Letters

Quickie comment here. I welcome all letters, positive and negative. Especially negative. I mean, someone's gotta keep me honest. Just one thing. If you choose to flame me, be prepared to be ignored, or flamed back. One individual recently wrote me a long, nasty, condescending letter in which he essentially condemned my entire writing style and lectured me on how to make it better. When I told him to take a flying leap, he accused me of not accepting criticism. I told him not to bother writing me anymore. I accept criticism. But I don't listen to a-holes.

And now, yet another word from Ryan Matheuszik...

It has recently come to my attention, through a number of emails received off my webpage, that some anime fans have developed the incredibly nasty habit of capturing anime onto their computers as MPEGs and then posting these video files on the internet. We're not talking about a five-minute clip here, a 40-second clip there. These people are capturing and posting entire movies, entire seasons of anime, and then making these pirate copies available via FTP download.

Apparently as VCD technology and high-speed internet connections become more prevalent, people have found it easier and easier to pirate anime. This is a travesty! The anime industry is not a large industry like Hollywood, where they can absorb 10,000 or 20,000 lost sales. The anime industry is a small, niche market, and cannot afford the loss of revenue these pirate copies represent.

And we're not talking about Fansubs or the occasional bootleg you make for your best friend here, we're talking about people who distribute illegal copies of anime to large amounts of people, sometimes for personal profit.

VCD and online MPEG piracy is just the newest form of large-scale piracy in the anime community. Piracy groups have been distributing bootlegged anime via parcel-post for years now. When eBay opened, they moved right in. Copying to a video data file and posting on the net is just another step for these morons who care nothing for the effect they have on the average fan.

I've heard it all before, from "it doesn't really hurt anyone", right up to the ludicrous "pirating anime actually HELPS the industry by promoting anime". It's all just desperate rationalisation by greedy individuals who want to benefit from the commercial anime available in North America today, but who are too self-centered to contribute back to the anime community by purchasing, and therefore supporting, the compaines that release anime in our native language. And in the end, all they hurt is us, the real anime fans, who pay for our anime.

The anime companies have to make up the lost profits somehow, and as any first year economics student can tell you, the less copies of a tape sold, the smaller the next print run, and the smaller the batch of tapes being produced, the higher the cost per tape. Anime tapes are already higher priced than Holywood releases due to the much smaller print runs they produce, but large-scale piracy does nothing more than drive the cost up further for the real fans. These pirates are supporting themselves on the pocketbooks of true anime fans everywhere.

Any person who pirates anime and posts it on the internet or distributes it on any other large scale has no right to call him or herself an anime fan. These people are only serving to damage the small, pocket industry so many of us fought for and supported all these years. And that's the bottom line.

-Ryan
ryanm6@uniserve.com | (http://users.uniserve.com/~ryanm6)

Myself, online MPEG piracy both disgusts and amuses me. Disgusts me, because these people have glamorous views of themselves, as if they were fansubbers. Amuses me, because I can't believe anyone would be so cheap as to prefer to spend all that time to download an often crappy-looking MPEG-1 file when they could just pay $20 - $30 and buy the tape.

Now, people will remember that I covered MP3 sites in this column, so I don't have a problem with the distribution of small tastes of an anime, just as I didn't think it was wrong to have MP3s on one's site for individual tracks. However, I got a bit squeamish when it came to providing an entire CD on a site, and similarly I have to stand with Ryan when it comes to distributing entire anime series on the web.

Piracy. It sucks, but we're gonna have to find ways to live with it. By that, I don't mean accept it. For example, as computer speed, bandwidth, and server space continue to increase, eventually you will be able to download pirated DVDs, just as people download PlayStation games today. Fans must ostracize those who pirate DVD anime, in precisely the same way we do bootleggers and people who want fansubs of commercially available anime.

Comments, anyone?

On Apollo Smile:

I'd have to agree with you about Apollo Smile. She was at a recent 'convention' in Toronto (I use quotations because Anime and Marvel/DC Comic dealers do NOT belong in the same venue >:P ) , and I don't think I've ever moved so fast in my life as I did when I fled the area after hearing her voice. The character is just plain awful. >_<

Regards,

Bert Van Vliet, alias SkyKnight
http:\\www.bgcrisis.com
skyknght@sentex.net

And now, an opposing view (among other opinions):

Hmm...well, as far as watching anime for the cheese factor goes, I'll tentatively say "yes". There's very view anime-or movies-that I don't tend to make fun of while I watch them, not because I don't like them, but because I'm that annoying sort of person. Of course, when watching something truly awful, like the Ranma anime, people usually don't mind, and it's true that nowadays the only reason I watch new Ranma anime is to make fun of it (which is rather sad, now that I think about it). ;p

Of course, it's a little different in the theatre; though I've only a couple of times watched anime theatrically, politeness dictates that one at least keeps their voice down.

