Going legit aka doing it how they want you to do it, part 1: iTunes
I hate to leave even a small portion of my meager readership out of my topics (in this case, non-North-Americans), but something I’ve wanted to write about for a while is the recent explosion of legitimate streaming anime online. It’s a unique time that we’re living in right now, where the anime industry is finally starting to follow in the footsteps of the music world. Fortunately, for all the notorious stubbornness of the Japanese, the change is happening from the inside, without a Metallica/Napster sort of high-profile catalyst to get it going (no, Scott Von Schilling vs. the Fansubs doesn’t count). And with at least one bigtime US distributor, Funimation, facilitating faster (often realtime) licensing, things are finally starting to look practical for the legit anime streamer.
Problem is, it still ain’t perfect. Each channel and method has its own downfalls and drawbacks, so I intend to swallow a couple bucks to provide a reasonable practical guide. I had planned to co-write this series with Riex for Oi, Hayaku! quite some time ago, but of course we didn’t quite get to that, and now I’ve been beaten to the punch by Reverse Thieves and their very well-done analysis of Crunchyroll’s anime membership.
I want to preface this whole journey with one of the fundamental problems behind any streaming or online distribution method. At least for the forseeable future, both studios and licensors get their cash from DVD sales (well — that and merch). Any online distribution is seen as just a promotional tool for those DVDs. That’s a big reason why we haven’t seen a lot of HD/high-res/TV-watchable stuff out there yet. Younger generations of folks don’t necessarily need physical media — and considering that most anime started its life in a fairly transient way, as a television series, who can blame them anyway? More and more people are connecting PCs to TVs, and a lot of anime viewers aren’t interested in leaving their computers (which have higher-res screens than TVs) to begin with.
If you saw the recent half-off anime sale at Best Buy (aka Margin Eliminators, Inc.) you know that those plastic discs are not doing it like they used to, but there’s still a ways to go before we see anime companies on either side of the Pacific fully embrace digital, with or without DRM. That out of the way…
Enter the Apple
iTunes is a perfect candidate for cracking any tough market, since it persuaded a Napster-crazed America to start actually paying for music. Not only that, it persuaded us to pay for low-quality (128kbps), DRM-handicapped music. Granted, the DRM worked better than the ultra-crippling Windows Media kind, but it wasn’t the quality or portability that won customers over — it was Apple’s trademark ease of use. When they brought video to that, suddenly 5 bucks to rent a low-res movie didn’t seem that bad to people. It still does to me, especially as a longtime Netflix user, but it is portable, and every once in a while you end up with an iTunes gift card so what are you gonna do…
The first thing you’ll notice about finding anime on iTunes is that it’s really fucking hard to do. That’s because categories are pretty broad in the iTunes store and there isn’t one for “TV Anime.” There is one for Movies — and it fails hard, just check it out — but not for TV Shows, which is the meat and potatoes of the anime viewer’s diet. So Ouran High School Host Club falls under “Animation,” but your average tit-filled Gonzo action-fest is in the “Sci Fi” section.
FUNi Factor
The second thing you’ll probably notice is that, like a lot of the digital channels that I’ll be exploring, FUNimation rules the roost. Each site and store has its own unique players (like Joost’s Gong or Toei on Crunchyroll) but Funi is like the Visa commercial, everywhere you want to be. Also, I’m assuming that original licenses probably didn’t apply when they started going digital, so it’s far from being all of Funi’s stuff. That means a lot of Gonzo. If you’re not interested in the likes of Speed Grapher, Afro Samurai, Burst Angel… you get the picture, your choices start to drop tremendously. That’s not to say Funi doesn’t have good stuff on iTunes — Ghost Hunt, Ouran, FMP: The Second Raid, and Gunslinger Girl for instance — or that some of the Gonzo titles aren’t worth watching.
Gong Anime, a fixture in streaming sites, doesn’t really have a presence on iTunes, but the Anime Network does, and they have a few interesting titles: Tsukihime, Mahoromatic, Angelic Layer, Saiyuki, and Pet Shop of Horrors. Nothing earth-shattering, but hey it’s better than just watching Speed Grapher all day long.
