Should new Tenchi Muyo series be financed by Kickstarter?

[antvasima]

It seems to work for lots of projects, including new anime series.  If anybody likes the idea, and can speak Japanese, or knows somebody that can, could you please forward the suggestion to Kajishima, AIC, or whichever company that owks the property of Tenchi Muyo and Tenchi GXP?

[Dr.Soviet]

We've actually been talking about this for years now, problem is there isn't anyway for us to contact him.

[antvasima]

Okay. Doesn't he have a homepage anymore? How about the anime company?

[shades of blue]

Kaji hasn't had that homepage for many years now. His friend, that ran it, probably dropped it because there weren't enough comiket profits to cover the domain fees. Nearly half of the dudes at comiket don't actually turn a profit or even break even. And since Kaji is not into writing hentai parodies of the latest shit to air, I doubt he falls under that highly profitable side. Said it before and I'll say it again, someone really needs to teach these dinosaurs how to use facebook. I may not like facebook, but it is free and there's no need to learn HTML... And more importantly, it'd open up interaction with the fans beyond glancing at the man from across a table.

That said, as a western fan, I think goading Yen Press or Del Ray into gauging interest in licensing the novels via Kickstarter would be a better way to go. I believe that instead of simply mentioning interest in seeing X-novel licensed by X-publisher, a better way to go about gauging interest would be to say look we believe in this product and to prove it we challenge you to start a Kickstarter fund. And if the sum of X-amount is not raised, we'll shut up. End of story. Because clearly online petitions have never worked, ever. And simple word of mouth has not worked either.

[antvasima]

Well, we could do both. What company has the Tenchi Muyo license at the momemt? I would like to see the GXP novels filmatised, and a 4th OAV series. But maybe you're right that it is better to start with just getting the novels translated?

[shades of blue]

In the states Funimation has all of the anime licensed, but I don't think that really matters. If who had the license for x-format interfered with the license for y-format, there's be a lot of titles not being released in multiple formats, by multiple publishers. Even Tenchi is an example of that, since Pioneer USA owned the rights to the anime and VIZ licensed the manga. But of course this is all dependent upon the terms of the contract. Which obviously has improved significantly, since the contractual disaster that spawned the Studio Nue vs Harmony Gold legal debacle.

That said, the lightnovels are published by Fujimi Shobo, a subdivision of Kadokawa Shoten. Kadokawa Corporation, the head of company, is basically Sony without the electronics. They dab in pretty much everything, from real estate to monthly publications to novels to feature length films. This might even be why the novels have remained so elusive, as a huge company like Sony or Universal is going to demand top dollar for anything they own simply because they do not need pawn off their pieces for insignificant gains.

[antvasima]

Okay. Here is Fujimi Shobo's website: http://www.fujimishobo.co.jp/top.php

If anybody here knows Japanese or knows somebody that does, could you send them an e-mail with the idea of using Kickstarter for the GXP novels?