Forum - View topicINTEREST: Gainax Co-Founder Okada Shares Thoughts on Illegal Copying
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minakichan
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I am totally cool with this. I think it's okay to tolerate people who never buy stuff as long as it is well-established that they are of lower worth. |
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jl07045
 Posts: 1527 Location: Riga, Latvia |
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Indeed, paying fans are encouraged to feel superior to keep them buying stuff and sustain the industry, while pirates don't care one way or the other and those who care actually start buying something. a very manipulative system, but if it works... |
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Polycell
 Posts: 4623 |
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At any rate, I haven't been following fansubs for shows released here since I started being able to be a paying customer(I'm only following two right now, compared to ten or eleven shows on Crunchyroll - gotta make that premium membership count!). The only fansub I've ever followed when there was a legal stream going was the first half of Guilty Crown, which was solely a matter of Funimation's crap player; I've since learned to give up on shows Funi's doing. |
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Mr. sickVisionz
 Posts: 2173 |
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Completely off-topic but yes, this. HBO should sell their shows online as they air, even on a per episode basis. $17 a month on a channel that only offers me one show per week that I want is laughable to me, but I'd happily pay them per episode. |
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Carl Horn
Posts: 90 |
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It has been suggested that Toshio Okada should not offer any criticisms of illegal copying because of works that GAINAX has produced in the past. I think most fans can see the distinction between the two types of activities considered here, and, more to the point, the Japanese industry has historically seen the distinction.
While the Japanese industry has never been okay with illegal copies of the original anime or manga (that is, simply making unauthorized copies of an anime episode or a manga chapter), they generally tolerate and have even offered tacit endorsement of fans making (and also selling) fan works that use the original's characters or situations--I'm talking about doujinshi, of course. To show how long this co-existence has been around, consider that Comic Market was founded in 1975, before the anime boom of the late 1970s, and twenty years before manga would reach its circulation peak in Japan. There have been cases where a particular Japanese company cracked down on a doujinshi. But generally speaking, a fan in Japan can draw a short comic using some anime or manga's characters, and perhaps even sell several thousand copies of it, and they are not going to get into trouble over it with the industry, the way people involved in illegal copying have been in Japan. If this weren't so, Comike and other doujinshi cons could not have grown to the size they are, not to mention brick-and-mortar doujinshi stores like Toranoana. People sometimes say here that Japanese companies are behind the times, but there have been other Western IP commentators who are amazed at the relatively open and progressive environment toward intellectual property that the doujinshi scene represents. But like all environments, it requires a balance, and part of that balance in Japan has been that the original works themselves would be purchased, not just the doujinshi 
That gets us back to early works Okada was involved with, such as the Daicon III and IV opening anime. As fan-made works that used industry anime and manga characters (they also had a considerable amount of original content), these were recognized at the time as a kind of doujinshi. If the Japanese industry had considered it an unacceptable practice, I doubt they would have been invited, based on what they showed in these fan films, to start working in the industry. The Macross footage in Otaku no Video, for example, references the fact Yamaga and Anno's first professional experience was on that very TV show. But consider for a moment if GAINAX (then called Daicon Film) hadn't actually been the ones to animate Daicon III and IV; if someone else had animated it, and they had just taken those people's animation without permission and sold or distributed copies of it. I doubt, in that case, whether anyone in the industry would have been impressed or admiring. They were impressed because, even though they used other people's characters, they used them in a way that showed they had creative energy and talent themselves, and didn't just run off copies of the original shows or manga. That too is a way to support the industry--by using your fan work to become a part of it; many professional manga artists (as well as animators and computer game designers) have come out of the doujinshi scene. |
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kamanashi
 Posts: 65 |
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Not exactly the best analogy, but the basic idea behind it is still correct. People don't want to pay for something they claim to love, but will download illegally so long as they don't get caught. |
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Zac
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 7912 Location: Anime News Network Technodrome |
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These arguments express entitlement more than almost anything else. HBO's business model is wildly successful for them. They have millions and millions of subscribers. Game of Thrones is a premium cable series that gets ratings that rival similarly successful shows on basic cable channels and the DVDs sell like crazy. They spend something like $4-6 million per episode and it's doing well enough to the point that they greenlight the next season the minute the current one premieres. This is a perfectly functioning business model for them. You not getting exactly what you want in the manner you want it does not mean their business model is broken or obsolete, it means you aren't partaking. It's like pointing to a crowded bakery with a line out the door and down the block every day and saying "I don't like the way they sell bread there, that place is a failure". |
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krystallinity
Posts: 21 |
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Agreed. I would rather have nice looking karaoke, colored fonts, visual typesetting that blends nicely into an image, and a convenient file I can take anywhere in the world...than have to settle for clunky streams. As long as fansubs continue to offer a superior, more attractive product, people will be more inclined to download them. The only way fansub piracy can truly be stopped is if all Japanese Anime were released on a content platform like Crunchyroll, with HD video quality, karaoke, visual effects, two types of translation (literal and interpretive), the ability to download a copy of the stream for free, and a release within a couple of days of their Japanese airing. Maybe the companies could even hire fansubbers to do the work for them. They're already doing it for free, so offering teams a nominal amount per episode would certainly be possible. But there is definitely a place for physical goods in the Anime market. If I were to download the raw .m2ts Blu-ray files / ISOs, it'd take up 125gb of space for a single 13 episode series, and that's just too unwieldy, considering the immense difficulty of finding and retrieving the raw files. Fansubs can't be stopped (unless companies release a product equivalent in quality to them), but the physical nature of Anime puts the collectors a notch above the fansub watchers in terms of being able to hold a box, leaf through the art book, and acquire the greatest video quality possible without going through an incredible amount of trouble to try and acquire Blu-ray raws. |
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JuicyB
Posts: 278 |
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This is a hilarious article. His point of view on the matter is very refreshing, especially compared to the usual industry bull that "PIRACY IS RUINING EVERYTHING FOREVERRRRR!!!"
