DarkMessiah's Blog

A while back I, for some unknown reason, finally put myself through the effort of describing my opinion on the subject of "anime sharing and why distributors are having a hard time dealing with it".

I liked the outcome, so I posted it here as a blog entry:

First of all, just so that you know my position in all this worldwide-mess, I live in a country of the European Union where there is NO ANIME. There are no distributors, and the foreign one that releases DVD's here uses such crappy subs they make crappy fansubs look admirable.

The reason behind the whole piracy thing going on, not only with anime, but also with music and movies is just one: a system was created in order to distribute these materials in a profitable way. Since the client was forced to "purchase in order to enjoy", everything seemed alright. Then along came the WWW.

When ppl started learning about a way to access the stuff for free, they immediately stopped buying it.

Now, why would they do that? Concerning anime DVDs, the reasons are clear: they are overpriced and take forever to be released. (right now I'm talking as if I lived in the US, since in many European countries they simply don't get released).

How does the industry react? Instead of improving the system they created, they try to force ppl to buy the stuff. Here's a simple analogy:

A kid lives with his mother. His mother loves to bake cookies. Her cookies suck. Their neighbours' cookies are pure win. Mommy is jealous that her son prefers the neighbour's cookies. The neighbour is always willing to give free cookies to the kid. The mother keeps telling her son not to eat the neighbour’s cookies instead of her own. The son is not a dumbfuck, so he doesn't give a rat's ass and always goes to the neighbour for cookies.

Can anyone tell me what did the mother do wrong? Simple: instead of yelling and bitchin' about, she should have tried to make better cookies. The kid would then be happy to have her cookies instead of the neighbours'.

How does this relate to the present situation? Here's how:
I simply cannot understand how fansub groups, whose members are not getting any profit from it, manage to translate and release an episode way faster than companies whose employees make a livin' out of selling the DVD's! They can’t just expect us to wait months for the series to be licensed, and then pay ridiculous sums to obtain them! And don’t forget that, all those who don’t watch dubs pay for the work of an entire crew of dubbers, which they simply don’t want!

Solution:
-dual releases (sub-only edition (MUCH cheaper) / sub+dub edition)
-Faster releases (dubbed versions would be released a bit later, obviously)
-lower prices (considering the increase in sales that would result from faster releases, profits could be maintained)

Also, the anime studios could also try to make the releases reach Europe, as it is a promising market for the anime industry (I know what I’m talking about).