Forum - View topicHey, Answerman! - Requiem For a Mangastream
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mike.motaku
 Posts: 160 Location: Indiana |
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WHAT??? Anime & manga fans are spoiled? Say it ain't so! And if NISA's Natsume release doesn't include a free talking cat, I will personally lead a worldwide boycott of all their goods!
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Asterisk-CGY
 Posts: 398 |
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Well you could say that about anything done through innovation, that the latter group is rather spoiled compared to the previous. Those people who listen to CD's? Spoiled record people. Car drivers? Spoiled horseriders. Any improvement that enhances a person's usability will always in a way "spoil" those who lived with it.
Being "spoiled" and "entitled" is what drives innovation. And while there are "rules" and "regulations" Viz and Shueisha play by, the fact is that they wrote those exact same rules, so the only thing stopping them from rewriting them are themselves. Also now even if Amano wanted to try something different with Reborn!, his rights are now tied with Shueisha, who will most likely be content on sitting on it doing nothing. And anyone will agree that doing nothing sucks. |
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Charred Knight
 Posts: 3085 |
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So you're saying that Viz should just stop paying the mangakas and stop paying the translators? You're forgetting that the only thing aggregators pay for is the servers whereas Viz has to pay for things like the rights to the manga which goes towards not only Shueisha but more importantly to the people who actually work on the manga. You keep on treating anime, manga, or movies like they are created by magic, that someone twitches their nose and all of a sudden a finished anime appears out of thin air. |
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GVman
 Posts: 730 |
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Akira Amano is a girl. |
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LordByronius
ANN Columnist
 Posts: 861 Location: Philippe for America! He is five. |
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whoops! i'll fix that once i can sit down at the computer machine. |
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s.alsa-man1991
Posts: 137 |
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I think Gabe Newell said it best: "We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable." He's talking about videogames and Steam, of course, but a similar service could be created for anime and manga. |
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potatochobit
 Posts: 1373 Location: TEXAS |
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two issues with purchasing official cosplay merchandise come to mind
first, have you ever bought anything from cospa? it is the cheapest, cheap, cheap, cheap material you can find. Any normal girl is not going to feel comfortable in a skirt if it feels like it was made out of a mechanic's rag leftovers. cosplay clothing should not make you feel like a paper mache character. It needs to be comfortable and look like real clothing. Right now I have an official cospa to heart 2 coffee mug on my desk. I don't understand why the japanese coffee mug is 1/3rd the size of a regular coffee cup. Am I just supposed to put pencils in my anime coffee mug? the second issue is the lack of official merchandise and lack of demand. there literally is 'nothing to buy'. At least nothing that would fit americans, and that brings up the what size should I buy? issue. I totally know how to fix cosplay clothing sales. it is very simple, in fact. The clothing needs to look like the characters but be soft like sleep wear. Do you see how well hugging pillows sell? I would totally be in for 3 kuroneko outfits that can be worn to bed. For outdoor clothing, it just needs to be subtle and look and feel like real clothing. You don't need to announce to the world that you are an otaku, but if the clothing is 'streetable' other anime fans will pick up on it and be delighted. for example, maybe ichigo's 1 5 shirt. I mean we dont really need a huge orange head on a T-shirt to promote bleach. |
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Nonaka Machine Gun B
 Posts: 825 |
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To this week's question: Yes and no. I won't speak for others, but I'm certainly not going to just buy something without sampling it. But at the same time, how many people are "sampling" big name series like One Piece in the year 2012? And then you consider MS was releasing newer chapters of heavily serialized manga.
Really, the whole region-lock is, as you said, out of Viz's hands. People should be asking why Belgian Licensor A is just sitting on Shonen B, or what is Belgian Scanlator C doing with all his free time? I think that might be a interesting point; so many overseas people upset about English scans being taken away from them. |
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GATSU
Posts: 15567 |
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Actually, from what I heard, the Akira movie was a hit in Japan. But it still cost so much that they had to sell it to international markets. The Ghost in the Shell movies, OTOH, were co-productions from the start. So they didn't actually have as much risk associated with them, as, say, Steamboy. Honneamise was probably a disaster, though. But I imagine the Japan economic bubble made it more possible for Bandai to write it off than nowadays.
