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The Xenos wrote:

Though one thing that makes this a unique fan item is that we have random headbands like a One Piece or Full Metal Alchemist logo instead of a regular Naruto one. It's like a signature of Roger Moore on a photo of Sean Connery in metal headband form.

This is a little OT, but were you at the Artist Alley of AnimeNext? I think I saw your booth there.

The bunny and kitty are so cute, and they are even of matching colours! Very Happy

kokoroAngel wrote:

The bunny and kitty are so cute, and they are even of matching colours! Very Happy

They really are! Zac, where do you find all of these pictures?

The Xenos wrote:

Now where we could run into trouble someday is that we sell Naruto headbands. Yes, we are competing with the legit ones in the dealers room. Though I do belive we keep an ear out for any cease and desist. Also, we argue that ours are of a superior and somewhat handmade quality.

this is what i read: "we break the law, but if anybody catches us, we'll be sure to stop. plus, ours are better, so we should be able to make and sell them."

it seems like you're trying to justify breaking the law. so your headbands are better made? it doesn't mean anybody can make them and sell them when they're already licensed to another company. trust me, this would not be a grey area for a copywrite or trademark lawyer. what is more likely is that you're not worth confronting. if you were making any sizable amount of money, then i think you might be under a little more scrutiny.

anime, manga, and video games are all about marketing. they're created as a means to market other objects for profit. the response your friends got was pretty thorough. i don't see what you're trying to add to their defense. you're basically saying you and your friends operate on the notion that if you don't get caught, it's alright.

That's the Universal Law. "Anything and everything is legal, as long as you do not get caught". Wink

the scary part isn't that there are people who break the law. it's that they think they can justify it and expect other people to buy their rationalizations.

hanachan01 wrote:

And I don't mean 12 year old Ed. Shota is weird. In my state, New Jersey, 16 is the age of consent. Ed's 16 for most of the series, and I don't like fics with Ed being any younger than 16. I'm talking older Ed, like his age in the movie, you know? Also, I remember Lust(or maybe Envy?) saying in the 5th laboratory that once Ed joined the military, he wasn't a child anymore.

Oh, so we're determing pedophilia by age of consent laws in certain states? Ok, so what do the laws of your state say about sodomy and gay marrage? Yeah, let's rate the apropriateness of yaoi porn doujins by state laws. Brilliant....

Listen, yaoi fans, by the very definition of the term yaoi is pornographic and meaningless. "no climax, no punch line, no meaning." It's not shonen ai, it's an x-rated parody. Now I like x-rated parody doujins too, but I certainly not to think too deeply about them. They're for surface level responces, arousing laughter or.. um.. other baser emotions. They're not supposed to be taken seriously and if you're really thinking this hard about them, stop, just stop. Please, grow up. This isn't the holy grail or any literary masterpeice. It's porn! Enjoy it, but quilt hyping it up everywhere you go.

One knows when one has grown up when whatever that is the latest fad of adolescene, becomes annoying and distasteful. Wink

Last edited by The Xenos on Sun Jun 25, 2006 1:31 pm; edited 1 time in total

hanachan01 wrote:

The Xenos wrote:

Though one thing that makes this a unique fan item is that we have random headbands like a One Piece or Full Metal Alchemist logo instead of a regular Naruto one. It's like a signature of Roger Moore on a photo of Sean Connery in metal headband form.

This is a little OT, but were you at the Artist Alley of AnimeNext? I think I saw your booth there.