Manga Entertainment, most famous for the “THIS SHIT’S NOT FOR KIDSSSSSS” trailers at the beginning of their VHS tapes of 90s OVAs (also for being the people who will never reprint End of Evangelion, thankyoujebus I bought it back in the day), has a few titles as well and most are really solid. Among them are Astro Boy, Stand Alone Complex, Gurren Lagann, Robotech, Macross Plus, Macross II, and Now And Then, Here and There.
And of course, tons of Dragonball, Naruto, Bleach, and other popular Toonami-style shonen action series, along with their accompanying movie versions, abound in the store.
There are a few other movies, which makes iTunes the clear winner in that department (I think CR has… two?), but it’s not much of a win. You’d expect Disney properties like Ghibli flicks to be here, but not so. However, search a little and you’ll find Paprika, Tekkonkinkrit, and a few others.
Crowdsourcing
Most sites and stores feature user reviews. So can you trust them? In iTunes’ case, reviews vary depending on what you’re looking at. For the longest time, all any of them ever said was “Get Naruto! Vote Zero if you want Naruto!!!!!one!!” This is, as you can imagine, not super awesomely helpful. Now that iTunes HAS Naruto, these sorts of things have ironed themselves out a little, but reviews still tend toward the not-too-helpful. iTunes buyers also seem to be DVD buyers, and range from people just like my friends to the superior-otaku “I know lots about anime because I have 6 boxsets at home” attitude. If you’re not 12, and if you own more than 6 DVDs, you will see through that. And one of Macross Plus’s reviews talks about how these days it’s all computers, and things were much better back then without all the computers. Macross Plus. Look it up. Now who’s the superior fan? HUH?
Anyway, here’s the breakdown, in a format I’ll be using for the rest as well:
| Quality & Resolution | Decent (no HD anime available that I can see, but better than many online streams). If you’ve seen any iTunes video before, you know the general H264 quality. Outlines are crisp and the colors are bright, never washed out. It looks best on a Touch/iPhone. |
|---|---|
| Selection | Above average, although only very recently so with the addition of Manga, Anime Network, and non-Gonzo Funimation titles. |
| DRM | Yes, Apple’s FairPlay. Works on both Mac and Windows OSes, allows copy to up to 5 (I think) authorized computers and iPods. |
| Portability | Great — in fact it’s very easy, if your device is an iPod/iPhone. |
| TV potential | Pretty decent. Like I said, not super high-res, but all this stuff is available to your TV-connected PC/Mac or an Apple TV. |
| Subtitiles? | This may be a killer for some of you, as it is for me. Aside from a few movies, almost everything here is dubbed. As you know, there are 5 American actors who tend to do dubs, most are not actually good at acting, and you will get really tired really fast of only buying the ones featuring Crispin Freeman. Manga has the best chance of giving you decent dubs (SAC is actually quite good and frankly kind of hard to watch subtitled) but if you’re an all-out dub hater, just write off iTunes altogether. |
| Availability | There is an iTunes store for most regions of the globe, but since I’m not there I can’t tell you what’s available in your corner of the universe. I can say this, though: iTunes is only comprised of licensed material, not simultaneously available stuff, and only a very very small chunk of what you can buy on DVD. |
| Cost | Compared to streaming sites, I’d consider iTunes to be pretty expensive. While $6.99 is a great price for Macross Plus, in general $2 an episode is an expensive way to finish more than a 1-cour show. How often do you really pay full price for a DVD or box set? The internet is a magical place where you can pretty much buy whatever’s on sale at Rightstuf at any given time. However, if you’re on the go and really need something to watch on that plane ride, no other means of obtaining anime comes close: Flash isn’t very portable (and can’t be kept legitimately), DVDs have to be ripped and scaled to take on a portable player, even digital fansubs have to be converted to go on your video iPod. So that cost? It’s for convenience, and it’s unlikely to change anytime soon. |
So… anyone here buy iTunes anime? What are your thoughts?
