Armchair Theorist

Anime fans in Singapore got a dose of good news earlier this month.

Animax Asia announced that Tears to Tiara will be the first ever Japanese anime in history to be simulcasted in Japan and the rest of Asia.

The first episode will be shown in Singapore on Apr 6 2009 at 12:35 am, which is simultaneous to the series’ 1.35 am (Tokyo) debut in Japan.

As a fan of Utawarerumono (another series created by the same team that is doing Tears to Tiara), I was naturally happy to see this groundbreaking development.

The Straits Times also covered the story, but from a slightly different angle:

New battle against anime’s illegal downloads

By Boon Chan

The battle against the illegal downloading of TV anime has taken a new turn.

A new animated series, Tears To Tiara, is to become the first in the world to be broadcast simultaneously in Japan and across the rest of Asia, including Singapore.

Local anime distributor Odex says the same-time broadcast is to help combat the problem of illegal downloads.

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Pirates download the shows as they do not want to fork out big bucks for the genuine DVDs of the shows, which can cost $100 or more for a season and are often available only several months after being broadcast.

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Anime fan Eric Chew, a 29-year-old welding engineer, is happy about the same-day-and-time broadcast.

Asked if this will address the problem of illegal downloads, he said: ‘Since one can watch it on TV, there’s no point downloading and putting oneself in a high-risk situation.’

If caught, downloaders can find themselves in court and facing possible fines though globally, few rights owners who sue end-users of movies, music and games win.

Odex has the Asian licence for Tears To Tiara and is sub-licensing the title to Animax Asia for the TV broadcast. It plans to release the title on DVD three to six months after the initial broadcast.

Mr Go says Odex has spent years trying to convince the Japanese side that simulcast is the way to go ‘so that there’s no more reason to download anymore’.

Animax Asia’s vice-president Gregory Ho says: ‘The world is changing and it is changing fast.

The Japanese realise they are lagging behind. Downloading is no secret and it’s a big problem. They realise they have to do something.’

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Hmm… Hold on a second. I’m… not so sure about that.

If I was a betting man, I would bet that simulcasting Tears to Tiara – while certainly a positive for both the fans and the content owners – will not have any effect whatsoever on the number of online video downloads.

To understand why, we have to first understand why folks prefer downloading videos from the Internet instead of watching them on the tube. In my opinion, there are five reasons:

• Content Access – The show is simply not available in the country you live in. If you don’t download, you need to wait 3-6 months before your local TV station gets the show or the (expensive) DVD becomes available.
• On Demand Viewing – If you watch a show on TV, you must abide to the TV schedule. If you download a video onto your computer, you can watch it whenever you want. How many folks will be willing to stay up past midnight on a Sunday night to watch Tears to Tiara if they have school or work the next day?
• Playback Flexibility – Downloaded videos can be played, fast forwarded, rewound, paused, and resumed over and over again. You can’t do that with live TV unless you own an expensive DVR unit. Want to replay the last 20 seconds because you missed the punchline of a joke? Too bad… wait for the DVD.
• Portability – You can watch live TV on your television set at home. You can watch downloaded videos on your television set, laptop, netbook, desktop home entertainment system, at work, at home, or even on your Zune or iPhone during your commute to and from work.
• And finally, No Commercials – Rightly or wrongly, in today’s world where permission marketing trumps advertising, empowered consumers expect to not receive any form of advertising if they do not want to. Downloaded videos give them this option, while TV does not.

The problem is that simulcasting really only satisfies the content access issue, but doesn’t address any of the other four issues. Thus, there is still ample reason for folks to download TV shows – particularly since today we have technologies like Bittorrent and near ubiquitous broadband which allows you to download a 30-minute show (22 running minutes) in slightly less than 10 minutes.

Therefore, I believe that while simulcasting shows a lot of goodwill on the part of the content owners towards the fans (which by itself is a strong positive reason to do so), if the end goal in mind was to reduce online video downloads, many folks at Odex will be terribly disappointed at the results.