I wasn't tehre, but the main guys who run it were.

bink1227 wrote:

The Xenos wrote:

Now where we could run into trouble someday is that we sell Naruto headbands. Yes, we are competing with the legit ones in the dealers room. Though I do belive we keep an ear out for any cease and desist. Also, we argue that ours are of a superior and somewhat handmade quality.

this is what i read: "we break the law, but if anybody catches us, we'll be sure to stop. plus, ours are better, so we should be able to make and sell them."

it seems like you're trying to justify breaking the law. so your headbands are better made? it doesn't mean anybody can make them and sell them when they're already licensed to another company. trust me, this would not be a grey area for a copywrite or trademark lawyer. what is more likely is that you're not worth confronting. if you were making any sizable amount of money, then i think you might be under a little more scrutiny.

anime, manga, and video games are all about marketing. they're created as a means to market other objects for profit. the response your friends got was pretty thorough. i don't see what you're trying to add to their defense. you're basically saying you and your friends operate on the notion that if you don't get caught, it's alright.

Well, welcome to the situation of fanart in artist alley. Welcome to the grey area of living in any country with laws! We don't live inside a law book. People technically break laws everyday. Police can see this and make judgement calls as to the ethics of the actions. Laws are applicable when they are enforced and when society argrees upon them. There are many laws that are often ignored for practicality or because strict enforcement just wouldn't work. If Boston police gave out tickets for jaywalking, everyone in the city would be fined. This isn't even to mention the outdated laws and old ones still on the books that were made for a previous era. Of course, I think some could argue current copyright laws are outdated in this digital age and the lawmakers redesigning them have no understanding of the technolgogy. (Ted Stevens defiantely comes to mind.)

Like I just joked, in many states homosexuals break the law, but they would argue their lifestyle is ethical. Other examples of laws in flux could be the marijuana issue and, most relevent here, the downloading of copyright material.

It goes back to how strict copyright laws need to be enforced. Some companies are putting software on music CDs to monitor your computer (look up Sony who is currently getting sued by three states over this). I thought I heard something about attempts to limit mp3s only to your computer and mp3 player, so you couldn't even load a friend anything to hear. It is getting to sound like the RIAA doesn't want you copying mp3s from your CDs. Perhaps they feel downloading mp3s using their approved software controls the consumer more. This, to me, encroaches on personal freedoms and is as wrong as the wild mass sharing of copyright materials. Sadly, the people who make the laws do not understand the technolgy and are lobbied (and possibly just plain paid off) by the giant media and electronics companies. Again, I point you to Ted Stevens. The man is clueless about the internet, having once propsed FCC fines based on US TV broadcast standards to be put on the internet. Sadly, this man is the chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. This man is a major force in writing telecommunications law. God help us, because right now the issue of net neutrality is being determined by this man and others being lobbied by media giants.

So really, who are making these copyright laws? Sure, I don't want to mindless anime fan downloading fansubs all day making them, but I also question the control of media giants in them. I question if the people are being

Anyway, I am digressing a bit, but I make the point in tht I question the strictness of laws and who makes them. Now, the anarchist and selfish downloader thinks there should be no laws and people should be able to download for free. That's not right either. More in line with this, the fan artist who copies a character's image from an anime then sells mass produced prints is not right either.

Also, mind you I said only a handful of the designs are liscenced to a compnay. Though yes, technically the others have copywritten logos, but there is no forseeable chance of them ever being made. No one is making a the joke prop of a One Peice Naruto headband.

Also, again, I am pointing out the difference between this and fanart. I said these are labor intensive products, hand by our booth assmbled at at least one point. They are asking money for that work. Plus like I said, those Naruto ones are the most questionable, but the rest are much less grey.

My argument is, how much effort was put into the product by the fan artist. How original is the work and what labor was done to create that design? From what I understand of what has been said by conventions, particularly what Otakon's press releases said, this is how those who run artists alley determine the legitimacy of fanart.

Oh and if you want to get into a strict interpretation copyright laws, let's ban all the yaoi at cons aling with the rest of the fanart. Seriously, there needs to be a grey area otherwise artist alley becomes dead.

