Where do you watch your anime?

[Kaldur]

Originally Posted by Dez

Youtube? Aww >_<

And Veoh is somewhat annoying, lol.

Youtube and agree on the Veoh part lol

I download the good anime (unlicensed), the one people buy at Wal-Mart is a piece of ****, since it's all that dubbed garbage that filters into FoxKids.

[Frein]

Originally Posted by Taiyz

If you're complaining about translation quality, that's another rant altogether so I'm not gonna bother too much. I will say however, that if you think fansubs are in any way better than official subtitles, this point couldn't be any more wrong unless you're fluent in the language and can prove this point, in which I'm not gonna be happy to hear. D=

I think what he means is that commercial subs need to be purged of cultural references or in general anything that your average Westerner wouldn't understand. It's been a while since I saw a commercial sub* as very few have ever been sold here and I've seen them years before on fansubs anyway, but they didn't even have honorifics, which are essential for conversation in Japanese yet lack any equivalents in other languages.

*I'm referring to NGE and FMA which were broadcast here some time ago. The only DVD I've watched was Dragon Half, but it was so long ago I can't remember how the sub was.

This is why I believe a niche audience is better served by catering to them exclusively rather than trying to widen the market even though a wider market makes sense financially.

Even then, if it's just one series or a bad company, it's an isolated issue, especially compared to the amount of speed subbers and groups like Nyoro~n that can get away with automated translators and rewriting with embellished English. Gundam 00 &mdash; Nyoro~n Translation Errors - Ramblings of DarkMirage

Sadly, the fansub community can't enforce quality so we'll always have some bad apples in the mix, I'm afraid.

For the latter? I've gone to other anime-based communities before and it's the same issue as above. Shows like Naruto are essentially bottom-feeders in most communities; sure it might be a bit elitist, but I will indefinitely prefer a production like Ghost Hound compared to a multi-seasonal show rife with fight scenes, animated by Koreans on the cheap.
Case and point: Mistakes Of Youth-- VIP Quality

I'm also not gonna bring up the age demographic that Naruto is actually aimed at, because that's just mean. =P

Haha, exactly my sentiments.

Watch it sell like crazy; I don't doubt it will. Why would you think that the dub will be terrible? They're going to be adding in liner notes, which most fansubbers left out of Lucky Star and they're digging into the extremely renowned Bang Zoom! Entertainment talent pool.

I think the dub will be terrible (even the one in Haruhi, which you said sold well, was), but that's beside the point. I think dubbing Lucky Star is 100% unnecessary because only a relatively invested anime hobbyist will understand it anyway. It's a pure moe show, the main character of which is an otaku and much of the dialog is rather pointless rambling about our daily lives. It almost doesn't get more niche than that.

What's next, Kodomo no Jikan? That's not only niche, but also offensive.

It is common however for most people to want shows to come out faster, but I would say that the cases where people go ahead and start pirating ahead of time out of impatience are very isolated. If you don't do it already, then chances are you aren't gonna start.

Well, most of the time you can't really predict whether something will be licensed at all or not and that goes even for Americans who actually get a lot of licensed anime releases. Usually the show has been entirely fansubbed long before the announcement of a license.

Anime is already coming out on iTunes; Ghost in the Shell just landed. Xbox Live's Marketplace has had anime episodes for reasonable prices, and lots of popular series' like Trinity Blood or Akira, at that.
FUNimation's official site is now holding series' for download either by episode, or as a batch for a reduced price and ADV's been doing the same for a while. They're all pretty much .99-2.99 per episode.

Really? Hah, I didn't even know. But still, they aren't fast enough and need some kind of industry-wide collective contract that allows them to sub anything aired on certain channels and put it up there as soon as they can.

And also, DVDs are 20 bucks for 4-5 episodes; I think that's totally reasonable considering that they can't be paid to air the stuff on TV, nor do they get free advertising. The television market isn't welcoming for the Anime Industry either, which has affected prices.

I tried looking up some prices for anime series here, but it was hard as most shops don't seem to have any, but then I found one shop advertise box sets containing the entire Silver Fang (Ginga: Nagareboshi Gin) and Weed series and both were 49,95€. Also, episodes 1-4 for FMA were sold for 12.95€.

Anecdote: Silver Fang was somehow a huge hit for children here in the early 90s even though it was censored to hell and never intended for small children in the first place. Bizarre.

