Forum - View topicAnswerman - What's With The Bootlegs On Amazon?
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Brand
 Posts: 1028 |
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Yeah, I really feel people are reading way to much into the whole Universal Studios thing. When I saw the logo come up on Arslan, my first thought was like "I guess Universal is producing shows in Japan." Not "OMG universal bought out Funimation!" Same for the distro, sounds like normal B2B stuff.
So I just compared the amount of anime on Netflix and Amazon Prime and they are actually pretty close. Netflix has 80 and Amazon has "84" but some of those are miscategorized so lets say it is closer to 70. The thing is Amazon selection is weird. Like most of what Netflix has are or were pretty big titles with a lot of popularity. The Amazon selection has more movies (though nothing big) and then all shows are pretty much somewhat older shows with very few in HD. It does say to me that they don't care much about anime and given there are site like CR and Funi (or even Hulu) with so much more anime maybe they don't want to bother to compete. I use Amazon Prime but I've mostly watched kids shows or British historical dramas. Last edited by Brand on Fri Jun 26, 2015 10:54 am; edited 2 times in total |
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Primus
 Posts: 2761 Location: Toronto |
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I read that first response and couldn't help but wonder if Justin forgot he's talking about 4K content in regards to anime fans. Anime fans that are still buying physical media in 2015. If there was ever a market for niche appeal high end home video releases whose superiority comes more from the power of suggestion than discernible quality, anime fans seem like a good bet.
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Buzz201
Posts: 266 |
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I heard a rumour Amazon Instant Video had a rule that all of their content had to be exclusive to their service, consequently a lot of content providers were put off. I don't how true that is though...
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lavmintrose
Posts: 90 |
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I hope the Universal deal does manage to push anime into people's awareness a bit more. I'm constantly stunned to see people who consider themselves film and TV fans - animation fans even - who can't name a single anime TV series other than Pokemon, or an anime film that isn't from Ghibli.
Some publication needs to do a list of like, "5 anime to watch on Netflix if you like Game of Thrones" or "if you like Avengers" or things like that. And not have it be all Shonen Jump stuff. ... but let me try not to get overly excited about what could happen when FUNi finally does something with Code Geass. |
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DerekTheRed
 Posts: 3544 Location: ::Points to hand:: |
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Amazon also drops an extra hurdle in front of small scale sellers by requiring them to upgrade to a pro seller account before listing products that have been historically reported as bootlegs. I imagine this does zero to stop the Taiwanese mega bootleggers.
EDIT: Sorry, I misremembered. They require a pro account to list DVDs with a msrp higher than $25, which they say is to fight bootlegged disks. |
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Hoppy800
 Posts: 3331 |
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Always buy anime goods from a reputable source (even if it means importing) and don't trust Amazon sellers for anime and anime related merchandise, same with Ebay, getting fakes of anime goods is highly likely from there as well. However some reputable auction sites can yield bootlegs (Yahoo Japan auctions has had issues with fakes every now and then).
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Angel M Cazares
 Posts: 5424 Location: Iscandar |
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On the 4K question, what I wish is for Japanese publishers to really embrace it. But I want NA publishers to stick to 1080. This mind sound like a bad deal for NA costumers, but I think that having a difference in high definition can forever put reverse importation fears to rest.
I am confident that the distribution deal with Universal will be a positive thing for Funimation, but Justin words have made me a bit nervous. Still, I hope things work out well for Funimation. And I am very glad to hear that Amazon removed some of their anime bootlegs listings. |
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Keichitsu0305
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Back in middle school, there was only one time I bought a bootleg on purpose because I didn't have enough money at the time to buy it at FYE or Best Buy (also this was before I found out about RightStuf.com). The last time I bought a bootleg on accident was when I wanted an official Japanese film poster and film pamphlet (kinda cool that Japan theaters still give those out) but they turned out to be a poor photocopies.
The "smartest" offenders are those who release bootlegs to anime that are already available from official licencors. For example, I wanted to buy season 4 of Natsume's Book of Friends and decided to buy on Amazon for a change of pace. Except I got back at least 20 results from bogus Hong Kong and Taiwan bootlegs that look nothing like the NIS America releases. 
Same with merchandise; I stick to CD Japan or Ami Ami but some Amazon retailers were ranging from $20 - $150 for a fake plushie or keychain. It's a total mess.  I like to import some exclusive merchandise but, unless I know a trusted import service, then it's easy to fall prey to fakes.