Last edited by bink1227 on Sun Jun 25, 2006 1:46 pm; edited 1 time in total

questioning the law and breaking the law are two different things. one is a logical and ethical debate over what purpose a law serves to society. the other is unethical. this all comes down to ethics. is it ok to break the law when nobody is looking? no, it's not okay. laws exist because people don't know how to behave themselves. if everybody acted ethically, then they wouldn't need to be told how to behave. since it's easier to cheat, though, we've all got to be babysat and told what's right and what's wrong.

let's take a look at how outdated laws get overturned. the anti-sodomy law is a great example. some guy was arrested in his house for having consentual sex with his boyfriend. he was charged under the anti-sodomy law. he got a lawyer and they took the case up to the supreme court, where the court found that this law was completely unconstitutional.

laws concerning copyrighted material and downloading are being developed, but that doesn't mean that in the interim, everybody gets a carte blanche to steal whatever they want to. and if you had material you owned the copyright to and you were trying to sell it, i am sure you'd have a different attitude on the enforcement of such laws.

selling fan stuff and justifying with the excuse that you don't agree with the law is not challenging the law. it's BREAKING THE LAW.

bink, you totally ignored the part where I explained we looked at the rules that cons have for Artists Alley. We are pointing out that, according to what is said by those running cons, they look at the labor put into the art and that the work is not mass produced. Unline prints, we have to do more than just make an image and hit the print button.

The cons make the rules. We follow them. The people who run this company are in close communications with those who run the conventions. They are more on top of what is allowed in artist alley than I am.

Actually, I think the rules we bend the most may be the weapons policy. Thankfully, conventions have been pretty leinient toward some of the heavier props we have on display.

Actually, we recently started seeing kunai being sold in the dealers room. I don't know if they were liscened or just from Japan. I heard this from a friend on security at Anime Boston. It seems the ones the dealers room was selling were made of metal and a security risk. The con had to crack down on those. The ones we sold were made of plastic or a rubber and were made for conventions as cosplay items. There are no legitimate cosplay kunai being sold.

Please, go to a con, talk to the people running them. Don't come in here with your black and white view of laws and try to fit everything into them. There are people running these cons, who my friends talk to, who are dealing with these laws in real life and working out how to apply them. Right now, you're still stuck in a law book. My friends are dealing with the people figuring out how to apply them.

your friends are dealing with people who are figuring out how to get around them. last i checked, conventions didn't create copyright laws. just because they say it's okay to have a booth where illegal goods are sold does not make it any more legal. if your friends are selling things that are licensed for production to another entity, then they're breaking the law. i don't see how that could be grey.

conventions are usually run (or at least started) by fans, and fan art is important to some people. i don't believe making fan art is against the law. what is definitely against the law, though, is selling that art.

Okay, so you guys dont agree with me, I guess I am in the wrong country:

As for manga that appeal to the 18 and up (action adult)

-Naruto (this is shonen 14 and up, not enough mature themes here, too kiddie for me)
-One Piece (Shonen too)
-Death Note (good reading but not in the genre)
-Worst (Good pick, this is one)
-Berserk (Good one)
-Tenjou Tenge (Good reading, but shonen too)
-Ragnarok (shonen, doesnt count)
Akira (Good pick)
Eva (Giant robo, mecha, shonen too)
FMA (Not extreme enough, shonen)

So from your list, I just pick 3 so you still have 7 fingers to fill out, let me help you on that, vagabond, battle royale, sword of the inmortal, basilisk and that's it? I dont remember anymore than that.

Zack, my rant may be not well written because my mother language is not english (here you are to edit it anyway, is your job, right?) but you cant deny that this market is flooding with goth and shojo crap, there are titles that I dont even know the name but you have to see in the cover that is the same crap all over again...the average girl making friends with millionaire cute boys or artists or the generic stuff, how come france have 15 books of Soten no ken, 20th century boys complete, monster complete, pound for pound, Baki, fist of the north star complete and so many more that I dont know, Worst have 14 books in japan and since it was published here there are no more than 3-4 books, that's all.