It's all a matter of how willing you are to dedicate yourself to your hobbies I suppose; I'd say it's entirely worth it for anime. =/

Yeah, I suppose. I'd rather not touch licensed anime at all then, though, as I feel it's just not worth it. Then again, I'm not North American and most licenses don't affect me and many of the series licensed over there don't really interest me anyway. Also, it is extremely rare for me to watch anything more than once.

[FrozenIce]

I watch on my computer and usually download from Fansub group's staff or distro FTP servers :P. I help fansub and distro more than I actually watch. Unlicensed anime only though. If i'm not part of the group, then torrents or xdcc bots. Never would do youtube because the quality takes such a big hit.

[birdman]

All that money when you can get the same for free ;p. The only thing I'm looking after is my own wallet Taiyz.

[Dez]

*steals birdmans wallet*

[Howling]

Originally Posted by Taiyz

The anime industry would do just fine without fansubbing.

Craziest sentence of the year award goes to........
Most people, myself included, get introduced to all the animes through
Fansubs. Without the fansubs noone would know what the animes are and thus would have alot (alot) less incentive to pay through the nose for a DvD of a show they've never seen.
Take out fansubs - kill the industry, it's that simple. Only the über hardcore fans like you would buy something without watching it first

Anime is already coming out on iTunes; Ghost in the Shell just landed. Xbox Live's Marketplace has had anime episodes for reasonable prices, and lots of popular series' like Trinity Blood or Akira, at that.
FUNimation's official site is now holding series' for download either by episode, or as a batch for a reduced price and ADV's been doing the same for a while. They're all pretty much .99-2.99 per episode.

The problem is that nobody really knows these features, cares to learn about them, or actually goes and uses the features; they claim they can get the exact same product for free anyway. No matter how many times this solution is suggested, it's consistently ignored by consumers.

And also, DVDs are 20 bucks for 4-5 episodes; I think that's totally reasonable considering that they can't be paid to air the stuff on TV, nor do they get free advertising. The television market isn't welcoming for the Anime Industry either, which has affected prices.

It's also worth noting that I live in Canada, so I pay roughly 2-5 dollars more for a volume of manga, 10 dollars more on the average DVD, 20+ more on the average box set, and twice as much tax on each purchase than Americans, and yet I still do it. That's not even including 20+ dollars of Duty per shipment when I have to order something from America.

Personally, I didn't know they were offering these services - So thats 1 more person you've introduced to it.

And your DvD prices, sure it's fine to say that $4-5 an episode is fine, the trouble is alot of the people in the world aren't in America/Canada - and Anime is very cheap over there opposed to most other places. It's about $40 for a DvD here, or if you're lucky and they bring out a boxset you can get it for $60-80ish (I'm English btw).
I've heard in some of the euro countries its $60 for a single dvd - can't remember which country I'm thinking of, was talking to someone about it a few weeks ago and he said where he's from.. norway or something like that.. they're really expensive and it's alot cheaper to buy from UK and ship.. Dispite UK being reletively expensive (to America).

[Mr Mage]

Well I have down loaded a few episodes from downloadstore.bt.com the selection at the moment is quite small (only a totle of 30 episodes.) Unfortunately (or fortunately) it does not work out side the UK.

[Howling]

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£3.49 per episode ?! Thats marginally less than you'd pay if you bought the DvDs Mage... That's a rediculous amount ... but then again it's BT so what do you expect..

[Taiyz]

First-off, I'm gonna say that my entire opinion refers to North America. If you live in Europe or elsewhere, chances are, like with video games, you are gonna get stuff years later than they should be released, most likely have the translation editted by the European licensor, and probably dubbed into other languages as well, then you'll be overcharged and left with a terrible product not worth paying money for in the first place, so I can't really say anything about that. You guys get screwed over with everything. Importing still adds extra fees and won't natively work with your hardware.

It's not like you're gonna be affecting the market I'm part of anyway, and my market is the one I'm concerned about. I don't think I need to point out how much more common piracy is outside the North American market.

Originally Posted by Frein

I think the dub will be terrible (even the one in Haruhi, which you said sold well, was), but that's beside the point. I think dubbing Lucky Star is 100% unnecessary because only a relatively invested anime hobbyist will understand it anyway. It's a pure moe show, the main character of which is an otaku and much of the dialog is rather pointless rambling about our daily lives. It almost doesn't get more niche than that.

