Supporting the Anime Industry

[BSLIONS]

I don't know how much they make off of it but a lot of the anime I wanted to watch is on Hulu or Netflix and I subscribe to both. The problem is I only watch one English dubbed anime and I don't want the cut version which is usually what you find on both so I download it.

[Lord of Fire]

I buy the occasional licensed DVD or manga, and plenty of figures and other merchandise (such as CDs).

I'd import DVDs directly from japan, but I have a few issues that prevent me from doing so:
- DVDs are expensive (I don't own a Blu-ray player and don't intend on getting one soon)
- Price and shipment costs aside, custom tax can be a real killer. There have been cases where I had to pay almost half of the total price I paid for the DVD itself. And since I don't exactly have a high income, I can't just buy whatever show I want without going bankrupt.
- Most of them aren't subbed. Japan is slowly getting the idea that they could sub their own DVDs and sell them overseas for maximum profit, but it'll probably take years before this really gets significant enough to compete with American licensers.

I'd subscribe to CR, but as long as there's still region blocking on some shows, I'm not going to bother. And I dare not touch Funi's streams, assuming I can actually view them. Furthermore, I want to watch anime whenever I like, without having to visit a streaming site.

[Triltaison]

I'm not going to buy movies directly from Japanese producers simply to assuage guilt of not supporting an artist. I'm more than willing to purchase North American releases of movies, box sets of television series, and manga I like. If that doesn't translate into money for its creators that's not my problem.

I don't want streaming either, if I'm paying money I want something I can hold in my hands.

This, pretty much.

I buy series that I have an interest in and try to support specific cases, also. When Viz released the first box of Monster in Wal-Mart stores of all places, I made sure to snap that up so it would continue to be made and stocked in a store like that. Apparently not many others did like me since Viz never even finished releasing the series, but at least I put my money where my mouth was for that show. I also try to buy my Nozomi/RightStuf releases directly from their website, and get many of my purchases over the last couple of years directly from Funi, ADV/Sentai, Media Blasters, or whoever at cons.

I probably have too many now according to my barcode listing (way over 800 individually scanned DVDs and VHS, which doesn't include multi-volume box sets and the like), but I've been doing it through the whole boom and bust. I honestly don't really understand not wanting to purchase series you like when they're cheaper and easier to buy than ever before - Gundam Wing cost $200 altogether and Rurouni Kenshin was upwards of $600 when they first came out on DVD. I remember buying the first volume of Outlaw Star for $42 in 2000, and I got the entire series of Casshern: Sins for $15 last week. The subs have gotten better, the dubs have gotten better (we may never see another Garzey's Wing), the prices have gotten better, you can buy stuff in something as easy as Wal Mart instead of sniffing around mail-order catalogs and searching out specialty stores that are willing to order you the movie you want, more series are getting picked up that would have been ignored in the past, and it encourages more of it to get released.

Maybe I'm just old.

[EmptyMemory]

https://www.daisuki.net/movies/watch/tBc/sBc

Well, that's pretty cool.

[Ruhl]

That's very cool indeed! Damn. Goodbye bakaboxtorrents, thanks for everything.

[buchno]

https://www.daisuki.net/movies/watch/tBc/sBc
Well, that's pretty cool.

Am I the only one who can't play the videos?
...or is it the worthless Flash player for Linux playing games with me again?

[ConsiderPhlebas]

Am I the only one who can't play the videos?

Plays fine for me with W7/IE10...

[buchno]

Am I the only one who can't play the videos?

Plays fine for me with W7/IE10...

Ok.
...I wish they'd support HTML5.

[jaybug]

If you really want to support the anime industry, find the addresses of the companies producing what you like, and mail them a international instrument of money. Western Union as an example.

Another good way that won't cost you money, is tell people you know, who aren't watching anime, to watch some. Even if it's only something on cable TV, at least it is more than nothing. Tell enough people, one of them is bound to become an otaku, or weeaboo., and make you look like you don't love anime enough. lol

[brunoais]

Oh also I like brunoais idea. Ever sent hentai?

Nope. Never found good enough hentai that I felt like paying.

If you really want to support the anime industry, find the addresses of the companies producing what you like, and mail them a international instrument of money. Western Union as an example.