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18186 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Actually, I was told by an Amazon rep that this does apply to Blu-Rays but does not apply to DVDs. I've never had any problem with bootlegs on buying BDs or DVDs on Amazon marketplace, though I almost always am buying from one of 2-3 companies that have been established for years (such as Deep Discount DVD). I won't touch eBay because of getting burned a couple of times there, though. |
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shirou.sama
Posts: 30 |
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Last year, I purchased a Sailor Mercury Figuarts figure that was marked "Ships from and sold by Amazon.com." and it was clearly bootleg.
Returning it had a few extra steps because they wanted to know why I thought it was a bootleg and how I was able to tell. |
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fearlessEdition
Posts: 3 |
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But hey, it's still exciting that we might be seeing some of the Funi shows on Target shelves...probably.
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Nonaka Machine Gun B
 Posts: 819 |
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Amazon Prime is very new. I've been going through their free content the last two ro three months. It's pretty limited, on top of not having much worth watching to begin with. I've gone through their entire free Comedy Film category, and I'm pretty sure I've seen all the films worth watching as of last night(Listen Up Philip). And that's the mainstream stuff. Anime can't be too far ahead, or ahead at all.
Of course, there is also the pay-per-view/rental stuff, but I'm not gonna look at that until I've exhausted the free material; I'm already paying for the subscription after all. |
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Via_01
 Posts: 551 |
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It's a bit hard for fans around here NOT to buy bootlegs if they want to, say, decorate their rooms with anime posters and stuff. There are SOME "distributors" (as in, stores that sell goodies) of anime merchandise here in Chile, but they usually rely on imported products, which are expensive as hell thanks to taxes (same story with DVDs and Blu-rays). This intimidates fans, who often decide to buy a bootleg instead of the real thing (and having stuff shipped here from abroad is a luxury that not everyone can afford). I'm rather well-off, and sometimes I order some items from the US or Japan, but even I have some bootleg blu-rays in my (small) collection simply because I can't afford paying three times the original price for a single disk.
To be fair, these bootlegs usually almost, ALMOST, look like the real thing, so it has never bothered me too much. Or maybe I'm just too used to cheap things. Who knows. |
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EricJ2
 Posts: 4016 |
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In the US, 4K is already shaping up to be, if not THE major disaster that pops the current home-theater "Digital vs. disk" bubble, at least is going to leave a few heads rolling: From start to finish, the entire technology has been based on studios and hardware companies believing their own myths about the consumers, and now they're so busy listening to the voices in their own heads, they can't hear each other's. The hardware companies stake their year's profits on the belief that customers will run out and early-adopt the first new standalone-player or big screen format that shows up at Best Buy because it's new, with no consideration for longterm shelf-life, price, or title availability. The studios providing the software will swear on a stack of bibles that "Disks are dying" (especially if they can kill them off themselves), and that customers will rush to the ease and convenience of digital libraries, with no consideration for longterm ownership, print quality, or streaming/download bandwidth speed. Can you see the fundamental problem in the above two premises? If you do, it's not hard, as it's already been happening for the last two CES's, which is why there's so little that's already hit the shelf. The Digital Bits site regularly (with a touch of paranoia toward Warner's disk-phobia) soapboxes against these current delusions, as the home-theater fan that would constitute the first half, and run out and buy new hard-disk players, tend to be those hardcore collectors who want to keep their movies on disk, and consider digital an "insult", a "swindle" and a "studio power-grab". Studios, in words of few syllables, you're making the wrong people your enemies--which you literally can't afford to do--and it's going to leave you without the right kind of friends when you need them. I'm a middle-early adopter at heart; I got in on Blu-ray with a PS3, and will defend Blu 3D to my last breath, and even I'LL be glad when this 4K capper to post-Blu studio delusions blows over, in whatever disastrous 9/11 form it takes. I'm just worried how studios will spin this, in their own fantasies that it wasn't their fault everything went wrong--Ten bucks says they'll go down with the "See, we TOLD you disks were dying" ship...
(And as for why few Japanese 4K titles--They're usually about two years behind us, which means they only recently got into Blu-rays.) Last edited by EricJ2 on Fri Jun 26, 2015 3:00 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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configspace
Posts: 3717 |
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Regarding Amazon Prime Video for anime, I do want to warn people that:
1) the quality is crap 2) a fair amount--most of the Sentai titles I checked out--were the broadcast version, not home video version. This goes for titles that have been added to Prime a good while after their DVD/BD release. So if you decide to "purchase" the videos, you are getting ripped off IMO. |
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