Forum - View topicDo you think it is worth paying for anime?
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The Naked Beast
 Posts: 1028 Location: A Blue Planet |
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Hi everyone. This is my first topic here after being here for a few years.
I have been thinking about this for a while now. Without further ado, I ask you: Do you think it is worth paying for anime? This question came about after having many discussions with a good friend of mine. We have a lot in common but when it comes to paying for stuff that is where our opinions differ. With the advent of the Internet, information is vastly available. You can find just about everything (good and bad) on Internet. My opinion: Yes, I think it is worth paying for anime. My reasoning is simple. It is something I like and I feel it is proper to pay for all the hard work that is put into making an anime. Even at times when I pay extra to get a piece of cardboard (art boxes and whatnot), though of high quality, I am willing to shell out money for it. If I cleaned up a bit, I would even surprise myself to see all of my collection before me comprised of art boxes and DVDs. I know even though some extra items with the special editions are corny but I just have this compulsion to buy the special edition version for the reason that it says special edition on the box. My friend's opinion differs from mine: Why pay for something when you can get it for free? If fact, some of them feels that it is not not even worth paying for it claiming that the quality (production, localization) is sub par. You can download whatever you want these days off the Internet whether it be games (Nintendo DS, PlayStation 3), movies, TV series, manga, anime, and the list keeps on going. Where I have spent thousands of my hard-earned United States dollars (USD) on tons of anime, manga, and games, my friend finds everything that I have off the Internet for free. I want to ask you, in your own opinion, do you think it is worth paying for anime? |
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12skippy21
 Posts: 785 Location: York, England |
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Good question that.
It depends really. Honestly I've never paid for any anime or manga, or films for that matter. I do get it all of the internet. On a moral standpoint, you should pay for anime or manga products, it's stealing otherwise. Hollywood always say downloading movies ruins the industry, same with music. Despite the fact more continues to come out and budgets are higher than ever? Despite this I would never pay for an anime or manga product. Simply because I cannot afford it, university costs a bomb. But once you get into the habit of getting everything from the internet, it's difficult to get out of it. That's my excuse anyway 
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Fairli
 Posts: 10 |
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I pay for some of my anime, I just don't bother to buy some anime when it is out of print, I simply refuse to spend an entire month trying to find an out of print anime.
Yes, you can download everything off of the internet, but when you get caught what will become of you? |
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Tony K.
 SubscriberModerator  Posts: 12088 Location: Frisco, TX |
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It's good to see regular people admit to being all pirate-like now, savvy?
There is no "excuse," by the way. You're either cheap or you're occasionally not.
Nothing, at least in the U.S... probably. |
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Hannish Lightning
Posts: 376 |
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l buy all my anime because l have too much respect for the industry to do something as underhanded as to pirate something that doesn't belong to me.
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farruinn
 Posts: 122 |
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The answer to your question is a question itself: is the show worth owning? Anime is no different from American TV in that some series are worth owning while other simply are not. Now, we're at a disadvantage because some shows may be worth watching but not to own, however our only legal option is watching DVD releases. At least we have the option to rent as well.
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Yawnny
 Posts: 37 |
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I actually buy all of my anime and download none. Ill stop by my local anime shop every week and basically pick up whatever new and interesting box sets I find. I tend to be quite the collector when it comes to anime and having anime boxsets on my bookshelf look so nice.
I'm also a (sometimes) a sucker for buying different covers for something.. my main example of this is the Lucky Star Limited Editions. I'm trying to collect the normal and the LE covers..I just have a lot of expendable income  I have one day off a week so I make a decent amount of cash.. hobbies make the work worth it.
