Demon Hunter anime wrapped 883/885 / SL to Hakata

[katoftw]

https://www.jrkyushu.co.jp/train/kimetu/campaign.html?fbclid=IwAR2Ig4Pn77ES6VmBilAQJCrJfNSsJWdEU7kcYo15GPUOkr_A_x3IbItBm0A

 

Demon Hunter anime wrap trains. 883 and 885 series. Hakata to Nagasaki.

 

SL 8620 one way Kumamoto to Hakata.

[GCS]

4 minutes ago, katoftw said:

https://www.jrkyushu.co.jp/train/kimetu/campaign.html?fbclid=IwAR2Ig4Pn77ES6VmBilAQJCrJfNSsJWdEU7kcYo15GPUOkr_A_x3IbItBm0A

 

Demon Hunter anime wrap trains. 883 and 885 series. Hakata to Nagasaki.

 

SL 8620 one way Kumamoto to Hakata.

I wish Kato would do more special editions like these, it would be an instant buy for me!

 

Guy

[Kamome]

Just seen the 885 on my morning commute. It looks very nice. Annoyingly only 2% battery so waiting around at my stop and getting a video as it coming past on its way to Oita is out of the question today. (Law of the sod) I’m already late for work as JR Kyushu often has issues. 

[disturbman]

 

On 9/24/2020 at 11:05 AM, GCS said:

I wish Kato would do more special editions like these, it would be an instant buy for me!

Yes, I wonder why Kato has not jumped on the painted/special train bandwagon. They have been pretty conservative in their approach compared to Tomix, Micro Ace and Greenmax. They only have done a few. The special sleeves or box art is also quite a nice touch for these unique sets. I'm a sucker for these kind of things. I really like the train face details on the spine of the Micro Ace's cases, it's such a nice, little detail.

[Kamome]

Well the 883 is a bit disappointing as it’s only the Moha and Saha 883-1000s that are decorated. (The smooth sided 885 type coaches)

[cteno4]

Kato may just hate the hassle of the licensing unless it’s one of the must do painted trains. License negotiations can be awful and expensive and fickle and rarely consistent. May be wanting to niche instead of head on compete in the odder stuff. Always wish you could know the sales numbers of individual model trains! I always wonder how the painted trains do, they usually sell out well, but they may limit numbers to drive up the “special” nature.

 

i too am also a sucker for them and all the trimmings and side story of the images.
 

jeff

[Yavaris Forge]

18 hours ago, cteno4 said:

License negotiations can be awful and expensive

And given that Demon Slayer was one of the most successful anime of this year the licensing costs are going to be quite high i guess...

[cteno4]

Licensing can be a mess in addition to pricing. All depends on the other party (or parties, sometimes licensing is shared meaning you need to make more than one party happy all at once), other deals they have made (some agreements rule out other licensing in very strange ways and at times the rights owner doesn’t realize they signed something away), at times other licensees can have a say in the matter under there license, some the owner wants a say or approvals in product development, packaging and/or advertising, some have restrictions on where you can distribute to, some have separate agreements in use in packaging and advertising, some want some money up front just to talk to you, on and on. When I was doing commercial content stuff it would make you pull your hair out (my excuse for not having much left!) and I would always look at licensing deals like they were not going to happen and then just be happy when they worked out. I gave up trying to guess which deal was going to be easy and which would get messy.

 

we had one deal with the family of one of the late rock and roll greats and about a year in the family exploded with lawsuits everywhere. Sunk our project partway in and like $100,000 in lost work. We got letters from one side threatening to sue if we moved forward and the other side said they would sue for breech of contract if we didn’t continue on the project (it was a profit sharing deal — another messy thing). Of course our lawyers loved it! I can’t remember if the company got into the lawsuit fray to try to recover it or not, but for many years afterward I would see the battle surface yet again in the press. Sad as beginnings of the project we’re looking quite good and a nice tribute to the rock and roller.

 

sometimes you get lucky with stuff like this and the owner is reasonable sees it as good advertising for them to just cement their base more, bit more money in their pocket and doesn’t get silly with price. Others will treat it like they have the holy grail and fight you tooth and nail for every penny (at great cost to everyone’s lawyers) when they have made millions and millions. Just gets silly.

 

jeff

[disturbman]

Definitely.

What I wonder is how licensing is done in Japan. It's seems to me that Japanese culture, with its love of mascots and pop culture icons, is much more at ease and used to licensing than Western countries are. Special wrappings are relatively common both on Japanese trains and model trains. Seeing the number of licensed liveries GM, MA, Tomix and Tomytec manages to produce, I have a hard time believing that Kato would not be able to do the same. They are obviously a few outliers, MA never produced an Anpanman JR Shikoku livery, but it seems more like a decision on Kato's part than a real issue with licensing. Seeing the context, I can imagine that publishing houses and tv networks are used to play that game. I guess the question is more if Kato sees a potential for profit in it.

Obviously, I do nothing about all this and this is just speculation on my part.

[cteno4]

Yes I would agree, I would guess that it may be a bit more open and unified approach to licensing in japan. But as soon as something gets very popular and a number of different deals get done is also when it starts getting complex. But again all my experience was mainly North America and some Europe. US tends to be a free for all.

 

all just fun musings though. The only thing I just learned big time is licensing can get ugly even when it seems super simple.

 

jeff

 

ps forgot another ugly, expensive bit is if there are any other licensing deals on what you are licensing, before you sign you have to pay your lawyers to review all those other contracts to make sure no restrictions then limit your deal, as if they do, the previous licensee has control of you later and can stop production, take profits, etc. our company (luckily after I left as I hate that side of business) ended up taking over a project another company was doing with a big name we had just done a licensing project with and the second agreement infringed on our first deal. Really screwed the other company and rights owner, but they didn’t look carefully at our license. The new ceo was a prick and did not care what bridges he burned or reputation he created. Another reason why licensing agreements makes me shutter.

 

jeff