So I've wanted to make this kind of thread for quite a while, and after reading some news about a favorite manga series, finally got around to this...
Anyways, it seems to me that 90% of anime is licensed by the US the instant it goes into production in Japan these days. For myself, this generally translates to "oh shit, the DMCA notices are going to be going out soon, better act fast before I lose the power to download any of it". Now I'm sure some might argue there's torrents and maybe IRC, but IRC I'm not the best with, and torrents... well, I'm currently in college, and it's the school's policy that file-sharing programs cannot be used unless you want to end up in Deep Shit. Which leaves direct downloading, and I'm sure the more tech-savvy people here know the many problems associated with that.
Now, the above paragraph is the pirate in me muttering, and I'm well aware that all the licensing companies are still businesses, and thus they have to make money or face going out of business, and piracy supposedly helps out the latter. The "I'll support the author/production studio by buying this series" side has a very different complaint. My two biggest issues with licensing, especially for a series that I really like, is first and foremost the amount of time between releases. These days, I'm seeing that a lot of series are being released in just one shot on blu-ray/dvd, but those are the 12, 13 episodes series generally. For the longer... well, they'll release the part 1, and then it takes months for the next part to come out. Hell, a lot of this bitterness is probably left over from the days of DVDs, when you'd have to wait 2~3 months for another DVD to come out with just four or five episodes, and then keep waiting for the next volume until you had the whole series (I suppose waiting for it all on VHS was even worse... I wasn't part of that generation). That's a painfully slow torture when in general, unless it's OVAs, the episodes come out weekly in Japan, and I'm pretty sure that the official DVD/Blu-ray releases come out faster in Japan than they do the US (I could be wrong on that part though). Even worse for me is when a series is licensed but nothing has actually been released... that screws you over both ways, because not only can you not get it through the easier means on the net, but it also means that you're not going to see the hard copy dvd/blu-ray anytime soon (prime example of this is Toaru Majutsu no Index S1- licensed, but there's not going to be a release of it anytime soon, from what I understand. And yes, I did enjoy the first season and would buy it if I could) Yes, they try to make up for it with the extras like "clean closing/opening" "commentary" on occasion, and "trailers", but to this guy... that just ain't worth the wait, especially since the OP/ED becomes pointless after the first disk, and same thing for the trailers, unless they change the trailers around on each disk, which is rare. I'm assuming there's also the idea of the wait is needed in order for people to get more money so they can actually buy the DVD/Blu-ray
The other complaint that I have with the licensing is the price... yes, I realize I probably have little room to talk here because the US prices are far, far cheaper than they are in Japan. But still... I'm a college student, so I have to be careful where I put my money. My greatest fear, mostly because I've done it probably multiple times by now, is buying a series that I haven't seen fansubbed and thus know nothing about it other than the premise and artwork, and find out I've wasted my money on it. prime example for me- I bought all the DVDs to the first Negima! series... and I know how it ends, so there's over $120 wasted because now it's just sitting on my shelf, waiting for me to just say "eff it, let's watch this series and get it over with", and then hope I can sell it off again for at least half the price I bought it for. I also have Goddanar, Noein, Heat Guy J, and several other series which I haven't seen in any form (other than some heresay and trailers), and I'm hoping those too weren't wastes of money. Admittedly, I have another hobby where I've spent over $1000, if not more on over the past 5 or so years, but that hobby is (and I hate to phrase it like this) "more socially acceptable", and well as yielding a better return rate for my investment. With anime... there are some series that I'm willing to watch multiple times, but it'll be months before I decide to watch any series twice. And just to add on, there are a ton a series that I'd like to watch but wouldn't be willing to spend any money on (namely a lot of the mindless ecchi series that are good for a look at once and then never again).
My last thing about the Bad is rather minor thing that I'm just very nit-picky about, namely the translation. I'll trust a fan translation any day over an "official" translation, because as long as it's a group with a good reputation, they'll keep things as close to the original Japanese as possible, and when they can't, they'll usually throw in T/L notes to explain it. I can't recall any time an official company has done this... usually they'll just Westernize is as much as possible, or even in quite a few cases, just ignore it all together and move on. I may not be the most hardcore fan out there, but I prefer that kind of stuff to be as close to the original source as possible.
Okay... so that's the Bad. I actually do have a few good things to say about licensing (damn, even licensing seems to be a dirty word to me). First and foremost, it's obviously a good way to support the author (in the case of manga) or production studio (in the case of anime). In fact, that's usually the primary reason why I buy an anime (and admittedly, apparently it's what you're supposed to do...). Second... on great occasion, the English is actually better than Japanese (which is rare, and also a bad that I missed, but I suppose I can't say too much there because things usually have Dual audio these days). Third, and one of my real big reasons for buying anything in the first place, it's sometimes worth it to have a series just for any extra artwork that is included with a release (okay, so in 9/10 times this only applies to ecchi anime, but still...). The last reason for me to actually buy anything, and this applies to anime that I've seen fansubbed already, is that I have a hard copy of the anime. After all, even with a almost 1TB external hard drive, I still like to delete things as both a mark of "alright, I've seen it", as well as to free up space.
So, that's my rant/thoughts about licensing. The TL;DR version is: there's too much wait between releases, and it also tends to cost quite a bit and I have to be careful where I place my money, and sometimes the translations don't match up. While on the bright side, you're supporting the Japanese maker (I hope...), sometimes English is better than the Japanese, there can be extra artwork, and it's always good to have a backup copy. Anyone else have similar thoughts on anime/manga and its licensing?
