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Hey, Answerman! - Think Of The Children

Not to mention you're paying in yen, which is stronger than the US dollar?

tuxedocat wrote:

Here is a paradox; There are people like this who "pirate", but then buy a ton of stuff related to the title. Then there are people like me, who won't watch the title illegally, but won't spend any money at all on something that I couldn't ]preview in a legal way. What supports the industry more?

I guarantee people who buy a 100+ dollar figures and merchandise directly from Japan are supporting the series more than someone who buys a 30 dollar box-set from Funimation. If you go by Answerman's previous analysis, they only see about 15% of your sale money as a royalty and the rest goes to Funimation. So that means about 5 bucks on average goes to the original animators? 5 dollars VS 100+ merchandise; which, I might add, actually fuels the Japanese economy directly, not the American one? Not to mention you're paying in yen, which is stronger than the US dollar? 5 bucks converted into yen is even less than that due to conversion rate. It's better to create more of a demand in the Japanese market with your money. Even just importing a few 450 yen manga volumes does more, because your sales will actually be counted in that weekly ranking chart, unlike if you bought American. There's so many better and alternative ways to support a series than buying R1 releases.

Not anymore. The Yen fell drastically this year, and financial speculation states it's going to continue to drop as Japan is heading into another recession.

For importers, this is good news at the expense of a struggling economy. It sucks for Japan, but this could also be beneficial as the stronger dollar could entice more sales.

I suppose every bit helps, but for those who don't import, they'll be oblivious to it. I'm a figure collector, and you can bet I'll be taking advantage of our stronger dollar.

It's not as though a weaker Yen will mean our R1 prices will go down. If anything, I see them going up again this year. I suspect we'll start seeing anime prices heading above the $60 "sale" price by June.

But that's just a guess on my part.

I live in the U.S. so I like to support the economy here. I don't agree with your assessment that anyone is less than a fan if they don't import.

It's still more than 1:1 conversions, but I can live with the conversion rates;

I'm more concerned with EMS/SAL costs to be honest. I suppose the drop with supplement that, though.

Hell I've waited six to seven years for higursahi kai, [...] and even five years for dennou coil to get localized sometimes a persons patience just runs out.

ljaesch wrote:

A few months ago, they were watching a bit of Case Closed on the site; I made sure to stress to my 15-year-old that they needed to try to watch FUNimation's legal streams of the series at YouTube as much as possible.

Actually Detective Conan would be a great example of a show you have to pirate if you want to watch. One of the greatest and most iconic anime series of all time isn't available here. Sounds like a reason to watch fansubs to me. Tons of other countries in the world get it and air it, but not America.

I know what you mean. Why, only a mere 130 episodes of Case Closed are available for purchase.

There's nothing really wrong with this. Unless you're a very small country like Norway (who makes The Longest Journey video game series) foreign sales shouldn't matter that much. I doubt Nickelodeon cares if people in Budapest are downloading Spongebob Squarepants episodes; they can survive without the foreign market. Japanese sales are all that matter in terms of if a series is considered a success and gets more seasons or if it's a failure. Heck, it applies to American shows as well given some instances I've heard of series being more popular in the UK than the US. Granted, there's no proof outside the creator's word so he could be lying and just being butt-pained over being cancelled, so take it with a grain of salt I suppose.

Goku killed plenty of characters without giving it a second thought when he was a child. I'm not sure why Toriyama decided to make that shift later with adult Goku wanting to avoid killing anyone.

Toriyama fanboys seemed to have adopted this for their main characters but in a series about Ninja it makes the least amount of sense.

One-hundred-thirty sounds like a lot of episodes, but it's only like a fifth of the total number of episodes out there. It would be like a twenty-five-episode series only having five episodes released in English, and if you want to watch the other twenty you have to pirate.

There are exceptions to this. Like Toei ordering more Dragon Ball Kai episodes because it did very well overseas and we're possibly seeing another Big O situation with Deadman's Wonderland. Not to mention this has happened with several Japanese games that got more installments because it sold very well overseas.

TitanXL wrote:

ljaesch wrote: A few months ago, they were watching a bit of Case Closed on the site; I made sure to stress to my 15-year-old that they needed to try to watch FUNimation's legal streams of the series at YouTube as much as possible. Actually Detective Conan would be a great example of a show you have to pirate if you want to watch. One of the greatest and most iconic anime series of all time isn't available here. Sounds like a reason to watch fansubs to me. Tons of other countries in the world get it and air it, but not America.

I know what you mean. Why, only a mere 130 episodes of Case Closed are available for purchase.