Forum - View topicA Shameful Confession About Buying Bootleg
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Blood-
 Bargain Hunter Posts: 24141 |
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Well, I made a classic noob mistake and I want to share it with other noobs so they can avoid the same pitfall. A few days before I discovered ANN, I ordered a title from a site that I knew had to be selling bootlegs. How did I know they were bootlegs? The prices were so cheap compared to legit sets.
At that time, I thought my only buying options were the brick and mortar retailers in my city or Amazon/eBay. Ah, if only I had known about sites like Right Stuf, etc. Anyway, as a quality test case, I ordered a series that came in two volumes which arrived on Friday. I tried out the first episode last night: utter garbage. It's one of those infamous Chinese bootlegs where the subtitler obviously had about 10 minutes of ESL training. I admit there is a mild entertainment value in reading bad translation, but it is far outweighed by the fact that I know I am missing so much. And the real-asskicker? Even though the two volumes were relatively cheap, shipping was $20 US because I live in Canada, so at the end of the day, I didn't really save that much. PLUS, I have to buy a legit copy because I still want the series. Grrr, grrr. Oh well, lesson learned. Anybody else want to share a shameful bootleg tale? |
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zawa113
 Posts: 7358 |
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Oh yeah, I accidentally got a bootleg of the Phoenix series. The catch here is that I didn't get it online, I got it in a privately owned game shop that shall remain nameless because except for this, I still totally love them (seeing as how I got a used copy of Alundra from them). This was right around the time that Media Works started releasing the Phoenix series but I figured I could get the whole thing for $25 instead of $45. I did end up getting the real DVDs, and if I had waited even longer I could've gotten the thing for $20 at Best Buy
Seriously, other than lines like "You lied me!" you could see the time thingy in the upper left corner, you could tell by looking at the video that it was bootleg. But it taught me that these were bootlegs and not just "chinese import versions" as the staff had clearly been told to tell customers (I don't blame them entirely, some of them really don't know and I heard their boss was evil). it only gets more confusing because they do buy and sell legit DVDs, but the only legit anime ones they have are all used. I definately checked every DVD I ever got from there from there on out, the "spotting bootlegs" thread helped me avoid one in their used section. It rather makes me question the DQ8 soundtrack I got there, but they also do have legit Japanese import stuff in there, and I didn't find anything wrong with the CD, so I'm guessing it might've really been legit. All of the games that I saw were legit though, and they're the type of place that still buys and sells NES and Genesis cartridges. So, you cannot go into that place uninformed, because they have legit American R1 releases (used only), all legit games, some import games and soundtracks, and a ton of bootleg anime DVDs (some in both the new and used section). |
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 24141 |
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Maybe I'm just naive, but I don't think I'd ever get fooled by a bootleg in a store that sold used DVDs for the simple reason that bootleggers don't tend to put much effort into coming up with convincing looking packaging.
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zawa113
Posts: 7358 |
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Perhaps, but some of them are actually rather convincing, particularly for series that aren't out yet. Whoever made the legit R1 Phoenix DVDs (Media Blasters?), their packaging looks like bootleg too. I got the thing before I'd read the extremely useful thread on here too. And for some reason, I thought you could only get bootlegs online by accident and that an actual store wouldn't have them. Then I completely forgot about that one anime/game store a ways out that if I remember correctly, got shut down for carrying about 90% of the stock in bootlegs (no I am not kidding). That was even earlier when I had maybe 2 things in my collection, and I asked my mom if I could get something there, but she (thankfully) said it cost too much (to be fair, there was like 100 episodes for $100 or something, so by episode it was cheap), so I convinced her to give me an allowance, which I did not spend in there. At the place where I got Phoenix, I saw a Wind Named Amnesia used (after I'd read the thread), but I've never seen an R1 cover of that, but I checked the back of the box and got suspicious and thus avoided it. It looked fine from the front cover. Now it's just faster to use TRSI, in which while they may have prices so cheap on singles that they'd surely be bootlegs elsewhere, they aren't on TRSI! will i be fooled again? not in person, no and probably not online if i only ever use TRSI or bestbuy or other certified legit places. Like there's another place that's a used DVD/music store that has Kenshin boxsets used that i'm not interesting in (not a huge Kenshin fan) that look suspicious that I'm avoiding. I also find it strange that this is a place that charges $10 per singles sometimes and is only going $20 for whole set, but then again, I did get Lain from them for $13 (most def legit Geneon). I guess buy back places might not be as keen, since they're not selling it new. It's just the packaging for sure. |
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eyeresist
 Posts: 995 Location: a 320x240 resolution igloo (Sydney) |
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Interesting thing is, for Chinese viewers, these bootlegs are practically the only way to get anime in their language, as bootlegging has made producing legitimate product for that market unprofitable. |
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zawa113
Posts: 7358 |
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That is interesting, I had considered asking this over in random questions in the anime forum section as to wether, since all these bootleg DVDs seem to originate from China, if they had any legit Chinese anime DVDs over there. So is it basically, no due to bootlegs then. |
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