Shameful Otaku Secret!

You call it filler, I call it… blog tapas.

Nothing worth a full blog post here. So here’s a few random thoughts:

1. Nabari No Mo

Fansub group Rumi has been issued a takedown notice by Funimation, who has “obtained an agreement authorizing FUNimation to act on behalf of d-rights to prevent infringement on specific titles.” So no more than 6 episodes from the end of a series, I’m forced to stop watching it, “though these series have not been licensed to a local distributor in North America.” That means I may never see the end (you know, where the inevitable gay sex will be).

I have a couple questions here (perhaps someone like a jpmeyer or an Omo can answer them):

1. Firstly, is it not the distribution of raws that is the illegal part? So wouldn’t releasing a script (like an .ass) be a reasonable “circumvention?” Obviously, that’s up to the subbers, if they want to play it clean, they might not even want to enable people who obtain the raws, but if you obtain the raws you’ve already done the dodgy part… or am I wrong?
2. Second, how does the DMCA, and US federal copyright law, apply to a property that isn’t licensed in the US?
3. Does this imply that there will be a license for the series, and the other ones in the package (Bamboo Blade, Monochrome Factor, etc)?
4. Could someone pull a pirate bay and locate (their tracker) outside the jurisdiction of Funi and the DMCA? I’m not saying it’s a great idea, just curious.

Anyway, I can’t say I’m really that rootin’ tootin’ about the series, but now that I’ve come this far, it’s at least a rental. Provided it actually becomes licensed.

2. I am an extremist, and I enjoy seeing pretty girls being dismembered.

According to Author anyway.

Well… let’s not get carried away. I mean… are there robots involved? This affects my answer. I suppose I did caption that image “Fuck yes,” but really that picture was just enabling some fine-ass Kabitzin punnery.

And if what you meant was, “I would rather see some sweet spattering gore as long as it’s in a good anime than watch a bunch of underage nekomimi cavort around in their underpants for 24 minutes a week while pretending to be airplanes,” then yes. I am an extremist.

Anyway, I do understand the creators are in the place where they are through no fault of their own, but my 2 bucks doesn’t care where the blame goes. It cares when the new Blassreiter comes out.

3. I can’t find my Netflix.

This is irrelevant to most of anything, but people have been talking a lot about Netflix lately for some retarded reason. Here are some Netflix fun facts:

1. I have been on the service for 8 years.
2. I watched a lot of anime on Netflix.
3. The delay stories are true. You have to know just how fast to return your movies for maximum value. Not too fast, not too slow.
4. “Watch Instantly” is kind of a drag because the DRM requires Internet Explorer (and thus, Windows), there is a really small selection, and anime always shows the dub.
5. There is no big fucking whoop or revelation about Netflix, and if you’re watching anime using it, you are about the 8 millionth person to do so.
6. I have never once made a spreadsheet of my rentals.

Problem is, I moved recently, and all my boxes have finally been unpacked, and some miscellaneous disc-shaped things from one corner of one room are missing: The bonus music CD from the Home Movies season 1 box set, my RahXephon box, and two movies from Netflix. Possibly some candy. Kind of sucks.

4. That reminds me.

Primer is a really good movie. You should try it. Not sure you can get it from Netflix though. I hear some guy is hoarding it at his house. Weird.

That was easy

Well, we waded through six posts where I barely talked about anime at all, wasn’t that boring? Then I pretended to know about economics, and so did some other people. I pissed off Scott again, this time really badly, and as I mentioned, we probably all looked like those old honkies sitting around drinking cheap beer on a Sunday and fixing the world’s problems after a round of golf. Except without the ethnic slurs and pink polo shirts. Good times were had by most.

Here’s what we’ve learned.

