Kickstarter is a company/website that helps people get funding for projects in various areas like arts, technology, crafts, etc. Several Kickstarter projects have been started by fans to pay for creations of extra seasons of their favorite shows. There are a few problems that anime lovers in the states run into:
1. My favorite manga never got turned into an anime even though it should have. 2. My favorite anime is older and is no longer being sold due to licensing. I can't seem to find it anywhere and I'd really like to own it. Or I can find it and it costs a fortune because it is rare. 3. Anime/Manga never got translated to English at all, so fans over here are missing out. Do you think kickstarter can help remedy these issues? How can we make people aware of kickstarter campaigns so that they can donate? Are there any other issues that kickstarter could potentially solve for US fans?
Make this article your own, my intention is to use it to spread awareness so that maybe we can get more content in the US.
This would only work and be true if a particular distributor was willing to take on the risk and the challenge of adding it to their production schedule. Because in the case of anime licensing and distributing, it doesn't matter if it CAN be crowdfunded for those sparse individuals who want a particular release, it matters who's going to put up the campaign, and have the facilities and the know-how to get the title re-published and printed. Not just anyone can set up a Kickstarter for a re-release of a particular anime. So not only would fans have to still get the permission of the rights holders of a show to re-establish a license with a new entity (if the Kickstarter is successful), but you would also have to convince an American publisher to get involved who would want to take on the job of gathering all the assets together: most importantly, seeing if the previous distributor still has their former disk IMGs available in a storage somewhere, and still has their DVD covers, promotional material, original English dub recordings, and so on. Discotek Media has successfully done this quite a few times already, so I've been putting my money on them that if a particular show I used to like is out of print, they'd be the mostly likely to revive it, even without a crowdfunding campaign. – Jonathan Leiter9 years ago
Yeah, I know and agree. I think what you'd have to do BEFORE throwing it up on kickstarter, is a fan would have to take the lead and contact these companies formally. They'd need to get estimates on how many dollars/etc it would take to complete the project. It's hard work, but it's the necessary first step. I think if people were more aware of it and REALLY loved something, they'd at least ask the question. And if a few successes were had, this could become a more popular way of getting these types of projects done. This topic is "can it help." So you point out a very big hurdle against it. – Tatijana9 years ago
Maybe you could change Kickstarter to crowdfunding. There are other sites that do the same thing such as IndieGoGo. Expanding this to crowdfunding allows whoever writes this the ability to expand the field of works that have succeeded in the past which leads to better resource materials. – Connor9 years ago
Done. I was not aware that this was a term or that other sites like it existed. Thanks. – Tatijana9 years ago
There's an anime crowdfunding site which managed to create a limited release for Creamy Mami. I forget the name but if you Google you should be able to find it. Actually making manga turned into an anime would have to be something in the Japanese market? – Jordan9 years ago
It was called Anime Sols or something – Jordan9 years ago