I was sitting down this morning looking at the TV guide, since, whilst not being a big fan of many television shows, felt like spending some time on the couch watching some television. Now, back then I was a kid, I was addicted to the childrens afternoon on the ABC Channel with shows like Play School *Shudder* and animated shows like Blinky Bill which showed that there was some decent animation done in Australia, basically in comparison to now as when I looked at the TV Guide, a lot of them seemed…. a lot less uninspired, at least in my own opinion but I suppose that is what I get for getting older.
However more importantly to the topic is the actual presence of anime on TV. Back in the days until a few years ago, there was a television show called Cheez TV, which is one of those morning kiddy cartoon channels which often showed animes such as Pokemon, Digimon and a few others during a two-three hour time period with special Digimon marathons on each Saturday morning, which I remember waking up to. Alas, a few years ago, the show was dropped and it seemed like coverage of anime has dropped since then. Before I continue on, a facebook group found here trying to encourage a reunion of a series, like was done with Hey Hey It’s Saturday with a total of 38,056 Aussies as of the time this post was published, having signed up.
Now, I havent really seen the coverage the last few years, and the only anime I have seen on television is a run of Death Note on ABC which pleasantly surprised me, but afterwards, nothing much came of it. I was viewing the television timetable for today and found that the only anime really running this morning was of Digimon: Data Squad, which was held at 6:25am, which honestly shocked me…. since when I was a kid I was not waking up at 6:25 to watch get my anime fix…. On another channel there was a Yu-gi-oh episode running at 7:05 but besides those two… there was nothing.
My question is, why is anime so hard to come by in Australia, and in those cases, why is it so expensive to get certain titles. A 12-episode box set for anime can come to a total of $59 with individual DVD’s costing up to $29 and when I went to a specialist store a few months back, a single DVD (First arc I think) of When They Cry either costed $49 or $89 (Not too sure, but I am leaning towards the $49), which was a huge expense regardless.
So yes, that is my little rant for today.
I think it’s just a general thing with DVDs etc being expensive, no idea why though. Box sets of TV shows here are also more expensive than in the US and so are our games. Rarely see sales for anime DVDs though, i guess they don’t sell as much to warrant having them.
It’s true Australia doesn’t have much anime :|. My cousin lived there, he has to rely on the internet for anime which SUCKS because he can’t watch most things. He has to go to CrunchyRoll and such to watch anything……. And it’s the same situation with overpricing in all countries I think. I know that a manga volume in the US is easily 3x more expensive than in Japan.
@Zone: The funny thing is, that I would have to say that there is at least a 2x mark up on manga over here on the American prices…. does get costly….
Hey Sam, I’m from Australia too and I miss CheezTV like many people who grew up with it. I suspect that the internet plays a role in this shift. You can access anime anytime you want nowadays with steaming video sites. I’m pretty sure that those other TV shows had to be fast tracked from America because people were simply watching them online because they didn’t want to wait until it aired over here. And there’s that problem of trying to sell manga and anime overseas.
They’ve got Toasted Tv which is currently the succesor… but as an Australian young boy with only 6 hours of sleep on weekdays, WHERE’S THE TIME TO WATCH IT :O
Australia gets far more anime than the UK and the UK does not air any anime on TV, at all!