem is a small bit of missing footage in the last episode. It is only a tiny bit, perhaps a minute or so... but still, there is no excuse for it to be missing. The second is a problem called "phase inversion" on the Japanese language track. Now, I'm not very well versed on all the technical jiggery-poo, but as far as I've been able to acertain, this problem means that the Japanese language track is, depending on your audio set up, anywhere from completely fine to completely unlistenable, usually somewhere in between. This problem was noticed by buyers soon after the set's release in September of 2000. Representatives of Central Park Media said they would look into the problem. Also, CPM offered people who had bought the DVD set a chance to purchase the entire subtitled VHS set for a price that worked out to be about the cost of the equivelent in blank tapes. Fans felt somewhat comforted by the promise of CPM's looking into it, along with the temporary hold-over of a VHS version. They were not happy, but they were willing to wait and see what CPM's eventual responce would be. At long last, this responce has come... and it was not a good one. At a recent anime convention, the following news was announced: "The Slayers DVD audio will most likely not be fixed due to economical reasons." Also announced was, "CPM will redo La Blue Girl." La Blue Girl is an example of hentai (adult) anime. From what I understand, it is a particularly unpleasent example, falling into the sub-genere of "tenticle porn." Aparently, the La Blue Girl box set that CPM released had problems of missing footage and mis-timed subtitles. So, CPM will fix an adult title, but refuses to fix a highly sought-after, rather popular main stream title. When displeased fans became rather expressive as to the levels of their displeasure, Justin Sevakis, a representative of CPM, made the following comments on the Anime on DVD Message Board: "The Slayers box set shipped almost a year ago, and when this situation came to light, we scrambled to figure out what happened, and what went wrong. I personally did the research, and we went over and over our production process with a fine-toothed comb. We finally figured out that when the master tapes were duplicated to send to the authoring house, one of the two Japanese tracks was phase-inverted at the post-production facility. We didn't catch it -- there was no way to have caught it because our QC setups used headphones. It sounded fine to us... "Of course, since then, checking for phase inversion is part of our normal QC process every step of the way. But that's besides the point. "We had to take into account that this only affects the Japanese audio. The vast majority of anime fans do not watch it with the Japanese audio. "We had to take into account that the disc was still watchable, in either language. "We had to take into account that with a bit of wiring trickery, the audio could be played 100% as intended. "I know that this answer will not be satisfactory to a good number of you. It probably will make a good number of you angry, even. We really wish there was something more we could do. (We even extended that offer for the subtitled VHS tapes for less than the cost of blank tapes... which is still good, BTW.) We most certainly wish we could remaster the set, but we just can't. We're a business. We're here to make money. And we can't do something that would hurt ourselves just to quell a small (but loud) group of our clientele. Even if we're part of it. "We appreciate all of the passion and energy all of you put into anime. It's what makes all of us fans. (I say 'us' because I, and many others at CPM, are just as much fanboy geeks as anybody here.) But please take a step back from that passion, just for a second, and try to look at it from our point of view." I would like to make some arguments in responce to Mr. Sevakis's comments. "We had to take into account that this only affects the Japanese audio. The vast majority of anime fans do not watch it with the Japanese audio." Mr. Sevakis's comments here aparently are based on information from the VHS era, when subtitled VHS sales were a lot lower then dubbed VHS sales. I've heard figures saying that in the pre-DVD says, subtitled VHS made up only between 10% - 30% of anime VHS sales. Of course, when dubbed VHS is cheeper then subtitled VHS, and many stores didn't even stock subtitled VHS, it is not difficult to see why dubbed sold better. Heck, even I, a most devout Otaku and one who definitely prefers subtitled, was known to make a dubbed purchase back in those days. Sometimes when it is a choice between dubbed and nothing, one chooses dubbed. The advent of DVD has efectively killed the subtitled VHS market completely. Most hard core otaku own DVD players, and the casual fan who is more likely to still be buying VHS is more likely, I admit, to prefer dubbed. With the hardcore audience buying DVD, it is rather difficult to say based on sales alone which format they prefer, as both are usually included on the same disc. (And before one thinks that Slayers may get a lot of sales from casual fans even in the DVD format, I would tend to speculate that it is more likely the hardcore fan who would buy a boxed set that costs over $100.) However, one recent event can certianly sho how much of a demand there is from the hardcore fan for the original Japanese audio: the Princess Mononoke DVD. When Buena Vista announced that the DVD would include only the English and French language versions, and not the original Japanese language version, anime fans across America took issue with this, and within days Buena Vista had received thousands of e-mails and written letters expressing their desire for the Japanese language version to be included. Buena Vista was actually convinced to change their minds, and actually went the extra mile of using seemless branching technology to give the Japanese version the original Japanese title screen and