• The sky is not falling.
• Problems with “middleman” companies reflect globalization and internet-related growing pains, not just the easily-available fansubs and pirate copies that the internet provides. Japan will probably be OK, but companies like ADV are going to get worse before they get better.
• We should vote with our dollars, and even if new initiatives aren’t perfect, we should try to support them. Meaning, watch Blassreiter, like now.
• As a sort of inverse corollary, we shouldn’t feel obligated to support companies based entirely on good will. This is a capitalism, not a charity.
• Otaku will likely not stop buying DVDs altogether, because shiny objects and bright colors fascinate us.
• Anime bloggers can’t agree on whether teenagers have money, even if marketers seem to.
• Ad-supported content is good in theory, but there are plenty of potential kinks to work out first. Mostly, that it might not pay off. Let’s get on that.
• Many of my usual commenters couldn’t care less about this stuff, but some people who never comment showed up to provide some fantastic insight.

If it were in my power to instantly travel all around the country, I’d sit down and buy you all a beer right now (yes, you too, Scott). As it is, you’ll have to enjoy this less substantial beer with the queen of fanservice for the moment.

And here’s the post roundup:

1. Me: Eleventeen easy steps.
2. Kabitzin: Stop scapegoating fansubs and get with the solutions.
3. Baka-Raptor: The market will correct itself.
4. TheBigN: Respond to your customers.
5. CCY: Try a new ad-supported model.
6. OGT: Count on otaku to buy fetishize the physical.

Anything we didn’t quite cover? I fully expect the world to be completely righted by the time my next post goes live, at which time I’ll return to my regularly scheduled programming, which should wreck the world again since I’ll just be blogging about fansubbed anime.

EDIT: Thanks to omo as well for all the intelligent participation in the comments, here’s his take on things.

OGT and the final word

Are you sick of this yet? I know I am, and it was my idea. But I sent out a lot of requests, and was pleasantly surprised to find most of them got responses.

OGT runs Anime Wa Bakahatsu Da!, and contrary to its explosive-sounding name, it’s a place where I go for rational discussion and well-thought-out blog posts, not to mention the only place I know of where someone is as much of a fan of Real Drive and Itazura Na Kiss as I am right now. I love the site, and I know OGT is a big anime DVD buyer, so I was expecting to love this response:

The problem with the anime industry these days isn’t wholly dependent on the fact that people aren’t buying DVDs (I’m, frankly, surprised that you can still buy a “limited-edition” Haruhi DVD 1 + boxset when I was pretty sure that they wouldn’t be available after a month of sales. Unless the “limited edition” was a sales gimmick, but that’s kind of hard to believe), but a complex problem involving the economy in general, the companies’ own questionable spending ethics (over-saturating the market), and a few other Mysterious Economic Problems are partially to blame as well. I don’t think totally eliminating fansubs and forcing everyone to buy DVDs sight-unseen is the solution, and I still maintain that it’s 100% A-OK to watch fansubs, as long as you buy the series you enjoyed. Define “enjoy” however you feel like it, make decisions based on price point vs. how much you enjoyed it, make sure you have food to eat and a roof over your head, etc.–I own a ridiculous amount of anime DVDs, and question only a fraction of their purchases, but I’d never expect someone to buy more than a quarter of what I have over the years. The best thing R1 and Japan can do–and they’re testing the waters already, in a haphazard way–is to simply beat fansubbers at their own game, and give the audience legal, official digital subs with little or no turnaround and at a small price point. But that’s not going to work unless people actually buy things, digital, physical, or otherwise. Information is free, but to keep it that way, sometimes a system needs to be fed with specie.

I sometimes wonder if sales of anime DVDs are relatively well distributed or if about 5 people buy most of them. I own less than a hundred DVDs of any kind, anime or otherwise, and I generally only buy anything if it’s best-of-breed or I just feel like rewatching. Netflix, or in the past, a conveniently located video rental, is perfectly acceptable from me. But there are people like OGT (and some others I know that I can immediately think of) who buy DVDs like they’re going out of style.

That brings us back to that numbingly-repeatable question: has the current age of internet-distributed fansubs altered that pattern any? Well I, for one, am buying more anime DVDs because anime is in my face a little more, but I could also attribute that to my blogging, since that has definitely sped up my purchasing as well.

As mentioned in some of the earlier comments, we DVD-buying fans are probably not going anywhere anytime soon, and if anyone is attached to the sight of a brightly-colored shelf of DVDs, it’s otaku. But just like the changing music market of the past few years, a host of issues — whether practical, technological, or economic, may make those shelves expand a little slower than they used to.