I knew it was only a matter of time before this ill thought-out rule started causing problems...

I've just voted no on a pending contribution for 669198803819 ("The Girl Who Leapt Through Time: Limited Edition"). The contribution is (amongst other things) amending the studio "Kadokawa Pictures USA" to "Kadokawa Pictures", removing the locality-specific suffix. This is what the rules now say to do...

But the problem is, there is a separate Japanese studio called "Kadokawa Pictures" who is also involved in this release. There are logos on the box for both "Kadokawa Pictures" (the producing company in Japan) and "Kadokawa Pictures USA" (the American licence holder). They are separate companies with distinct roles in this release. Both, in my opinion, need to be credited.

But following the rules, we're going to end up with Kadokawa Pictures and Kadokawa Pictures. Or if you remove the duplicate, you've just eliminated the data about the US licence holder.

Here's a shot of the packaging showing the two logos:



I know there are many other examples of this sort of problem ("Koi Kaze" is another title in my collection that comes to mind, where both Geneon Entertainment and Geneon Entertainment USA were involved in production). The locality-specific suffix rule is going to force us to remove valid and useful data.

Does anyone else agree or am I fighting a losing battle here?

Just one question:
Who is the owner of Kadokawa USA?
According to their own website they're nothing more than an affiliate of the mother company in Japan, so it's not as you stated a separate company.
Their job within the corporate structure of the Kadokawa Holding is to:

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KPUSA distributes, licenses, remakes and adapts library films and books for an international audience in the English language. It also acquires foreign language films for distribution in Japan.

So there's no own production recognizable.
I don't really see the difference between anime studios and other studios who have affiliates in the USA too (e.g. Village Roadshow = Australian with US - subcompanies).

Quoting goblinsdoitall:

Quote:
Just one question:
Who is the owner of Kadokawa USA?
According to their own website they're nothing more than an affiliate of the mother company in Japan, so it's not as you stated a separate company.

It is a separate legal entity ("Kadokawa Pictures USA Inc."). By your logic, BVHE, WDHE, Touchstone etc are all the same company as they are just subsiduaries of their parent Disney. I don't think anyone here would agree that we eliminate all the subsiduaries in that example, so why is it any different just because the name happens to contain a "locality-specific suffix"?

Quoting Kulju:

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Whats the problem? We have separate filters for Studios and Media Companies.

I know the beta version addresses this, but in the current version we only have a single Media Publisher field, which in this case in Bandai Entertainment.

Regardless though, even with the new version, if the rules stay as they are we'll still have Kadokawa Pictures listed in both fields, which is wrong. What if I want to check for all shows licenced in the US by Kadokawa Pictures USA? How do I do this without mixing in results from KP Japan, bearing in mind there are probably examples where the Japanese parent was involved in production of the US release but KPUSA was not (e.g. production of special features)?

The other problem is that this rule gives us ridiculous inconsistency. Consider these two examples of anime companies with a Japanese parent and a US licensing/releasing subsiduary:

Japanese parent: Geneon Entertainment
US subsiduary: Geneon Entertainment (USA)
Result in DVD Profiler: Both are listed as the same company - Geneon Entertainment

Japanese parent: Bandai Visual/Bandai Namco
US subsiduary: Bandai Entertainment
Result in DVD Profiler: They are listed separately

The rule as it stands gives us two different results for the exact same situation, the only difference being how creative the executives were when thinking up a name for the US division.

Inconsistency is bad. Discarding valid and useful data is bad. Ergo, this rule is bad.

Couldn't have been more concise myself, Unicus. But you can always do it locally, Fly.

Skip

Yes, I can (and will) list the studios correctly locally, and if any of my contributions get declined as a result I shall simply not contribute them (I refuse to knowingly contribute incorrect information).

But if this ridiculous rule came about "because a small group of vocal users decided they didn't like it", then it follows that only by being vocal about it myself and hopefully gaining the support of others do I stand any chance of convincing Ken that it needs to be changed.

Quoting goblinsdoitall:

Quote:
Not quite, the problem you have here simply occurs because the production company and the media distributor incidentally have the same name (except for the locality suffix), if the name of the distributor would have been different from the name of the production company there would have been no "problem".

Well yes, but that's hypothetical so isn't really relevant is it? The names are not different so there is a problem, and it's far from an isolated case. And as I illustrated with my Geneon/Bandai example, the current rule leads to inconsistency based solely on the creativity of whoever was charged with coming up with the name of the foreign subsiduary.

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Don't forget "studios" and "media companies" are not to be mixed up anymore.
Kadokawa USA, according to their own website just acts as a distributor.
We have the the "Media Companies" section for this and since the locality of the distributor usually is indicated by the locality of the DVD the locality suffix is simply redundant information.

KPUSA is just a distributor (or licence holder), yes, but Kadokawa Pictures is not, and there are examples where Kadokawa Pictures (Japan) were involved in the DVD production (e.g. special features) of a KPUSA-licensed title. Hence both could potentially be listed under Media Companies.

Quote:
The only situation where this locality suffix would be needed is if there were two independent companies in a country with the same name except for the locality indicator ( e.g. Warner Home Video AND Warner Home Video Germany).

Or, as in the example of Koi Kaze that I mentioned before, where the foreign subsiduary ("Geneon Entertainment (USA)" in this case) was actually directly involved in the production of the show alongside the Japanese parent, not just the DVD. Both are listed under production in the show's credits.

Quote:
EDIT: Regarding the "small group of vocal users": check here
and here

I counted 10 separate supporters across those two threads, with dissenters in each, and some people not bothered either way. I think by anyone's standards that can't be classed as anything more than a "small group". We can't all be on these forums every day - had I seen those threads at the time I would most certainly have made this argument then.

Bumping this up rather then starting a new thread.

Another case where locality-specific suffixes are needed appears to be Ergo Proxy which I'm updating right now:



Geneon Entertainment once again.  As you can see both Geneon Entertainment and Geneon Entertainment (USA) are credited as a production studio and Geneon Entertainment (USA) Inc. as the English Language producer (And Media company in this case).

For now what I will submit will be without the suffix per the rules but another case where I think removing the suffix is wrong.

Tom

Quoting whispering:

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Here big companys such as Universal Pictures Finland are slapped together with Universal Pictures the studio to make it look prettier. But rules are rules, so...

That is not a problem whatsoever, as we list the studio Universal Pictures in a separate field from where we put media company Universal Pictures - additionally, Ken specifically added the ability to do a separate search/filter on them. So in that case, yes, the concerns were known and addressed before implementing the rule (which was already being used as a rule of thumb by the vast majority of the userbase anyway).

Now, the example as noted by tkinnen is something completely different: "Geneon Entertainment" and "Geneon Entertainment (USA)" both need to be entered into the same field. That's a BIG difference: it's not just something someone might not like, but it's simply impossible. The program simply doesn't allow us to enter "Geneon Entertainment" in the same studios field twice. As such, I'm inclined to say that there are exceptions to every rule. Because there are, really. Although this kind of thing doesn't happen in my collection, if it did, I would seriously consider contributing it with the suffix, explaning it's rare exception status, the fact that it simply can't be done otherwise, and including a link to that screenshot. Then let the voters and the screeners decide. If they don't agree, you can always still do as you deem fit locally.