Behind the Scenes: Pony Can USA Enters the Market

Original Title:  A Challenger Appears! Pony Canyon Enters the US Anime Market   

Publication Date: 9/26/2014

Author: Samantha Ferreira

As a quick note; We actually had a tie last week, so I did a bit of deliberating on how to handle this. I'll be handling one today, and the other will be Friday's article. :) 

Before I begin, all I can say is "wow, it's been four years already?" Seriously, it feels like just yesterday that Pony Can USA was just opening its doors! 

I'm not going to go too deeply into the company themselves, just yet, because, well... that is an interesting story in and of itself that we've seen unfolding over the past third of a decade...ish. 

At the time that the company was announced, though, there was a very real mix of interest and confusion... as well as a healthy dose of skepticism. 

On the one hand, you had people who were intrigued by the concept. On the one hand, Pony Canyon proper was a force behind some of the most iconic anime out there, having production committee credits on iconic works like Attack on Titan, Fairy Tail, and Skip Beat!. So, at that point, there arose a very real question of what they owned, and what they were planning to do with those titles.  

For the most part, Pony Canyon was a black box in North America. Their one solo effort came in 2008, when they tried to crowdfund Abunai Sisters: a dreadful little title starring the Kano sisters. And this was a pretty big effort – like, they were producing entirely on a scaling model, where they'd only lower the price of certain thresholds were met. At the top of that sliding scale, fans would be on the hook to pay $250 just for a 30-minute DVD version of the title.  

No, Really. Stop laughing. 

But, well... at the time, that was about five years and an industry crash later I doubt anyone really remembered that surreal moment outside of the old timers. 😛  

But anyway! With this in mind, Pony Canyon was a blank slate. Nobody knew what to expect, nor were they ready to go full-on supporting the company. People were worried that Pony Canyon would embrace the Aniplex model, which is closer in style to Japan's general way of business than it is to the west's. People feared singles, and they were worried about high prices of the media like Blu-Rays and DVDs. 

The company did seem to be hitting a lot of the right notes out the gate, with guaranteed simulcasts and a pair of hotly anticipated titles at launch (Denki Gai and Yuki Yuna). 

At the time, though, I ended up just taking a step back, and looking at the market as a whole. I used this as a bit of an opportunity to put my business wonk hat on, as I dove into the concepts of markets, and how things were shaping up.  

This wasn't the deepest of pieces, but I ended up pulling in a fair amount of research from various sources, including Justin Sevakis's Answerman commentary on Aniplex, the now-defunct Otaku Review, and our own analyses on the market. With the details we had, as well a bit of research that I had shelved, I ended up putting together a quick lay of the market... outlining the general strata that had formed naturally, with upmarket, middle-market, and streaming realm kind of taking their own chunks of the pie. At the same time, I did note the mistakes of the past, and really seemed to like hammering home the warnings about Bandai Visual USA's "sledgehammer" approach to the market. 

Honestly, I still kind of do – Bandai Visual was a company that came in trying to do the most elite of the elite, bringing Japan's model here wholesale – and they were rightfully laughed out of the room.  As amazing as the works were, people weren't going to pay a hundred bucks for Patlabor: The Movie, or Wings of Honneamise... and they certainly weren't going to pay $45 for two episodes of Galaxy Angel Rune!  

On that note, I kind of wonder why I don't harp on Toei USA as much... Interlude's "SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAM" subtitle was amazing. But anyway, I digress!  

Because Japanese publishers' entries to the market were so spotty, to the point that only one publisher was seen "doing it right" (and even then they were [and still are] facing serious opposition from the community), it was kind of hard to really peg where Pony Canyon would land. Personally, I figured they'd hit the upmarket, and I expressed as such, while outlining a successful formula would work out. 

It's the type of article that I would love to do more of. Quick, a bit fluffy, but still plenty of meat to really draw from my years of experience in the market. 

Maybe I will, someday... maybe soon... 🙂  

-Samantha