Tokyopop Fall Down, Going Pff.

[Epsilon]

Epsilon, what Rob said. That, and the response of the Japanese is a pretty good gauge to go by, despite the cultural differences between East and West.

If a company fails to do even this much for research, then they deserve to lose that money. (Maybe the company the licensed the anime/manga from can use the royalty fees to make better stories.)

So on the one hand you say that fansubing is great because it gives you access to obscure titles and on the other you say that anime translators shouldn't bother to try and bring over unpopular stuff because its not going to be profitable. Well, that's certainly a convenient system for the fansubbers, I'll agree. The trick being, that guessing which stories are going to be popular and profitable and which ones are going to sink like stones is hard work, often impossible work. Sure you can safely assume that really high sales stuff from Japan like Naruto or Bleach are going to sell over here, but even then there have been surefire hits from Japan that have crashed and burned in the North American market.
Not that a series being popular stops the fansubers, of course. Quite the opposite.

Yes, production fees are expensive, but I reiterate: what do you expect when you reproduce crap?

So, how do you tell the difference between the next regurgitated crap and the next Haruhi Suzimiya (or whatever anime you want to put in there)? Lots of anime/manga looks terrible when you consider the premise. Fuck, premise has nothing to do with it. It's all in the execution. The most cliched, ridiculous story can be the greatest story ever told depending on how well its elements are used. The most original, creative story can be sheer crap.
You can't have it both ways people. Either you can't produce good art by commitee in which case you just have to accept all the crap that comes out, or you can and in that case why do you complain so much about all the commitee produced stuff? The only way to produce art is a scattergun approach. Throw enough of it at the wall, see what sticks.
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Epsilon