Generation Kikaida and Shout Factory price difference

[kamil88]

With announcement of Dairanger from Shout Factory, i've been wondering about something, why Shout Factory DVD sets are cheaper than GK ones? Cheapest one is Kikaida 01, at 90 dollars, for original Kikaida, you need to buy 8 volumes seperately, for 20 dollars. And V3 costs 150$ Im not bashing GK by any means, just wonder, why other Toei shows are so expensive? While Zyu cost abot 50 dollars

 

[SentaiRiderFan]

Probably for the same reason that stuff costs so much in Japan. Some people are just used to it (which I guess includes people in Hawaii, the demographic GK is targeting) and really will pay that much for box-sets without much question ("who cares about everyone who won't, we're making so much to begin with"), so why not charge a kings ransom. It's all a matter of demographics, I guess (I might be wrong).

 

[SamuraiEchidna]

Pretty much what SentaiRiderFan said. Something about making items in a lesser amount of mass production raises the prices. Not sure how that works, but the examples holds true. Japan makes enough Sentai/Rider DVDs for Japan only, GK makes enough DVDs for Hawaii only, and that raises the price every time. American companies make way more DVDs for all of America, and the price lowers. Not sure how it work. Must have something to do with number of units produced and return on investment.

 

[Toku Prime]

With apologies for multiple hides to avoid a wall of text

OK, so here's a quick rundown of the reason anime DVD prices in Japan tend to be so high, as retold by my vague remembering of various "answerman" articles over on anime news network.
[HIDE]First of all, it should be noted that the entertainment industry in Japan is very much an 'old boys club' that will resist any people or technologies that they think could pose a threat to their profits. For example when netflix tried to establish a Japanese branch, all the major content producers in Japan refused to license anything to them at all. The Japanese music charts are still dominated by CD sales instead of downloads. Most relevant to this conversation, Japan is one of the last safe havens for the old fashioned video rental shop.

I'm sure everyone reading this knows the frustration of having to sit through the unskippable text at the beginning of a video that tells you the disk is a home video version and must not be rented. The reason for this is that the version sold to the rental companies are WAY more expensive, as the rental store will slowly make that money back over time.

Anyone who follows the weekly anime streaming over on Crunchyroll and/or Funimation will tell you it's very easy to regard the medium as disposable without realising it. You get into a pattern of watching the latest episodes, discussing them, and then a new season is starting and you start watching new shows instead. 9 times out of 10, by the time a show comes out on DVD you've long since moved onto something else.

Back in the VHS days this resulted in something slightly unusual in Japan. People who wanted to watch an anime after it had been on TV increasingly rented the shows instead of buying their own copy outright. It eventually reached the point where it simply wasn't commercially viable for anime companies to release a home video version - even when they ordered the minimum number of tapes they couldn't sell enough to make a profit on them. So they stopped bothering and only sold the more expensive rental version. The few people who has still been buying the tapes tended to be the more hardcore fans, and some of them were even willing to shoulder the cost of the expensive rental tapes in order to add a show to their shelf.

The situation continues nowadays. An anime's DVD sales will usually be to a vast number of rental stores and a tiny number of collectors. All at the more expensive rental price.[/HIDE]Relevance to tokusatsu sales in Japan:
[HIDE]My understanding is that DVD sales in Japan for both Rider and Sentai seem to follow the anime trend. There will be some hardcore collectors out there but most of the time if you want to watch an older toku show, you go rent it. So most of the DVD releases are the more expensive rental disks only. As rental stores will want to offer the entire series to their customers it makes DVD sales very consistant (and mostly unrelated to the broadcast viewing figures).[/HIDE]GK and Shout:
[HIDE]It's also worth pointing out that Toei don't give licenses for their shows away cheaply. A number of years ago Crunchyroll did enquire about streaming rights to Kamen Rider, and the quote they got back was similar to the kind of hyped-up "guaranteed hit" anime. So I'm guessing Generation Kikaida had to pay quite a high price for what is a tiny niche market in North America.

However, Generation Kikaida likely knew what audience it was targeting - fans who remembered those campy foreign super hero shows that were on TV back in the day and would probably have already been buying overpriced 'grey import' copies of the Japanese releases (which as discussed above were already expensive to begin with). Those people were already willing to pay the inflated prices and so GK could charge more for DVDs in order to earn back the licence fee and turn a profit. And who knows, maybe they could lure in some of the bootleg crowd that had only seen toku on battered and faded VHS tapes (usually raw or with hk subs)?