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Charred Knight
Posts: 3085 |
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They are working on that SJA is one form of this. As for Gabe Newell, his not actually competing with the pirates his instead competing with brick and mortar stores giving a better service for at most the same cost or usually less. If he was competing with pirates he would release his next hit game for free by torrenting it. His not that stupid. The problem with most forms of piracy is that their business model can't actually support anything. Zynga and Steam represents the future of video games not some dude who owns a site that allows you to download hundreds of video games for free and makes less money than Zynga does on Farmville. |
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s.alsa-man1991
Posts: 137 |
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He's saying precisely the opposite: it's not about pricing, it's about accessibility and service. And competing against piracy is precisely what they set out to do when Steam debuted in Russia, where everyone thought it was doomed to fail due to the country's rampant piracy. Besides, they already give tons of stuff for free. I got Portal for absolutely nothing about a year ago and that lead me to buy Portal 2, full price, on release day. What we need are world-wide, hassle-free services, like Steam or Apple's iTunes/App Store. While Shonen Jump Alpha is a step forward, the fact that they have other series that could get the same digital "almost simultaneous" release and don't is hurting their business, and making people turn to scanlators. |
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Thatguy3331
 Posts: 1799 |
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I will bluntly honest about all of this: This is a massive double edged sword for me.
I have not been a anime fan very long, only being one for a good four or five years at this point, and I am just now begining to pyhsically buy my anime/manga. When I first got into the subculture, I had no means of staying, I only wanted to sart of my path to cure my pathetic fear from sight of blood. while that is resolved, I'm still in this subculture because I find it enjoyable and better than any of the other crap on TV. So obviously I went Online to view whatever series I wanted to for free. it was a obvious choice, I didn't know how folk ran things I only wanted to find more shows that I liked. two years later My first real anime DVD was sgt. frog and from there on I began getting DVDs and manga volumes with whatever money I had. I'm merely a minor without a job at the momment so its not like I have a stable support for my hobby, can't just walk up to mommy and daddy and ask them to lend me some mony for what they see as a cartoon or comic, when they'd much rather make me sit through a lecture about saving, importance of money and all that crap. For me personally, this streaming is a convienence until I'm at a point where I can support my hobby at a stable point. Do I think its wrong that NONE of the "support" given to these streams and such don't go at all to the original creators? of course! I plan to be a cartoonist myself someday, and I'd be pissed if some JA went up and posted my work on youtube while the people at work are saying "sorry, but no ones seen this on TV so we can't let it air anymore". However, I'm in no position to preach or even do anything about the situation so for now I'm simply doing what I have to in order to enjoy my hobby. even still, its not like ALL the anime's I like have had a release here in the US, Funi is still holding back on any info for "to aru majustu no index", Viz went and discontinued "Zatch bell" long ago, and there is NO NEWS AT ALL about "beelzebub". you know the manga, the version that dosn't suck. I do believe the streaming can be in a sense helpful under the condition that it isn't liscened by anyone and if people take time to notice, they can SEE that "to aru" has a western fanbase built up. For those in other countries such as the UK, I'm sure those who don't have a wallet dedicated to anime at least appreciate the fact that they CAN enjoy these sereis despite the restrictions placed for pysical release. HOWEVER, like I said before hand, I still think its wrong in the sense that the people who make these manga that we oh so love, are only getting "thank yous" and nothing else from the fans here. I among others are guilty of this and in the long run the only true support we can give them is to quit being cheap and BUY the merchandise like they are intended to. the thing keeping me motivated to put a savings for this subculture is the fact that it will support the creators in the long run and the fact I know its a series WORTH my money, as I'm positvie there will be a time where this freedom of streaming may be swiped away at any momment, and those people living off streams will end up with jacksqaut. of course I don't find this exactly perfect. the folk in other countries like UK will be severely limited unless the same treatment is given to them and that may