I can't believe some of you parasites are lame enough to get butthurt over this -- whoops, I meant to say "pets" 
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Actar
 Posts: 1074 Location: Singapore |
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Regarding the streaming thing, I think that many (Western) fans are forgetting (or not caring) about the fact that many countries outside the US still don't get even a fraction of the titles that are available in the US. Also, while this isn't a 100% valid point, for someone who has actually been studying the Japanese language for a relatively long period of time, I find that the subtitle quality of some of the streams to be questionable at best.
Moving on to the buying point, I admit that I download Anime. But the thing is, I do spend money, buying the BD/DVDs of the shows that I actually like, which is the way I personally think it should be. This might be a little idealistic, but I believe that fans should buy the DVDs and BDs of the shows that they like and not just for the sake of supporting the industry. If I watch Lucky Star and like it, I would gladly spend 400 dollars of hard earned money on the BD-Box set (which I did). But for a show I hate? I'd stay far, far away from any of its merchandise. Support what you like, screw what you don't. Not to mention, aside from buying the BDs and DVDs, no one seems to mention the whole crap ton of merchandise that some of us fans buy. Figures, Dolls, Posters, Straps, Artbooks, Dakimakura Covers... Don't these hundreds and thousands of dollars that I and many a fan have spent count at all? Sometimes, it is true that I put off buying the DVDs and BDs of an Anime that I have seen and liked, but that is almost always in favor of buying a 1/8 Scale Completed PVC figure of a character from said show. I know that there are some people who just download and watch Anime without contributing at all. But more often than not, these people don't see Anime as anything more than casual entertainment and wouldn't buy the DVDs or merchandise anyway if their ability to pirate is lost. They would just move on to the next thing. However, I am more than certain that for evey one downloader who doesn't contribute, there are fans like me who, becasue of the enjoyment that we get from the Anime, do buy the DVDs and derivatve merchandise. Last edited by Actar on Sun Apr 22, 2012 4:22 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Chagen46
 Posts: 4377 |
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I think you mean "Fansub creators prefer their terribly made subs that are frequently lower quality than professional ones, because they have spent years collectively deluding themselves into thinking that they're better". That was a badly worded sentence, but you get my point. |
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Actar
Posts: 1074 Location: Singapore |
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Not this again... Professional =/always= good quality and fansub =/always= shitty. Do you actually have a good enough comprehension of the Japanese language and English language to pass judgment? Have you watched the Fate/Zero stream subs? |
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Mr. sickVisionz
Posts: 2173 |
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What's wrong with these subs? I watched the whole series on CR and nothing stood out as bad. Is this a case of something like, "they wrote Naruto Uzumaki instead of Uzumaki Naruto. WORST.SUBS.EVER!" |
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Actar
Posts: 1074 Location: Singapore |
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Not sure if they are the same, but I'm talking about Season 2's subs from Nico Nico. I have to concur with UTW about the awkward phrasing and poor accuracy of translation... though as I said, not a big point or concern to those who aren't that picky about the subtitle quality/accuracy or don't understand Japanese. That aside, I can't comment on any of the other translations from this season as I'm in the midst of my finals and haven't gotten around to watching any new Anime... Though, I will give credit when credit is due and say that there are times when the CR subbers do a phenomenal job - case in point: Nisemonogatari. Last edited by Actar on Sun Apr 22, 2012 4:54 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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krystallinity
Posts: 21 |
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I'd say it's fans like you that do more to keep the industry alive than people who only subscribe to Crunchyroll, buy the occasional cheap Funimation DVD, and constantly bash fansub watchers for being "the scum of the Earth." Merchandising is a huge factor in the development of modern Anime these days, and I thank you for supporting it the way you do. |
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