And on a totally different note, you take Apollo Smile too seriously. She's funny. ;p Of course, you already know about that, since I sent you that essay way back when. ^_^

Blade kumonryuu@hotmail.com

Apollo Smile works as "camp", where you laugh at her rather than with her. The feeling that I get from her and her fans is that they don't understand that she's camp. (In a further letter, Blade disagreed, saying her fans do understand.)

I asked for comments on how pricing affected your anime purchasing decisions, and the comments rolled in. Here's a few of them:

I agree with you about anime translators - I don't think they're out to gouge anyone, although I do wish for them to sell more than two episodes per tape.

I do judge how much anime I get per tape, but my allowances for less episodes and more money vary depending on what I think of the anime.

FREX: Evangelion, although I wish I got more episodes per hape, is something I'll buy all the episodes of because I enjoy it so much. If I enjoyed it less (say, the Tenchi in Tokyo level), then I'd probably not finish the series.

On the other hand, something that has four episodes at a decent (not more than $30) price is likely to tempt me into buying the first tape, if only to see what it's like. (Those evil, conniving businessmen at Pioneer have my number. :)

John Fiala jcfiala@CSSLTD.com

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I personally think you are doing the right thing in your rant--counter ranting for the sake of those companies bringing over the anime we all enjoy. However, I really don't like how you portrayed them. It's important to keep in mind the difference between the people and the company. They do different things.

For your information, I do consider heavily when I spend $ to buy anime. I've turned away from anime that seems to be very prospectively appealing (namely Outlaw Star) because I cannot commit to collect due to lack of funds. Everything has a value, so I was told by some econ text book.

On a lighter note, I think there's a greater need for an English Last Exit for other languages than just a Last Exit in a different language. Especially Japanese and Chinese (on a whole, maybe not just Anipike). There's a great wealth of info out there...

Jeffy rotinoma@animefan.org

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I am writing in response to part one of your column, in which you decried the viciousness of some fans towards American companies.

First, on the subject of dubbing/subtitling: I find that people where I am aren't angered so much by subtitled tapes costing more, as by subtitled tapes appearing to be nothing more than the dubbed script sequenced to the Japanese speech. As one of many people who tries to practice his Japanee on subtitled anime, such things as the complete mistranslation of songs so the English fits the tune or running roughshod over cultural references is more than bothersome. Added on to this, the more-than-occasional practice of blacking out anything written in Japanese and replacing it with English, be it title screens or subheads or computer displays, regardless of the art involved in the text in those segments or the semi-transparency of hovering computer displays, can be maddening. I know I can't go against an industry for whom I'm the minority, but much of the time it looks like American distributors are trying to hide all things Japanese from their consumers. I'm sure most of this is inadvertent on their part, but the Japanese-language customers are currently second-class citizens in the anime field.

Frankly, beyond the dubbed/subtitled debate, there do seem to be some differences in the way certain companies market anime titles. I am particularly upset about one company's move for some of their newer series from three episodes a tape (for the first two tapes) to two episodes a tape without a change in price or hastening of the release schedule. Although I am unaware about the possible economic necessities of the situation, from the consumer end it really looks as if the first two tapes were longer for no better reason than to make the episode count look like their competitors'. It really tempts me to finish the series by buying the versions released by the original Japanese distributor, which although they were 6000 yen had 3 episodes a tape, came in clamshells, and included glossy liner notes with concept art. Compared to $30 per two episodes and a paper box, that's pretty good, and I can always get better at Japanese.

So on the subject of price for anime, I feel it makes a difference. If I'd been an anime fan longer, like some of the people I know who had to get tapes of Okinawan TV from US servicemen, maybe I'd think differently, but for me anime is much like a film at the movies; there's a lot of stuff I won't see for $7.50 a ticket that I would at a theater if the ticket is $4. With the huge amount of anime that has appeared in the past two years alone, one can certainly pick and choose series based on value-for-money. Why else would AnimEigo tout their (very reasonable) $7.50 price-per-episode for many of their series?

Most of the time, the distributors here are pretty fair about their monopoly power over distribution of a cool series. However, there are what I feel are occasional abuses of the fans' love for a series and their need to own it, and I am strongly in favor of not indulging the company that engages in those practices by continuing to buy its product.

Sincerely,

Benjamin J. Cooper (email address withheld by request)

That's a good letter, and you make some good points, such as your complaints against poorly translated subtitles. Sub fans want an accurate translation. That (and disliking English voice actors) is why they buy sub tapes. It only makes sense to use an accurate translation for the sub. Thankfully, the process of "dubtitling" isn't as common as it once was.

I'm afraid I do have to call you on one point, though. The case to which you're referring, where the first two tapes had three episodes, and then it dropped to two, is Sorceror Hunters, am I correct? Anyone who was surprised by the drop in episode count simply wasn't doing his or her math. Think about it. It's a 26-episode series. 26 is not divisible by 3, so the episode count had to drop at some point (or go up, but ADV had never released a 4-episode tape at that point, so that wasn't likely). I do think ADV made a mistake releasing the tapes with the extra episodes first, as the drop in episode count with volume 3 provided fodder for the conspiracy theorists.