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LuckySeven
 Posts: 587 Location: Georgia, USA |
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If it is something that I liked then yes, its worth paying for. Thankfully I have liked everything I've seen. Ever since I started back buying anime on a regular basis I gave myself the rule that I make sure I pick up anything that watched the entire series of online. Having just gotten high speed internet for the first time last year around March, watching anime online wasn't an issue before. But over the summer I discovered a few streaming video sites (which I won't name) and I watched quite a few full series online in their entirety. So as long as it is actually available for purchase, I will buy it. And I have been slowly buying up the stuff I watched over that summer. So far that includes: Ai Yori Aoshi (and Ai Yori Aoshi ~ Enishi), Chobits, Girls Bravo, Grenadier, Koi Kaze, Please Teacher, Please Twins, and Vandread. Also a few series that I had only partially seen online (some I didn't even get through the first episode) being Hand Maid May, Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Risky Safety, Rumbling Hearts, and Strawberry Eggs. As it is now, I only have a few more from my summer "free for all" that I haven't gotten yet. Those being Azumanga Daioh, Love Hina (including the Christmas and Spring specials as well as Love Hina Again), Lucky*Star, Mahoromatic (both seasons), Midori Days, and Tenchi Muyo GXP. I figure once I finish making up for illegally watching all of those for free, then I can finally set my sights on other shows of interest with a clear conscious. That's just how I feel about it, you gotta give back to the anime biz so they'll keep putting out new stuff for us to see.
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fighterholic
Posts: 9193 |
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I do not download myself, though I sometimes do watch downloaded material. When I see something that I like, I most definitely buy it. A lot of times what pisses me off is when I am trying to buy CDs that are soundtracks for anime or games, and then I find that they're made in Taiwan. It pisses me off to no end. Therefore, I like to make sure that I have the real thing, and therefore a majority of my buying comes from retailers that I know are honest and have the real thing. Yes, it is worth paying for anime, especially when you buy the real thing, because not only are you getting quality picture, but other goodies that may be coming with the DVD.
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zawa113
 Posts: 7394 |
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No need to be a nice guy here: it depends.
Do I think it's worth paying for anime? Sometimes yes, yes I do, some things are good enough that the creators deserve monetary compensation for good intellectual properties. But junk, no, and I will never come up with a good excuse for a reason to buy Eiken no matter how low the price is. Wether or not it's worth paying the R1 companies is another issue though...and that's basically what's below. [rant on R1 companies] It mostly depends on if it's liscened and how easy the R1 companies are making it for me to get what I want. If it's neither, then no, there's no practical way to pay for the anime even if I would like to support them. I would like to get Maison Ikkoku on DVD, but given how stupid difficult it is to find half of the series (and expensive on top of it), I don't want to give them money. It's sorta like Spore with its stupid anti-piracy attempts with that stupid broken system that made people want to pirate it (indeed become the most pirated game of last year) simply out of principle of someone else's annoying decisions. It also depends on how good the series is, I saw Princess Tutu for free over the internet w/ fansubs and whatnot, but when the hideously covered thickpack came out, I determined a need to get the series because I wanted to watch it again (three more times so far) and wanted to reward ADV for taking a risk on something that lacks the sheer market appeal of Fullmetal Alchemist, and for liking Princess Tutu. Did the same thing for Mushi-shi and Monster (got the manga on this one though). Do I get everything I see online though? No. Sometimes it's not worth another look for me. Price of course comes in. I am not going to give Funimation $50 for 12-13 episodes of Fullmetal Alchemist now when it's clear that they intend to milk it like ADV has NGE for ages and release complete sets of it within a few years or so and I don't think FMA is not soooo amazing that I can't wait for it to go down in price (and up in episode/dollar count for that matter). In the case of a boxset like Phoenix, which is only $20 for 13 episodes, then I find it cheaper to get it that way than to look it up online. $33ish for 26 episodes for Oban Star-Racers proved much the same, the price has to be good enough to encourage me that it is cheaper in terms of time management to pay them for the DVD than it is for me to find it online. It's like 1001 Arabian Nights, convince me you're better off alive than dead and I'll reconsider. Or in this case that I'm better off giving you money than getting what I want for free (dubbing helps this). The next thing is that when I do pay for anime (which is more often than I make it sound), I want these companies to turn around and liscence things I want and not to go out of buisness. And then actually dub it, I don't see the point in paying for subtitles when they're free on the internet. If I give Funimation money for, say, Welcome to the NHK, I want them to turn around and lisence Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei. Actually, I gave ADV my money for that but they're too busy trying not to shut down right now. [/rant] |
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walw6pK4Alo
 Posts: 9322 |
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Given the choice, the most I'd pay for the larger portion of shows would be a cable/satellite subscription. You're not directly paying for the shows, and you're certainly not paying DVD prices. The only things I repeatedly find worth paying for as far as anime is concerned are high budget productions, which you find more often in movie and OVA format, opposed to television broadcast. Not to mention, they should be more re-watchable as well and easier to share with others.