What's next, Kodomo no Jikan? That's not only niche, but also offensive.

I can't logically agree with this, as I've gotten into conversations with some of my European friends about this; they don't like the "accent" in American English dubs, so they dislike everything, where-as in a language they don't natively speak, accent means nothing to them, which is why they prefer Japanese with subtitles. How many times have you been bothered by character who speaks with a Kansai-ben? I'd imagine not often.

The Haruhi dub was fantastic to most American audiences. Hell, the Haruhi dub was CHOSEN by American audiences. They had 5 people casted for each main character, and allowed the fans to vote on the voice they liked best, without giving away the actor names. There was no way the dub could be in bad taste.

As for the "appeal" of Lucky Star, it isn't "moe" like you seem to think. Sure it has girls, but did people watch Azumanga Daioh because the characters were physically attractive? No, it was for the comedy. Genshiken succeeded MASSIVELY in America as a slow-paced, slice-of-life otaku comedic commentary, and Lucky Star is no different; it just has a mostly female cast.

Besides, there are few people less manly than Minoru Shiraishi and Anime Tenchou.

BTW Kodomo no Jikan's manga WAS licensed by a company called Seven Seas, but the project was aborted because they didn't want to sully their reputation with a lolicon controversy (seriously, we love them for bringing over the Boogiepop novels. They're great guys, so it was a good decision.)

Lucky Star however, isn't perverted, and is already popularized by the creators, Kyoto Animation so it really isn't as niche as you keep saying. Bandai is doing a great job at promoting the series as well, as they did with Haruhi.

Originally Posted by Frein

Really? Hah, I didn't even know. But still, they aren't fast enough and need some kind of industry-wide collective contract that allows them to sub anything aired on certain channels and put it up there as soon as they can.

You mean like how GONZO just started releasing two of their newest series' simultaneously world-wide, and for FREE at several streaming sites, with options to pay for direct-download high quality files?

I don't think this debate could've been held at a more convenient time. >_>

Originally Posted by Frein

I tried looking up some prices for anime series here, but it was hard as most shops don't seem to have any, but then I found one shop advertise box sets containing the entire Silver Fang (Ginga: Nagareboshi Gin) and Weed series and both were 49,95€. Also, episodes 1-4 for FMA were sold for 12.95€.

This goes back to my point about Europe. If nobody in Europe licenses the content, you're not gonna see it. If it is licensed, then a lot of extra adaptation is required, and prices shoot up as the work is done.

Here in North America, I can walk into a local video store and find a shelf stocked full with anime DVDs, and stop in to any Futureshop or Best Buy (there are 2 Futureshops and 1 Best Buy in my city) for tons of new releases, at prices I've mentioned before. From Tokyo Majin to Kanon to Karas, Naruto, Bleach, Ghost in the Shell, Appleseed and more. It's readily available here; heck this is Canada where prices are supposed to shoot up more and niche American markets never have a chance of appearing here.

Though given your last paragraph, you seem to know all of this already, I figured I should say what I've seen at least. =/

Originally Posted by Howling

Craziest sentence of the year award goes to........
Most people, myself included, get introduced to all the animes through
Fansubs. Without the fansubs noone would know what the animes are and thus would have alot (alot) less incentive to pay through the nose for a DvD of a show they've never seen.
Take out fansubs - kill the industry, it's that simple. Only the über hardcore fans like you would buy something without watching it first

That's not very true. It's all a matter of paying attention to advertising. Say you see a commercial for an anime, or see an episode of an anime on TV that catches your eye. You can then research it and see if it's worth looking into. Websites such as the AnimeNewsNetwork make this simple, with summaries and reviews of DVDs on the site. You buy a DVD, and whether or not you like it, you can continue following the series or sell the DVD. The disc will also typically have previews of other series' on it, giving you more ideas of things to look out for.

It's a matter of perspective. Are you gonna go to a theater to see a movie you haven't heard about or seen commercials for? Chances are you don't even know that the movie exists.

The only problem is that in this day in age, "Oh this looks neat" translates to "I wonder where I can download this..." because of how simple the process is. Even with movies, I suppose, but it also comes down to a matter of connection speed and availability of decent quality pirated copies, of which anime has got covered in multiple subtitled varieties...Not to mention that American TV and movies make money off of televised appearances, where-as anime licensors have to pay to get their content on the air, as it's seen as advertising for a specific media market. It's quite the opposite situation, which ends up giving rise to such DVD prices.

