Interesting Ideas

First a little background on me, I actually just stumbled across this series about three weeks ago and began watching it. I'm currently to episode 100 and have about 30 left outside of the movies. Now I'm a person who enjoys watching Anime in my native tongue, English of course. So when I read that Funimation dropped the series I questioned why.

First the series, while simple is fun to watch. Appropriate for all ages really, including adults. So I "Googled" the subject and was surprised that the series is actually running strong still, from 1996-2013. So why did the dubbing get dropped?

Some speculate that the series didn't do well in North America and therefore Funimation dropped the series due to its ratings. Other believe that the sales for the box sets were too low. These may have been a contributing factor in this instance, but I however have another theory or rather an augmentation to the existing one.

I sincerely believe that while the two before mentioned issues did contribute, and of course add in "Stream Pirating" or uploading and streaming the series for free, made it worse. However I believe that the real culprit (Trying NOT to sound too much like the show) is actually licensing costs. These are factored in when they are making the decision to continue carrying the series or not. Of course with Adultswim airing so late the series really didn't get a fair shake at exposure while it was being aired.

However I've noticed a trend with Japanese Animation Production Companies in the past 10 years. That is when a show becomes popular, and this one exploded overseas, they tend to raise the licensing and royalty fees. For instance, wherein they were charging (And not exact amt, just used as example) $100,000 dollars for the license, when the shows popularity increased, they increased the licensing as well.

With poor numbers due to poor selling Funimation concluded that the show would not return the amounts needed to see a profit, even if the profit was small. Odds are, the License probably went to the grand figure of $500,000 or better due to the popularity of the series in Japan. This coupled with poor exposure and licensing in North America made Funimation drop a litter of kittens, so they pulled the plug, and we the dedicated viewer are left wonder what the rest of the story is.

Now that being said, as I spend some time researching and of course this is all purely speculative, I believe that there is a possibility that with the right marketing, this show could be "Rebooted" and English dubbing resumed. Of course you can't market the show to Toonami AKA Adultswim due to the time slot its in. The show should be marketed to Cartoon Network to air on one of its affiliate stations in a time slot that would allow a greater exposure. Negotiations of a lower licensing fee would also be needed as well. If you research some of these fees, you would find your jaw on the ground at the immense cost Japanese Production Companies are charging.

So with that being said, I now digress and discontinue pontification on this subject. I have become a fan of the show, and now am greatly saddened that I cannot continue to view the show and enjoy it to the fullest extent. I hope that maybe enough exposure can be wrought and more fans can be added, persuading Funimation to continue the project.



Thanks for listening and "With a Keen Eye for Detail, One Truth Prevails."

The true fact was:

The dub was cancelled 3 times because of various reasons (Most being poor ratings and sales).
It was first canned on Adult Swim, then second colors, then finally the direct to dvd releases were then ended, basically killing CC.

While its true they were not doing anything CC related in the last few years, funimation recently renewed the CC licence AND obtained rights to stream the dub on the website.

Also, DVD sales and ratings are rising on amazon, and recently its been the highest rated show on funimation.com (see https://savecaseclosed.forumotion.com/t102-cc-is-the-top-rated-anime-on-funimation-at-the-moment )

Its possible they might be considering a new season or movie. But who knows at the moment.
Of course, its strictly funimations fault that CC failed. They sold out on advertising deciding to be cheap and do almost no ads or promotional stuff.
Second, its DVD releases were always overpriced. The single DVD`s with about 3 episodes per box were around $20 each.

But like said, CC is now doing well in sales and ratings on both Funimations site and Amazon, the manga is selling like crazy, and there IS interest in the series.
So with that said, Funimation seems to of went ahead and renewed the license to CC with TMS. As said in the podcast this was not an accident. It was intentional. For a series that funimation claimed sold poor, why pay over a million to renew it if they are not going to continue it? This is obviously a sign.

FUNimation was definitely to blame for the troubles Detective Conan (Case Closed) experienced in the US. Of course, one of their worst decisions was skipping episodes on the DVD releases. Back when they did singles, at least when I started collecting, there was a DVD with the first four episodes and then they released the two episodes that start off FUNimation's third season set (There is a reason why 130 episodes in FUNimation's count is only the first 123 of the Japanese count).

At that point, they kept releasing new episodes, until they released all the episodes of the original season 5 (the link is my episode list that orders everything by how the episodes were originally released by FUNimation and includes the Japanese and FUNimation episode numberings. However, episodes in the fourth and fifth season sets are listed as seasons 6 and 7).

The fact that they went back to the beginning, in order to release the episodes between the Mist Goblin case and episode 4 probably annoyed some people, but not as much as suddenly doing seasons sets, at least I was more annoyed by the season set releases, since getting the first three sets was unnecessary double dipping.

ccrogers is certainly right though that they never really advertised this show well.

I will admit sales are up, but they're still not anywhere near where they need to be. We still need more people buying in large amounts. The summer and the holidays is always a good opportunity to reach people to do this. I still hope this is the year we can make some things happen.

Hope Season 2 shows up on funimation in a couple of months at least.