Forum - View topicOpposing Opinions on Piracy in Two Similar Mediums
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oblivious247
Posts: 242 |
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As a fan of both manga and western comics, I've come to notice something very interesting regarding piracy. While both manga and western comics are readily available for pirating online, the opinion on piracy between fans of the two is vastly different. From personal experience, most manga fans don't care about piracy and readily do so. Comic fans however, for the most part seem to be vehemently against piracy of comics.
Discuss (And let's keep this intelligent and not derail it into a manga vs comics thread) |
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EireformContinent
 Posts: 977 Location: Łódź/Poland (The Promised Land) |
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I wouldn't say that all comics are available in similar way. While manga is widely translated and pirated and comics written in English can be found one way or another there's fairly hard to find anything else. I'm lucky that lots of French comics are published here
I don't see the diversity you described- every fandom vocally seems to be against piracy, some just find better justification to commit these awful acts. The most common opinion is that as long as something isn't available in language (or is completely, but completely out of print) you are able to speak might be forgiven as long as you will to buy something as soon as it's available for you. Fans of manga can more often use that excuse. For community of American American comics fans buying a comics is just a matter of spare some dollars foe hobby. Last edited by EireformContinent on Wed Feb 29, 2012 10:42 am; edited 1 time in total |
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oblivious247
Posts: 242 |
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Most of the manga fans I've come across refuse to buy even the licensed stuff. They feel entitled to free manga. Perhaps this is just me? |
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Tamaria
 Posts: 1512 Location: De Achterhoek |
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Nah, it's not just you. There is a large, and very vocal group of young mangareaders who do not want to pay for entertainment. They're the opposit of a large and very vocal group of comic readers, namely the (male, adult) collectors. |
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TitanXL
 Posts: 4036 |
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I think the main difference is there's not anywhere near as many people into western comics, so you obviously won't see as many people talking about piracy and the like.
Plus the whole 'scanlation' thing. Comics don't need to be translated into English. Manga does, and there's a lot of manga and not much of it gets licensed. Which leads to piracy by default. |
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EireformContinent
Posts: 977 Location: Łódź/Poland (The Promised Land) |
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Titan, you always demands statistic so be a good citizen and give them to confirm your first statement.
It would be difficult, because people reading Western comics doesn't define themselves by that fact, usually have own tastes, instead of picking up everything that have pictures, and don't tend to gather themselves just because they seem to have some similarities. For example people grown up with Franco-Belgian style rarely witck with USA superheroes and vice-versa. Don't forget about children's comics (that vary from F-B like Lou! to comic magazines) and expanded universes of franchises. For manga fan the rest of the world may seem a bit complicated. |
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oblivious247
Posts: 242 |
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That works well enough as an explanation for unlicensed manga. But when it comes to widely available licensed manga, piracy is still much more acceptable in the manga fanbase. |
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TitanXL
Posts: 4036 |
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You'd think it'd be common knowledge, but very well. Most US comics sell under 100,000 an issue in their home country. Meanwhile Manga in Japan can sell over a million copies per tankobon. I think it's safe to say more people around the globe follow the latest Naruto and One Piece chapters more than they do Batman and Superman issues. Like you said, you can probably find more 'manga fans' than you can 'comic fans'.
There was a big discussion of that in the Talkbalk forum. The problem people have with licensed manga is twofold. One, the number of titles that are edited or just incompetently translated. The biggest manga in the US, Naruto, is edited and has name changes. And people out there refuse to support Viz an their practices as such. Shaman King, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Pocket Monsters, Hikaru no Go, One Piece, and other titles are ones I know that have also been edited. Apparently Hitman Reborn has goofy translations as well as said by someone there, but I never read it. So piracy is the only way to enjoy them in their original format. They don't even have the luxury of anime where you can switch to a sub track; manga is only one translation. And second would be the huge gap. Not every series is given the luxury of 'speed up, only a few weeks behind' releases like Shounen Jump Alpha. Especially people who want to buy the physical books. For example, Soul Eater is on chapter 95 in Japan. If I wanted to read Soul Eater through it's English volume release I'd be stuck on chapter 31. The second you might try to argue is being selfish, entitled, or impatient, and that's fine I suppose, but you can't really fault people for the first issue in any way. People not wanting to settle for edited stuff, nor actually encouraging companies to edit more stuff by paying them is fairly reasonable I would argue. |
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gsilver
Posts: 649 |
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The question is really: How do you get exposed to new series?
I've been burnt enough with blind-buying, even well reviewed titles, to not want to ever go through that again. Piracy at least lets you definitively answer the question "is it good and worth buying?" before you waste your money and even more valuable shelf space. That being said, I don't currently pirate any manga (aside from scanlations of the seldom-released Kabu no Isaki, but I already own all the Japanese volumes, which are far beyond where the scanlations are), and I haven't for a long time. ...At the same time, I haven't started anything *new* in a long time, either, not since I was pirating manga. The closest to it is Twin Spica, which I never read in scanlations, but did see fansubs of, and picked up the manga volumes once it started getting released here. I also buy Berserk, MPD Psycho, Youtsuba&, 20th Century Boys, and a few others. All of those I started with, drumroll please: by reading scanlations, and deciding that they were good enough to read. With all of these, I'm exclusively following the US paper release nowadays. Unless it's a manga of an anime that I'm watching, the only way I'm likely to ever start another a new manga series is if I read scanlations again, which doesn't seem too likely. So basically: I don't buy manga because I don't pirate it. I guess I could be a neckbeard and read the stuff on the floor in the bookstore, but 
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EireformContinent
Posts: 977 Location: Łódź/Poland (The Promised Land) |
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Titan, I know what I've written but it seems that you still love to misquote people. I said clearly that I didn't mean superhero comics in America but all comics besides Japanese all over the world. Since they differ in their tastes it might be a hard work for you, gut go ahead and prove it. A small difference. Still waiting for you supporting your claims.
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Tamaria
Posts: 1512 Location: De Achterhoek |
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Or you could try your local library? |
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dormcat
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 9902 Location: New Taipei City, Taiwan, ROC |
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I don't know how good public libraries are in the Netherlands, but in Taiwan only a handful of them would collect manga, and only ONE of them have mature titles. |
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EireformContinent
Posts: 977 Location: Łódź/Poland (The Promised Land) |
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In Poland there's not so good too- shouen series sales are decent, but manga suffers from delaying each volume. The only more mature series that is being published is Pluto which sales are mediocre at best. Older readers must be happy when they get one-shots.
In the meantime Franco-Belgian and Polish series are traditionally doing well, comics magazines are available everywhere and there's no problem while accessing library. IMHO that's the factor- it's easy to wait for series month or two, if you know it will get available for sure in good quality. Another thought- manga from the beginning was somewhat that was obtained semi-legally. The greatest explosion of popularity came with Net, so people had used to get it that way, before publishers saw the business. Western comics were around since people remember, bought regularly, something that we were used to buy. Last edited by EireformContinent on Thu Mar 01, 2012 2:04 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Tamaria
Posts: 1512 Location: De Achterhoek |
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Most libraries have some Dutch editions, but there's a mangalibrary in Utrecht. |
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Touma
 Posts: 2651 Location: Colorado, USA |
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That is a good option. Unfortunately my local library has a very small selection of manga. But they do have some and, more importantly, they have a lot of other books, magazines, and DVDs that can be borrowed. There is also free legal manga on the Internet. The point being that there is a lot of free entertainment that is intended to be free. It is an alternative to taking something that is not supposed to free, but it does require you to be flexible in what you read, or watch. |
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