So your answer confirm my suspicions about it, and you come and tell me that I need to support the companies? where is Gantz?, Koroshiya ichi? the millions of yakuza and samurai/ninja manga titles unknown here?

All you yaoi/shojo fans are at fault at this, the companies know how to put the generic candy in your mouth and you guys are going to pay for it.

America is flooding the market with penny a dozen licenses of manga that is read just for a handful of people overseas and Zack is afraid to tell that in his column, that america lineup of manga sucks bad.

I guess scanlations have a use after all.

ichido reichan wrote:

As for manga that appeal to the 18 and up (action adult)

-Naruto (this is shonen 14 and up, not enough mature themes here, too kiddie for me)
-One Piece (Shonen too)
-Death Note (good reading but not in the genre)
-Worst (Good pick, this is one)
-Berserk (Good one)
-Tenjou Tenge (Good reading, but shonen too)
-Ragnarok (shonen, doesnt count)
Akira (Good pick)
Eva (Giant robo, mecha, shonen too)
FMA (Not extreme enough, shonen)

So from your list, I just pick 3 so you still have 7 fingers to fill out, let me help you on that, vagabond, battle royale, sword of the inmortal, basilisk and that's it? I don't remember anymore than that.

(When I said "Ragnarok", I meant "Sword of the Dark Ones", which was originally titled "Ragnarok", I apologize for the confusion.)

You said action, and action is a very broad genre, but it seems that you're constraining it only to a very specific subclass, action-oriented seinen (a lot of seinen is ecchi romantic comedy stuff, a la Ai Yori Aoshi). I am not a big fan of action seinen (though I am a fan of Monster and Ray), so I can't really provide too many more examples off the top of my head. I'm also not familiar with the manga "climate" in France, so I really can't comment on that either.

But what I can tell you is that overall, it seems that action seinen just doesn't do well in American, and shoujo does. I'm not too sure what you mean by "gothic" manga. The way I see it you could either be talking about a) gothic shoujo/josei manga such as Godchild, Alichino, or X, of which there really aren't that many, b) gothic action titles such as Hellsing or... well, i can't even really think of anything else, or c) gothic-style "global manga" such as Shutterbox, Bizenghast, and Princess Ai, of which there does seem to be quite a bit. The market usually gets saturated with what sells, which in turn drowns out what doesn't sell, so I can understand why you'd be angry if you favorite genre was one of the latter, and your least favorite one of the former.

Last edited by Ashkah on Sun Jun 25, 2006 4:58 pm; edited 1 time in total

@ichido -

Sorry to imform you, but no one person has any right to determine what is or isn't considered to be good anime/manga. That decision is left up to the individual person in relation to their own personal tastes. Don't assume that just because YOU don't feel as if there are any good selections in the american market, that everyone else automatically agrees with you.

From the sound of it, it seems as if you are designating one or two particular genres as being superior to all the rest, and the lack of suck series under these genres justifies what you consider to be a lack in good quality selections in the US. But the truth of the matter is that no one genre is better than another.

The only true way to determine the worth of a series is to open it up and read the first few chapters and get a feel for the story. If you still aren't too interested, then it's not the series for you. Personally, I have favorite series which fall all over the genre map, yaoi/shounen-ai, shoujo, shounen, action, adventure, fantasy, samurai, romance, drama. I have fave series which fall under all of those categories, and I don't consider any one of those to be superior to another.

Truthfully, that type of question is better represented as an opinion and should have been directed more as a rant than an actual question to be answered, because there is no way to answer that question without adding in the answerer's own personal bias.

And as far as what is more widely available, the manga companies looks at statistics and trends when deciding what to license and what not to. If one particular type of series is selling better than another one, then they are going to continue to license that type of series until the fad/craze/trend/whatever you want to call it dies down and transfers over to a different one. They also look at what is popular over in Japan at the time, and popular genres are constantly jumping back and forth over there. So there is no telling what will end up on the shelves next, unless you're one of those who follows that type of thing.

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