Sure, fansubs are easier to get as a preview for the content within a series, but that's just not how the industry is meant to work, is all. Without fansubs, it would still function; you'd just weed out all the people who don't care enough to do their own research...Those too used to having anime delivered right to their door for free. If you enjoy anime as much as you say you do, if you couldn't get fansubs, you would get the DVDs. If you're not sure what to get into, you'd learn to research.

Originally Posted by Howling

I've heard in some of the euro countries its $60 for a single dvd - can't remember which country I'm thinking of, was talking to someone about it a few weeks ago and he said where he's from.. norway or something like that.. they're really expensive and it's alot cheaper to buy from UK and ship.. Dispite UK being reletively expensive (to America).

Japan pays 50 bucks for 2 episodes per disc. I believe I've already said that North America really gets the good deals, and this post is home to why I think it's a different story if you're European.

I'm obviously not gonna be convincing any Europeans to go legal with any of my comments, but if you're gonna be commenting about the American market, then you shouldn't be betting with your price ranges as the chips.

I also apologize in advance in case I said anything with a negative stigma.

[Howling]

Good post tbh, though I do still disagree about the fansubs thing, you do give a good point in theory - but I think in practice you'd probably see Epic Fail stamped on it

[Frein]

Originally Posted by Taiyz

First-off, I'm gonna say that my entire opinion refers to North America.

Fair enough.

I can't logically agree with this, as I've gotten into conversations with some of my European friends about this; they don't like the "accent" in American English dubs, so they dislike everything, where-as in a language they don't natively speak, accent means nothing to them, which is why they prefer Japanese with subtitles. How many times have you been bothered by character who speaks with a Kansai-ben? I'd imagine not often.

The Haruhi dub was fantastic to most American audiences. Hell, the Haruhi dub was CHOSEN by American audiences. They had 5 people casted for each main character, and allowed the fans to vote on the voice they liked best, without giving away the actor names. There was no way the dub could be in bad taste.

I don't think the accent is the problem. American TV is everywhere over here as well and it sounds very natural to me, except in dubs. I don't know what it is, but your dubs tend to have different voice acting than when actual actors speak. It's like I can tell I'm listening to a dub without seeing the screen.

Also, the Japanese names really cause problems as they sound so silly when pronounced by English speaking actors, especially when they seem to just "Americanize" it without even trying to pronounce it like a native, or perhaps they just can't. It's perhaps a bit difficult for me to relate with that as Finnish is phonetically so close to Japanese that I could probably pass for a native speaker if I really focused.

And finally, Kansai-ben rocks. It's often hard to understand but it's always a breath of fresh air.

As for the "appeal" of Lucky Star, it isn't "moe" like you seem to think. Sure it has girls, but did people watch Azumanga Daioh because the characters were physically attractive? No, it was for the comedy. Genshiken succeeded MASSIVELY in America as a slow-paced, slice-of-life otaku comedic commentary, and Lucky Star is no different; it just has a mostly female cast.

I still think LS is almost pure moe. I don't know what according to you is required for a series to be moe, but LS isn't really that 'funny', so I don't see it as an actual comedy. 'Entertaining' is the word I'd use and it does rely heavily on a set of cute female characters, after all. Even Konata thinks Miyuki is totally moe.

Besides, there are few people less manly than Minoru Shiraishi and Anime Tenchou.

Haha, yeah, they're almost as manly as a certain To Heart scooter.

You mean like how GONZO just started releasing two of their newest series' simultaneously world-wide, and for FREE at several streaming sites, with options to pay for direct-download high quality files?

I don't think this debate could've been held at a more convenient time. >_>

/grindsteeth

Well good for Gonzo, though the other studios need to join in to make the industry-wide service reality. Besides, Gonzo makes so much crap. :P

[Taiyz]

Well Druaga has been pretty awesome, though yeah, Blassreiter was absolutely terrible.

It's hard to imagine how they screwed it up when Demonbane (another visual novel turned anime from creator Nitro+) was so good in comparison.

But this is really off-topic...Where anime is watched huh...

Well these legal episodes are viewable either via the official Bittorrent Website, YouTube, CrunchyRoll (although they still charge you for a proper download because their stream is so terrible) and video-on-demand site BOST TV.