I read your article on pricing, among other things. I do agree with you about the issue of price gouging and worse. But I do disagree about a couple of things. ADV films dubbed copies do have serious flaws in far too many of them. An anime dist from whom i had ordered Sorcerer Hunters volume 4 had to send back his entire shipment of over 20 tapes because the reproduction quality and sound track were badly flawed. With about 10-15 tapes that have been purchased I have had problems with the sound track, such as intermittent noise, and severe picture dropouts and white noise(the annoying white horizontal lines). One series that was very bad for this was 2 tapes from Those Who Hunt Elves series. I sent ADV several letters and E-mails, no response as yet.

h MARSHALL robert@harlock.net

You got me wrong. I don't disagree with you. In fact, I've had trouble with the same series, and I've been buying the sub. What I find laughable is the accusation that ADV is doing this intentionally to drive people away from tapes, toward DVD. That's just ridiculous.

Nice question. I would say those who live in the US and complain too much about pricing should check out other places in the world. Where I live, you can rent bootleg post third generation anime (and mostly hentai) for $3.00 for 3 days. There are some honest video clubs where you could rent original tapes for $3.00 a week, but most of the time their selection is limited (I rented "Legend of Crystania"; the tape was the same one you would get if you bought it). Do not even mention Blockbuster. Anything you could possibly get (the last time I checked and that was a long time ago) was either Dragon Ball, which is running on the local TV, or Pokemon, which is also running on TV. Fortunately, I am Chinese and have access to Chinese video clubs where I have rented some interesting, unusual anime, such as Mahoujin Guru Guru, some GS Mikami and Yamato Takeru among others.

I haven't mentioned anything about purchasing anime here. And here is the reason: you can't buy it here. More specifically, there is almost nowhere you could find anything worthwhile. In my case, I am fortunate to have a forwarding service in Miami, and I usually buy things on-line. However, that services does cost some extra dollars and, for instance, a DVD that you could get from, say, Amazon.com for $25.00 (sans shipping and handling) ends up costing me circa $40.00 (probably even $50.00 if I have to pay custom taxes). Even worse, there are some requirements from some companies for customers whose billing address is outside the US. They need you to send them a copy of your billing statement + picture ID + a photocopy of your credit card. Come on! What's the purpose of on-line shopping then?! As a result, when I buy anime from the US, I do it almost blindly. I simply don't care about the price, when such goods (can I say "luxury goods"?) can't be found here.

Now, I have given a perspective from somebody who lives in a small country lost in the map. How about those who live in Japan, where anime is supposed to be something of daily life? Anyone who have complained about getting "only" 6 or 7 episodes per $25.00 DVD (Fushigi Yuugi box, et al) , should check some prices of new items in CDJapan. To Heart costs 6040 Yens (circa $56.00) for a 60 minutes, two episodes, DVD. Sentimental Journey, a twelve episodes anime, which I plan to buy next month in DVD format, cost 26040 Yens (that's about $240.00 or so). And that's only twelve, 30 minutes, episodes. Doing some quick math, we are talking about circa $20.00 for a 30 mintues episodes... That is for somebody who lives in Japan. Now, for your worst case scenario: What if someone like me, wants such an item? Add CDJapan's shipping & handling + 7% credit card commission + my Miami forwarding service + custom taxes and I end up paying about $300.00. Wait for the US release? No chance. Series like this one will never hit the US. Nor series like Kakyuusei TV/Shin Kakyuusei, Doukyuusei 2, Pia Carrot, Tokimeki Memorial, et al (cheap plug-in: Hey, ADV/Softcel, are you reading this?). I have been told that second hand items are pretty cheap over there, but then again, do anyone knows of an on-line shop that accepts credit cards, ships outside Japan and sell such items? If someone does, please, tell me! BTW, kudos for Tokyopop.com for bringing import items from Japan.

Francisco Ho
Ho Kim Kiu
fxho@panama.c-com.net

Wow. Thanks for the sense of perspective. I'm glad I live in the USA... (I edited Francisco's letter a bit for length.)

One last, silly letter:

From the March, 1999 Last Exit:

"I'm expecting this commercial sometime soon:

"Introducing Pokécrunch, the cereal for Pokémasters! With red-and-white Pokéberries and 150 different Pokémallows that evolve in milk! They're Pika-chewy!! Pokécrunch! Gotta eat 'em all!"

Sorry about that."

I guess that means you haven't seen the Pokebits candy yet then, eh? Sweet tart style candy, not that good IMHO, in the shapes of your favorite characters. And yes, it actually says on the bag, "Gotta eat 'em all!"

*sigh*
--
Otis Viles: Mudder, RPGer, KMFDM fan, Internet Oracle Priest
cierhart@ic.net, http://ic.net/~cierhart
drey@stormclouds.mudsrus.com, http://stormclouds.mudsrus.com