Shout Factory tends to operate on a completely different business model. They buy 'em cheap (the licenses) and sell 'em cheap, knowing that to do so allows them to make a profit across the entire country, even if the margin on each series is super slim. And let's be honest, with all their legal fees to pay Chaiyo were probably glad to have any money at all coming in. :redface2:[/HIDE]

 

[Amon]

Shout! is a much bigger company while Kikaida is a very small company. I remember hearing that Kikadia only has like 7 or 8 people working for the company. They make most of their money from their website and people from Hawaii. Shout! is a much bigger company that sells their DVD's and Blu-Rays to a much bigger market. Also Kamen Rider V3 and other DVD's from Kikadia have a lot of DVD bonus content. The more stuff on the disc, the bigger the price tag for the DVD set is.

 

[SamuraiEchidna]

[HIDE]It's also worth pointing out that Toei don't give licenses for their shows away cheaply. A number of years ago Crunchyroll did enquire about streaming rights to Kamen Rider, and the quote they got back was similar to the kind of hyped-up "guaranteed hit" anime. So I'm guessing Generation Kikaida had to pay quite a high price for what is a tiny niche market in North America.[/HIDE]

That's a very interesting piece of trivia right there. It's really nice knowing how the market actually does work. Actually kind of explains why things like Power Rangers and other adaptations exist, and gives me a better appreciation for their existence as well.

 

[Toku Prime]

That's a very interesting piece of trivia right there. It's really nice knowing how the market actually does work. Actually kind of explains why things like Power Rangers and other adaptations exist, and gives me a better appreciation for their existence as well.

It was mentioned in an episode of the old HJU Girls in Trouble podcast.
Toei told Crunchyroll that the price they quoted was based upon the massive level of recognisation the brand has within Japan, and the sheer merchandising potential of the franchise. The figure they asked for was apparently similar to amounts that Crunchyroll has paid for licenses in the past, but only when they were confident that the show was going to get lots of viewers and safely earn that money back with ad revenue. Their live action stuff just doesn't get as many viewers, so at the time they decided that they couldn't proceed at that price. That was a number of years ago though.

 

[Herman the Tosser]

That's a very interesting piece of trivia right there. It's really nice knowing how the market actually does work. Actually kind of explains why things like Power Rangers and other adaptations exist, and gives me a better appreciation for their existence as well.

It seems to line up with something I heard a while ago about that very topic. Countries that used to just get dubbed Sentai eventually switched to Power Rangers because it was cheaper to import, and most of the action sequences are there, I guess.

 

[Toku Prime]

It seems to line up with something I heard a while ago about that very topic. Countries that used to just get dubbed Sentai eventually switched to Power Rangers because it was cheaper to import, and most of the action sequences are there, I guess.

The other thing complicating matters is that it's supposedly standard for acting contracts in Japan to include clauses saying that the actors get additional payments if footage from the show that contains them is used abroad. Production companies usually inflate the license costs by the same amount to pay for this. So when Korea airs their version of Power Rangers that dubs the original Sentai actors, they're probably having to pay Toei more than Saban is for the footage with the original actors cut out. I hear that this has stopped quite a few Japanese TV shows and movies from getting foreign releases.

Whether that applies to streaming rights is unknown, especially if it was in the early 2000s when they probably weren't yet specifying things like that in contracts.

 

[arnoldmcguire335]

Countries that used to just get dubbed Sentai eventually switched to Power Rangers because it was cheaper to import

However it's also a double edged sword when you think of it- Countries that air PR now instead of SS will give the youth the bad mentality that any toku hero = PR (The Philippines for example), and is uncurable unless SS airs again, but Toei and the actors' agencies are being a dick about it (see below).

The other thing complicating matters is that it's supposedly standard for acting contracts in Japan to include clauses saying that the actors get additional payments if footage from the show that contains them is used abroad. Production companies usually inflate the license costs by the same amount to pay for this. I hear that this has stopped quite a few Japanese TV shows and movies from getting foreign releases.

So technically the Japanese TV/Movie industry is just too money-based, which is why Korea now went past through them media popularity wise- Japan's like "Pay us big expensive money 1st, our stuff goes out to the rest of the world", Korea's like "Our stuff 1st internationally, expense is not an issue".