2007 was a wonderful year for videogames. It saw the release of games like Halo 3, Call of Duty 4, Mass Effect, Bioshock, Metroid Prime 3, Super Mario Galaxy, and The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, among many other great titles. It wasn't, however, a great year for anime. In fact, it was a horrible one. Geneon USA closed up shop, The Anime Network 24/7 channel was dropped, and very few of the year's anime (both newly released in Japan, and licensed outside of Japan) were noteworthy. Anime DVD sales plummeted, and the industry is in a generally degenerate state.

How did we get here? How can something that caused such a cultural explosion be about to die?

An animnewsnetwork editor wrote that one of the greatest problems is the fact that neither Japan nor the countries that import anime have truly dedicated themselves to finding an effective way to distribute anime quickly and inexpensively outside Japan. In other words, fansubbing is one of the reasons the anime industry is collapsing, but the blame for the fansubs falls upon the anime industry itself; not on the users who download the fansubs. I agree that it is mostly the fault of the industry itself, but I'd be morally corrupt to say we users aren't to blame also.

In the end, anime lacks an effective means of distribution outside Japan.

The sad thing is that even if we had an effective means of distribution, we'd have no good anime to import. 2007 saw very few great anime releases. What's more, established favorites slipped considerably in quality (Naruto Shippuuden is a far cry from the original, pre-filler run of the series). Moe continues to infest anime releases, corrupting the industry with deranged Japanese otaku fantasies.

In the end, crappy anime is much too common.

The few titles that are actually good will usually have very small potential of generating any real money, thanks to the fansub community. Anime licenses are very expensive, and if the anime generates no profits, the licensing companies (responsible for making anime widely available to us) are the ones who suffer.

In the end, anime's target audience doesn't buy anime.

And why don't they buy it? There are many reasons (mostly because it can be found free at the risk of lower quality), but one very influential one is the perspective some people have of anime. Some of the people who don't buy anime are simply (understandably) not interested in viewing anime as an art form or anything more than "cool cartoons", and thus only want to watch anime much like we watch TV, and don't necessarily feel drawn to spending money on anime, much like we don't always buy series we watch. And those of us who do view anime as an art form and something other than just "cool cartoons" feel many times drawn to owning the anime we like, but soon find it is very expensive to have large collections. And so we are limited to only buying certain series (like I do) or not buying anime at all (like many do) and rely on fansubs to create our collection.

In the end, there are many "casual" anime watchers that won't buy anime, and anime is too expensive for dedicated fans.

Through fansubs, anime (much like the music and movie industries) has fallen prey to rampant digital piracy. But while movies can generate millions through the box office, anime (like music) must rely on the people that buy the hard-copy releases to generate money. Movies can co-exist with piracy, and since DVDs, Blu-Rays, and HD-DVDs aren't terribly expensive, it can still generate significant profits from its hard-copy releases. Music and anime don't have this advantage.

In the end, anime hasn't found an effective way to counteract the effect of piracy.

Anime will die in the coming months.

And what does this spell for videogames? The music and anime industry have both been toppled by digital piracy. Videogames are purely digital media. Game piracy has already grown significantly in the last decade, and unlike movies, videogames don't have a "box office" of sorts that will generate income regardless of whether people buy games or not. The videogame industry is on top right now, and is in the perfect spot to prepare countermeasures against piracy. Appropiate measures must be taken now. Let's at the very least learn from other fallen industries.

I hope that anime dies much like videogames did: they were great, they collapsed, and then they revived into a striving industry. I also hope that better technology is developed to prevent piracy in general, so that in 20 years from now artist is still considered a profitable profession.