Won't that be almost like shooting your own foot? Why would someone just send a load of cash out of the sudden (even if small) to a company... Specially if it's not in yen? Even though that could help the industry, it could have a bad reception and can lead an investigation of illegal ship (or however it is written) against ourselves.

[Zalis116]

Plus, these are businesses we're talking about here, not charities.

[gezenko]

I would subscribe to CR, since the majority of airing anime are streamed at roughly the same time nowadays anyway, and the translation quality is usually pretty decent (a lot of their staff are ex-fansubbers, after all). But the video is terrible (seriously, one look at their 1080p preview put me off immediately), and I much prefer having actual files saved to my computer which I can watch any time I want, without having to worry about having an internet connection, and which I can copy to my phone to watch while travelling, or do whatever I want with.

If CR could achieve equivalent quality to fansubbers in all aspects, and were able to provide offline downloads (never gonna happen - which also means good quality won't happen, since fansub quality is too high bitrate to easily stream for most people), then I'd subscribe in an instant. But they don't, so I won't.

Also, I may be misremembering this, but didn't CR start of as a fansub group as well? Except, unlike other groups, they had the bright idea of charging people money for their releases (obviously, none of that went to the original creators). Then they made so much money that way that they were able to form a company and go legal. I'm not 100% sure if that's true or not (it was before my time), but if so, then I'd be very dubious about paying them any money. I don't want to support people who would do that kind of thing.

I don't think Crunchyroll in itself was ever a fansub group, but I do know they initially were an illegal anime-streaming site, because they hosted a lot of copyrighted material. Eventually they made deals with companies (and eventually TV Tokyo, I believe) and became legal.

I probably won't ever subscribe to them, because fansubbers do the same job (and some groups actually have more material) for free. The biggest thing though (at least for me) is that you NEED an internet connection (which you mentioned), and that you can't rely on them to have something forever, which is why I like to either have the box set or at least a copy of the show on my hard drive.

[VicViper573]

Speaking of supporting the anime industry, animesols.com has several classic anime being streamed by major anime studios like Tatsunoko.  If you pledge enough money, they will put those series on DVD, such as Yatterman.

I started a thread about it but it was strangely deleted.

[Tatsujin]

Speaking about this, I have no freaking idea what to do with my Spice & Wolf funimation purchase. I have to sell it off. Both Japanese versions of Spice & Wolf - Collectors Edition and Complete Edition - are way above the shitty American version from funimation and they are not altered at all. The worst decision I made so far. Well, I learned the Hard way.

Are you guys just happy with the media itself altered or unaltered? Or do you like excellent quality type versions with extra media and materials within your purchase?

[Shohei-kun]

I'd prefer to watch my shows unaltered - the way the artist wanted the work to be seen. I never want to watch anything Funimation has touched since they butcher the shows to no end.

[brunoais]

And they usually add bad voice dubs (there are good exceptions, fortunately(?)) who are under paied.

[Saras]

Not verbatim because fuck you memory, but "I don't make movies to be read" - Mamoru Oshii

If you were going at it the way the author intended, you'd be watching the dub, end of story. Yes, the English dub is rarelly treated with the same amount of seriousness as the Japanese dub, but that doesn't make the Japanese dub the holy grail dubbing. It's still shit, you just don't know, because you don't know the language.

I'm not saying that you can't prefer one or the other, but don't spout bullshit about "The way it's meant to be (insert something here)".

[TMRNetShark]

Buying anime in the USA usually doesn't mean supporting anime back in Japan. The only real way to do that is to import. I still buy stuff from American dealers because then they are the ones that pay the licensing fees to the Japanese publishers/owners. Other than that, CR is where it's at.

[SirSkyRider]

I would buy anime here if they'd actually publish stuff worth watching. Unfortunately, there were only three major releases in the past few years to my liking – Tokyo Magnitude 8.0, K-On! and the BD version of all of Black Lagoon (Black Lagoon, Second Barrage and Roberta's Blood Trail), the rest of the series released here in Germany is SHIT.

I buy a lot of manga though. Simply because I hate scanlations.

[CappinHoff]

Buying anime in the USA usually doesn't mean supporting anime back in Japan. The only real way to do that is to import. I still buy stuff from American dealers because then they are the ones that pay the licensing fees to the Japanese publishers/owners. Other than that, CR is where it's at.

It's not about supporting the Japanese industry, it's about supporting the US anime industry. That video was right that the industry in the US is dying.