end credits. The Mononoke DVD has since been used as an example of the cream of the crop of anime DVD's. If a major distributer such as Buena Vista, who surely would not have been hurt very much if hardcore Otaku passed over the Mononoke DVD's, could be convinced of the value of the original language track, why then can a company that specializes in anime not see this? "We had to take into account that the disc was still watchable, in either language." Sure it is still WATCHABLE... but it is not LISTENABLE! At least, not in Japanese. Yes, Slayers has a good English dub, and I would undoubtably watch it at least once in English... but the majority of the time I and many other fans would prefer to watch it in Japanese. This is especially true since fan-favorite actress Megumi Hayashibara playes the main character of Lina Inverse. (Megumi-sama, for those who are unfamiliar with her work, has also played such rolls as Faye Valentine in Cowboy Beebop, Lime in Saber Marionette J, and female Ranma in Ranma ½.) "We had to take into account that with a bit of wiring trickery, the audio could be played 100% as intended." Well, I don't have a fancy home theater system, and thus unless I want to pull apart my television, I cannot rewire my speakers. And if I did have a home theater system, I would find it most annoying if I had to rewire my speaker system EVERY time I wanted to watch any episodes of the first season of Slayers, and then I had to wire it back to normal EVERY time I wanted to watch something else. "We even extended that offer for the subtitled VHS tapes for less than the cost of blank tapes... which is still good, BTW." One of the big draws of the DVD format over the VHS format is the greater picture and sound quality that DVD offers, as well as the fact that VHS is a format that after repeat vewings and with the passage of time degrades considerably. (Pop a seven or eight year old VHS tape into your VCR and tell me it looks as good as it did the day you bought it! I think it shan't!) While the cheep subtitled VHS offer may have been a good hold-over for fans while you looked into the problem, it is no permanant substitute. When one buys DVD, they expect DVD quality picture, sound, and longevity. "We most certainly wish we could remaster the set, but we just can't. We're a business." Other anime distributers are also businesses. When fans complained about quality on the first voulmes of Crest of the Stars and Neon Genesis Evangelion, Bandai and AD Vision respectively both changed replication companies for the remaining discs in the series, and there are talks that the first discs in each series will eventually be redone. When AnimEigo had problems with their Bubblegum Crisis boxed set, they eventually remastered the set, fixed all of the problems, and released an improved version. When AnimEigo had faulty discs in their first Urusei Yatsura boxed set, they fixed the problems and replaced the faulty discs FREE OF CHARGE. When The Right Stuf sent out thousands of Irresponsible Captain Tylor boxed sets with faulty disc fours, they fixed disc four and replaced it FREE OF CHARGE to anyone who ordered direct from them, and for a small fee to anyone who bought the set elsewhere. There are other examples I can think of, but I feal I have listed more then enough as it is. In short, other anime distributers are also businesses, and they have all gone to great lengths to correct problems they have had with their prouducts, even when doing so could cost them a profit. Businesses exist to make money, but it is also important that they maintain the good faith of their consumers. Other anime distributers have seen this, why is it CPM cannot? Because of this, many anime fans have lost faith in CPM. I have seen many posts by people saying that they will think twice before buying a CPM prouduct, and many others still who have flat out said they will never buy a CPM prouduct again. After all, we are long past the days when there was little anime to choose from in the market place. No longer can one buy everything, one must now pick and choose. When they do so, they will be more likely to choose from a company whose prouducts they feal secure in buying. A company they trust. A company they have faith in. I actually have not purchased Slayers. I was fortunate enough to hear about these problems before I did so. However, I have been disapointed with the production of most CPM purchases I have made in the past, most notably Urusei Yatsura Movie 2: Beautiful Dreamer and the original Lodoss War OAV series. These are both excellent programs that were to a degree ruined by poor handling by CPM. Trust and faith are not given to a company who fails to make up for their mistakes. CPM is clearly such a company. I am glad I had heard about the problems Slayers had BEFORE I purchased the set, and I certianly will not buy any other Slayers. (Two other seasons have been released in boxed sets, and are reportadly problem free.) I also plan to buy no more CPM prouducts in the future, unless they are part of a series I have already started. (There is only one such series -- Utena. You can't expect me to stop in the middle, can you?) I urdge any and all who read this to do likewise. Why should we support a company that does not support us? When I buy a prouduct, I expect it to work properly. If it does not, I expect the company who made the prouduct to fix it. After all, if you bought a car and the windows didn't roll down, wouldn't you expect the manufacturer of the car to fix it? Sure, you could still drive the car. You can also still watch Slayers. But if I couldn't roll down the windows, or watch Slayers in Japanese, I am not getting what I payed for, and I cannot enjoy the prouduct fully. Thank you for your time. --Matt Atanian (BoyScouts1-2.tripod.com) ===================================== The source for a lot of the information in this essay was the website www.AnimeOnDVD.com, and the Anime on DVD forums.