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The Naked Beast
Posts: 1028 Location: A Blue Planet |
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Many of these titles, I have waited patiently for its R1 DVD release. I am glad that I did. I must say that, for some series I watch one or two episodes online somewhere to feel it out, to see if I will potentially like it. I usually like most of the stuff I see and usually await for news that someone has licensed it. I hope that they will have a release date for Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion R2 and Gundam 00: Season 1 in the near future. The one thing that I can not stand is what some people I know do: downloading a whole series because they thought it was not worth paying for but still worth seeing. Last edited by The Naked Beast on Mon Feb 02, 2009 2:53 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Top Gun
 Posts: 5308 |
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It's really a devastatingly simple concept. If no one at all paid for anime/games/music/movies/whatever, no anime/games/music/movies/whatever would be made. At all. You can draw your own conclusions from there.
(This isn't to say that one should necessarily feel obligated to buy every last thing that one sees, but erring on the side of buying can do nothing but help the industry.) |
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SailorButterfly
 Posts: 152 Location: Pike Road, AL |
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This is my stance on it. Considering all the anime distributors that have been going under or canceling titles lately, I'm scared about the state of the anime industry. The more people that pirate instead of buy, the worse it will get...and soon we won't be able to get anime at all. I downloaded some in college when I first discovered anime, back before it was easily accessible, and when I was broke. When I graduated and got a job, though, I also got a conscience. Like LuckySeven, I've since bought or rented the titles I watched for free to make up for it. I don't download anything anymore. I've grown up past that. |
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GrinfilledCelt
 Posts: 75 Location: I wish I were in Ocqueoc. |
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It would be nice to be wealthy enough to pay for all the anime I download and have legitimate dvds for everything I own. I really do want to pay the creators of my favorite anime for their labors to bring me the fine entertainment that they do. I don't have that option. You can tell how much I like a show by the amount of my drool on the copies they have at Best Buy. I recently acquired a copy of Azumanga Daioh at half price when they closed down a local FYE store. I was delighted to have it, but it was foolish of me to spend even that much and I had been drooling over that one for five years. Farruinn is correct when he points out that there is a lot of stuff well worth seeing but not worth buying. This is a problem when your only legal option is to pay top dollar for a show to find out if it is worth seeing at all. If you are only considering the stuff that you can buy, you're missing out on an awful lot of very good stuff that you can't because it just isn't available over here. Tony K. knows the dirty little secret that the US doesn't recognize foreign copyrights. Of course, all that changes when something gets licensed. Still, you have a much better chance of being hit by lightening than busted for downloading or uploading copyrighted materials. I refuse to feel guilty for downloading, especially stuff that isn't legitimately available. Nobody feels guilty because they don't buy everything they see on tv, what's so different about anime? You can say that tv is supported by ads, but so is anime - in Japan. Do the Japanese pay for the American tv shows they download. No, but not that many people over there download American tv - probably because most of it isn't worth seeing - but that doesn't stop Hollywood from complaining about it. Things are changing. You see more and more anime being streamed online for free. I think that's a good thing overall. I now have to put up with much hated advertising just like watching tv, but it makes me feel better knowing that it provides much needed revenue to an industry that I love so it can keep providing me with more anime to watch. |
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