This Week in Anime

The Anime Community's Leak Culture

Steve
Nick, that recent CrowdStrike fiasco really affected me. As you know, I am the guy in charge of all anime distribution ever, so keeping everything safe and secure is my number one priority. Luckily, I've just found a new cybersecurity expert to lead my IT department, and I've got a good feeling about her.

So yeah, in case any of you have been living under a rock for the past week (and hey, if you have been, I get it), there is a big and ongoing breach that has spewed several major titles onto the shadier side of the interwebs, well ahead of their scheduled release dates. It's a hot mess.

Leaks are nothing new, but the volume of this one seems unprecedented. And by virtue of it being an ongoing story, the details aren't fully clear yet. The connective tissue seems to be that these are all Netflix licenses handled by the localization company Iyuno, and both have released vague statements confirming their awareness of the issue. Was this an inside job or an outside hacker? It's too early to say. Hell, we may never know. It's been ten years since that massive Sony hack, and nobody's been prosecuted.

So, to a degree, I get it. Way back in 2012, when the third Rebuild of Evangelion film came out, I was dying to see it. I'd been waiting three years. There was no word of a stateside release on the horizon. I might have gone looking for a crappy camrip to see what ol' Hideaki Anno had cooked up for that one. I was impatient. However, the anime scene in 2012 was a far cry from 2024.

True. Impatience is certainly a unifying factor for readers/viewers seeking extralegal means of finding something. However, the methods and motivating factors for the leakers are pretty different. I mean, we all know that every new anime episode gets ripped onto pirate sites the minute those streams go live. That doesn't make headlines because it's rampant and easy to do. On the other hand, leaking stuff ahead of time requires more effort for a riskier proposition with lower-quality results.

I mean, I could not tell you the last time I watched an anime episode in 640x360 resolution. That's barbaric.

Nobody tell David Lynch; he's got enough going on right now (as I link to a YouTube video from 2008 encoded in 240p)

That's the thing! Anime viewers have already won! We have same-day streaming for almost all seasonal titles. The occasional straggler is still more likely to get picked up than not (hello, Girls Band Cry). Plenty of anime movies get wide theatrical releases nowadays, and even the more obscure ones tend to get a limited run before they're added to the usual online suspects. It has never been easier to watch as much anime as you want. It's arguably too easy. There's too much!

Yep, I pay two bucks monthly to enjoy a hearty chuckle at Chainsaw Man every Tuesday—a fair exchange, IMO.

Oh, I believe it. I've seen them in the wild (mostly on Twitter). It still boggles the mind. How much of a gap can there possibly be between a leaked chapter and the official simulpub? How can that sliver of time be worth the trouble?

It's like spoiler culture's evil bizarro twin. Lots of people go way overboard in avoiding anything that might resemble a spoiler, and I think that's annoying. However, the contingent of people who seek these leaks just for some gamified sense of victory—for the cheap thrill of being "aware" of the plot as soon as humanly possible—those people are annoying, too. Everyone should be normal about it, like me.

Given how official localizations have become favored windmills for certain online cranks to tilt at, I've seen that slice of the audience gravitate towards these areas as well. After all, quality doesn't matter, so long as you're sticking it to the woke cartel ruining anime and manga with all of their pronouns and natural sentence structure.

No matter how cheap or convenient legal avenues become for any art form, I don't think piracy will ever disappear. I also don't think that's an entirely bad thing. As the anime scene, in particular, has become more corporatized, the shortcomings of that arrangement have also become more visible. Licenses expire. Localization staff is overworked and underpaid. Regional availability can be a bitch. You can't watch Samurai Flamenco anywhere. That's messed up.

Exactly. You can make a moral argument that it'd be better for someone to leak Coyote vs. Acme than for all of that work to evaporate into a tax write-off for David Zaslav and his obscenely rich cronies. You can't make that same argument about DAN DA DAN, airing this October for the whole world to see.

Right, these aren't faceless corporations being hurt. The response from the flesh and blood people who work on these projects is telling. For example, people who have worked on Coyote vs. Acme seem generally frustrated that it's in boardroom limbo. The animators who have worked on these leaked anime are also upset, but conversely, it's because the nature of the leak undermines the blood, sweat, and tears they've put into these shows and films. It's all been unceremoniously dumped in barely watchable quality. I used to complain about Netflix's batch releases (okay, I still complain about them), but at least those weren't covered in pixelated Vaseline, and normal people could watch them at their leisure.

Hype cycles aren't something I'm interested in or invested in, but they're a delicate ecosystem. Granted, it's way too early to say what kind of effect, if any, these leaks will have, but they threw a curveball that no one on the production side can be happy about.

And on a slightly tangential point, I also think, for as much good as piracy can potentially accomplish, people tend to put blinders on and get really indignant about it. Yes, media preservation is good, but piracy is hardly the only or best means of doing so. Just this week, I saw Twitter piling on Justin Sevakis, of all people, for supposedly not valuing anime preservation enough. Justin Sevakis, current CEO of AnimEigo and the guy who authors Discotek's Blu-rays. If you think that guy is the enemy of anime, then you've completely lost the plot.

I suppose the thirst for clout is unslakable for some. Maybe it feels really cool to get hundreds of thousands of followers by telling obvious lies. Couldn't be me. The Lord Himself verifies everything I tweet.

That's also the most cynical possible motivation for the current leak. That someone just wanted to do it for all the glory and admiration that the fine folk of 4chan have to offer.

Sadly, it's a possibility we may never be able to rule out. On the opposite side of the spectrum, I also don't want to come across as too holier-than-thou for not engaging with these leaks myself. I'm wholly sympathetic to the plight of the animators upset by this fiasco. Still, the primary reason for my avoidance is that I simply do not have time to watch any more anime than I currently do. I'm a grown-ass adult. I have shit to do. I can't be watching postage stamp-sized videos that are half watermarks. I have bills to pay.

Respect the artists who worked on it, and respect yourself. Even if all you want to do is snarf up slop, you shouldn't settle for anything less than artisanally crafted slop. In at least 720p.