Anyways, it seems to me that 90% of anime is licensed by the US the instant it goes into production in Japan these days. For myself, this generally translates to "oh shit, the DMCA notices are going to be going out soon, better act fast before I lose the power to download any of it". Now I'm sure some might argue there's torrents and maybe IRC, but IRC I'm not the best with, and torrents... well, I'm currently in college, and it's the school's policy that file-sharing programs cannot be used unless you want to end up in Deep Shit. Which leaves direct downloading, and I'm sure the more tech-savvy people here know the many problems associated with that.
Now, the above paragraph is the pirate in me muttering, and I'm well aware that all the licensing companies are still businesses, and thus they have to make money or face going out of business, and piracy supposedly helps out the latter. The "I'll support the author/production studio by buying this series" side has a very different complaint. My two biggest issues with licensing, especially for a series that I really like, is first and foremost the amount of time between releases. These days, I'm seeing that a lot of series are being released in just one shot on blu-ray/dvd, but those are the 12, 13 episodes series generally. For the longer... well, they'll release the part 1, and then it takes months for the next part to come out. Hell, a lot of this bitterness is probably left over from the days of DVDs, when you'd have to wait 2~3 months for another DVD to come out with just four or five episodes, and then keep waiting for the next volume until you had the whole series (I suppose waiting for it all on VHS was even worse... I wasn't part of that generation). That's a painfully slow torture when in general, unless it's OVAs, the episodes come out weekly in Japan, and I'm pretty sure that the official DVD/Blu-ray releases come out faster in Japan than they do the US (I could be wrong on that part though). Even worse for me is when a series is licensed but nothing has actually been released... that screws you over both ways, because not only can you not get it through the easier means on the net, but it also means that you're not going to see the hard copy dvd/blu-ray anytime soon (prime example of this is Toaru Majutsu no Index S1- licensed, but there's not going to be a release of it anytime soon, from what I understand. And yes, I did enjoy the first season and would buy it if I could) Yes, they try to make up for it with the extras like "clean closing/opening" "commentary" on occasion, and "trailers", but to this guy... that just ain't worth the wait, especially since the OP/ED becomes pointless after the first disk, and same thing for the trailers, unless they change the trailers around on each disk, which is rare. I'm assuming there's also the idea of the wait is needed in order for people to get more money so they can actually buy the DVD/Blu-ray
The other complaint that I have with the licensing is the price... yes, I realize I probably have little room to talk here because the US prices are far, far cheaper than they are in Japan. But still... I'm a college student, so I have to be careful where I put my money. My greatest fear, mostly because I've done it probably multiple times by now, is buying a series that I haven't seen fansubbed and thus know nothing about it other than the premise and artwork, and find out I've wasted my money on it. prime example for me- I bought all the DVDs to the first Negima! series... and I know how it ends, so there's over $120 wasted because now it's just sitting on my shelf, waiting for me to just say "eff it, let's watch this series and get it over with", and then hope I can sell it off again for at least half the price I bought it for. I also have Goddanar, Noein, Heat Guy J, and several other series which I haven't seen in any form (other than some heresay and trailers), and I'm hoping those too weren't wastes of money. Admittedly, I have another hobby where I've spent over $1000, if not more on over the past 5 or so years, but that hobby is (and I hate to phrase it like this) "more socially acceptable", and well as yielding a better return rate for my investment. With anime... there are some series that I'm willing to watch multiple times, but it'll be months before I decide to watch any series twice. And just to add on, there are a ton a series that I'd like to watch but wouldn't be willing to spend any money on (namely a lot of the mindless ecchi series that are good for a look at once and then never again).
My last thing about the Bad is rather minor thing that I'm just very nit-picky about, namely the translation. I'll trust a fan translation any day over an "official" translation, because as long as it's a group with a good reputation, they'll keep things as close to the original Japanese as possible, and when they can't, they'll usually throw in T/L notes to explain it. I can't recall any time an official company has done this... usually they'll just Westernize is as much as possible, or even in quite a few cases, just ignore it all together and move on. I may not be the most hardcore fan out there, but I prefer that kind of stuff to be as close to the original source as possible.
Okay... so that's the Bad. I actually do have a few good things to say about licensing (damn, even licensing seems to be a dirty word to me). First and foremost, it's obviously a good way to support the author (in the case of manga) or production studio (in the case of anime). In fact, that's usually the primary reason why I buy an anime (and admittedly, apparently it's what you're supposed to do...). Second... on great occasion, the English is actually better than Japanese (which is rare, and also a bad that I missed, but I suppose I can't say too much there because things usually have Dual audio these days). Third, and one of my real big reasons for buying anything in the first place, it's sometimes worth it to have a series just for any extra artwork that is included with a release (okay, so in 9/10 times this only applies to ecchi anime, but still...). The last reason for me to actually buy anything, and this applies to anime that I've seen fansubbed already, is that I have a hard copy of the anime. After all, even with a almost 1TB external hard drive, I still like to delete things as both a mark of "alright, I've seen it", as well as to free up space.
So, that's my rant/thoughts about licensing. The TL;DR version is: there's too much wait between releases, and it also tends to cost quite a bit and I have to be careful where I place my money, and sometimes the translations don't match up. While on the bright side, you're supporting the Japanese maker (I hope...), sometimes English is better than the Japanese, there can be extra artwork, and it's always good to have a backup copy. Anyone else have similar thoughts on anime/manga and its licensing?