見たmorphosis

I found this advertisement on the back of the latest issue of the free monthly Japanese magazine Gekkan NZ, which is aimed at the expatriate Japanese community within New Zealand. Unfortunately, I think someone in Marketing for Kikkoman Australia didn’t quite think it through as well as they should have… Please excuse the cameraphone shot.

I can sort of see the thought process that leads to this. “There aren’t many Japanese people in Australia and NZ, we need to target non-Asians in our advertising to increase soy sauce consumption!” -> “Japanese people use a lot of soy sauce, we should target them directly by placing an ad in a Japanese magazine” -> “Let’s translate one of our other ads into Japanese!”. Which leads to… *facepalm*

Nice soy sauce though. For my Japanese marketing/advertising and consumer information needs, I usually browse Japan Marketing News and JapanConsuming. On a more lighthearted note, Konbini Life is fun – microreviews of various sweets bought at convenience stores in Japan. Lisa at TokyoMango also has the occasional entry about (generally non-edible) interesting Japanese products.

And I’ll return to more regular blogging… some day. Maybe not right now, but I just had to share this.

Tags: antipodes, bloody australians, food, shopping, wtf

So Fallout 3 has been refused classification in Australia because of their stupid rating system from the Atari era that doesn’t take into account anything with any more depth than Pac-man. Officially, because of too much drug use. Unfortunately because our local distributors get their stock from Australia, with many games a nasty side effect is that our local stores only get supplies of the censored Australian version of the game, regardless of the game’s legal status here. It’s been that way for a while and until they get their fucking act together, we’ll continue to get fucked along with them. Sad really.

There was a better article on this, but I can’t find it anymore so have this one – The Gamesman bought out by EB/Gamestop. I kept meaning to write about it back when it first broke, but… I’m lazy. It’s kind of a big deal because it means that the only game specialist stores in New Zealand with more than one branch will be EB stores, which are in a strange quantum state of being overpriced yet constantly on sale. I’m a bit surprised by this, because the management of GDE, which ran The Gamesman, seemed pretty anti-EB.

As in, it was not unheard of for staff in the course of a normal trip out to the mall to feel compelled to enter an EB store for the sole purpose of making disparaging comments about the decor, hygiene of the staff and general inferiority of the chain. Sure, the first few times it was amusing, but every single mall trip got to be a bit excessive, and wound up with this writer dragging said staff member out of the store forcibly and trying to avoid future mall visits. Talking to the girlfriend of another staff member dispelled the notion that this was an individual quirk. An entire company full of people who do this seems a bit weird, but I suppose their corporate culture was kinda weird anyway…

Plus there seemed to be a bit of bad blood due to EB’s decision to stock Madman DVDs from Madman Australia rather than the (now formerly) GDE-run Madman NZ, the reason for which was, from what I remember, that they suspected a conflict of interest due to their running of The Gamesman chain. While that’s ancient history due to EB no longer stocking DVDs and GDE no longer distributing Madman, I do wonder how much it cost to get Phil to swallow his pride and accept this offer. I’m also a bit wary that they seem to be setting the online business to compete directly with GP Store, but hey, I’m not telling anyone how to run their business.

The Vodafone iPhone pricing came out and wow, 1GB per month for $250 a month? Mmm, price gouging. There’s little else to say other than “Are you exploiting a monopoly here?” Gah this makes me remember why I hate marketing types.

So tl;dr – Australia fucking us over, America fucking us over, corporations fucking us over. Sucks living in a small country. The answer is always import.

Via Kotaku and video from Campbell Live

Tags: antipodes, apple, bloody australians, bloody yanks, mobile, rant, sucks to be me

It’s time for more news from the arse end of the world!

First off, a big fuck you Australia! Turns out they’re just a bunch of uptight pricks after all.

Basically, our local distributors rely on Australian distribution channels and ended up with the censored Australian version of GTAIV which was rated R18 (i.e restricted to people 18 and over). However, the uncensored version was recently submitted to the Office of Film and Literature Classification, and passed with the same R18 rating. Unfortunately our lazy major retailers will no doubt keep importing from Australia, but it means you won’t be arrested for importing it from the States or UK, or paying someone else to import it. After all, it doesn’t make sense banning the uncensored version on the basis of prostitution scenes in a country where you can legally go out and get a prostitute at that age.

Madman AU being bought out again? After being bought out by Australian toy company Funtastic, it turns out Funtastic has been going down the shitter ever since. Buying another company only tangentially related to your main business might not be such a good idea after all! I should have guessed something was up when they lost the bidding war for Evangelion 1.0. But yes, right when Funtastic were considering setting Madman adrift again, the Archer consortium is trying to buy Funtastic out.

Certainly the Funtastic takeover seemed like a bit of a shambles from the New Zealand consumer perspective – Funtastic bought out Planet Fun, a local toy distributor and transferred control of Madman NZ to them while they were at it, whereas previously it was operated by Gamewizz Digital Entertainment (which had its own problems, but we should probably let bygones be bygones). While we only really see our monopolistic distributors at the Armageddon conventions, the changeover was immediately obvious with a rather glaring and disappointing change in policy (spearheaded by the folk of Madman AU) – that of DVD convention pricing being little different from RRP, which led to some rather annoyed customers.

From what I understand, Madman NZ distribution and so on is controlled as a smaller piece of the larger Funtastic machinery in operation here – which puts Urotsukidoji right next to the High School Musical game, and of magnitudes less importance. It doesn’t help that Gamesplus (a local gaming chain and anime retailer) closed down last year, leaving far fewer retail stores stocking anime DVDs and generally fucking over their plan of getting their DVDs into the Sounds music stores run by the same folks. Not all the business set-backs are their fault. But at the same time, the word from their existing retailers seems to be that things are still a mess on their DVD distribution front – do they even have a dedicated manager for the DVD part of their NZ business? It doesn’t seem so, given they still have Sylvester Ip from the Australian arm of the business coming over to manage con events. Like I said, a mess.

If you live in Auckland, you might want to try JB Hi-Fi instead – I’m under the impression they get their stock direct from Australia (like EB Games used to until they stopped distributing DVDs altogether). Last I saw they had plenty of Death Note Limited Edition Vol 1 and 2 boxes, which Madman NZ has apparently long run out of. Of if you aren’t already, consider importing. It really makes more sense, particular given our whole DVD region free thing.

About the only good thing Planet Fun have achieved is managing to get the Madman DVDs into The Warehouse chain, which is effectively the largest DVD retailer in the country, from memory. Yet their business still appears haphazard and ill-managed, with the New Zealand fan ultimately losing out. So will this buyout improve things? Somehow I doubt it – Madman NZ is now a small part of Madman Australia, which in turn is a small part of Funtastic, which is in the process of being swallowed by a progressively larger whale. Doesn’t seem good. And they still need to make the shift over to Blu-ray.

Sorry, this turned a bit ranty. Hmm.

Also, because there’s always so little local news, there’s this: Warhammer Online worldwide simultaneous release actually including us, with a dedicated server even. I was rather excited about this bit of local news until I realised that I honestly couldn’t give a shit about Warhammer.

Via Stuff.co.nz, Anime News Network (ugh, I need a better source) and Kotaku

Tags: antipodes, bloody australians, rant, sucks to be you