not happen soon cause the world's a b*****. Life's not a fairy tail shounen where probelms can be solved by singing kumbiyah, its this reason why we have to always cross our fingers that the seires we like don't get discontinued or wether or not we can get a official release of the show's game. the only way it could be stopped is, if we make fansubbers and the sort stop. we can't do that. There are too many of em and the fact that not all of them are pirates in the sense they want to steal. they ARE taking time out of their lives to sub some of this stuff, quality or not, so we can have some idea as to what the crap our favorite characters are saying. The indrustry simply has a long way to go, but even still I'll do whatever I can so that in the end, good or bad, I at least tried. Thats All I have to say at the momment, I apologize if this post was all over the place, maybe inaccurate in a few company facts or even has mispellings, but keep in mind this was written by a guy who just got a account and typed this post on impulse. thank you and have a wonderful day. |
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Melanchthon
 Posts: 550 Location: Northwest from Here |
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Well, you could get a proxy to bypass the region locks. You could import the US Novels. Or you could learn Japanese and import those -- that's what I did, because I don't trust scanalations to give an adequate quality. Or you could bitch about it to a clearly unsympathetic audience, because the people that run this site (and most the forum users) have the same opinion of fan translations as syphilis. Is it fair? No, but that's life for ya. But there's always ways around it, for someone that's willing to put some work into it. But here's a couple questions for you all. If pirate sites are making so much money giving stuff away for free, why can't legitimate companies make any money when they charge for it? Seems a bit silly, doesn't it? Now, for a debate on Copyright, see this Economist article. I found the statement that "We're living in a social moment where, more than usually, money has come unglued from value" particularly interesting. Is that not the state of the anime industry today? |
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ss-hikaru
 Posts: 269 Location: Western Australia |
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I agree on this! I don't buy anime shirts that have anime characters plastered over them, and my 'excuse' for when friends raise their eyebrows and point out I'm wearing a 'nerd shirt' is 'you recognised it, you're a nerd too'. 
And oh yes, the clothes in Bleach are awesome, my cosplay buddy says that Kubo should quit writing manga and become a fashion designer The shirts Ichigo wears are awesome, and totally merchandisable (I know that's not a real word )!!
That's exactly what I'm going to do. I guess if you don't want to have to depend on others (ie some company) to bring over a title you like to THE QUALITY you expect, then you should learn the language and import them yourselves. And if you're a combination of smart, patient and disciplined, it won't cost you too much to import them either (take this from someone who imports from both the US and Japan and manages to get stuff for cheaper than if I were to buy it in Aus).
Interesting. Because until recently, all the people I knew who read manga read it online for free, refused to buy a physical volume because 'why pay when you can get it for free' but also, refused to attend any conventions because it was 'too nerdy'. So cosplay is definitely out of the question there. Needless to say, I don't talk to those people about manga or anime any more. |
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Ichigo77
 Posts: 389 Location: California |
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I was going to bring this up. Gabe Newell knows what he is talking about and I think a lot of people can learn from him. Us PC gamers can be just as terrible as anime fans can. When it was announced Mass Effect 3 would require origin so many pc gamers were saying they were going to pirate it because they either wanted it on steam or just plain didn't want to use origin. With that being said I still think anime fans are the worst when it comes to pirating and they are the hardest to try and sell your product too, more the younger ones. Also I want to point out when it was announced that The Witcher 2 had been pirated over 4.5 million times and only sold 1 million copies. Even after hearing that CD Projekt Red said pirates will still be pirates and DRM usually punishes legit customers. Also gog.com which is their distribution site is DRM free and even after hearing this news gog is still DRM free. I don't think there is anything wrong with putting some sort of copy protection on your games but not to the point where it gets in the way of enjoying it *cough* games for windoes live. Thats why I love Valve and CD Projekt Red because they put the legit costumers first always and do their best not to punish us. |
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