This is in response to a blog post posted on another blog, but it won’t be mentioned further due to it being clearly troll bait. It’s pretty crazy what people can come up with to rationalize with themselves for being a tightwad. On with the show.
1. Anime companies get that people want their anime now, not months from now. English companies and sites have began to place shows online or licensed and released on DVD much earlier than years before.
2. The official subtitles are almost always superior to the fansub subtitles. Fansub groups come and go and vary greatly in terms of quality, professionalism, and accuracy. You’re far less likely to run into poor English grammar, spelling mistakes, goofy multi-colored subtitle fonts, and over the top explainations of why a word was used.
3. Good quality English dub voice acting and the choice between dub, sub, or neither. Some people like their anime differently and voice acting has come a long way in recent years. Anyone who’s bought much anime knows that.
4. Supports the anime industry and the workers to put the anime from an idea to animation. Generally speaking, you give your support if you like a form of media or a particular artist. It’s natural, shows your appreciation, and shows you want more of something.
5. Easy and convenient. Just drop by your local store, order online, rent, or barrow from a library. Plenty of ways of getting your anime.
FUNimation and others get it (it being the expectations and wants of the viewer) and and that’s why there have been so many changes with the anime industry.
I’ve always considered the presence and quality of a dub to be the major selling point of a dvd. It’s certainly one of the main criteria I use when choosing what dvds to buy.
Most of these arguments, when stated in the opposite sense, sound like they come straight from 5-10 years ago but people never bothered to take the time to actually see that these problems don’t generally exist anymore. This is sort of like how many people also bring up arguments about how “English anime DVDs are edited” based on having one article on some 4kids show like 5 years back, and somehow that means that all English releases “must be” like that. It’s just misinformation that people use to justify their lack of industry support, and I agree that that’s just annoying.
That being said… I would concede on the flipside that the industry still has some ways to go, especially for people who don’t live in major American urban centers. Many people don’t have a “local store”, and many live in areas that are region-blocked from the new English online content. Not that it’s ever an excuse, but the arguments would be a lot more compelling if they could come without the “Some restrictions apply” legal disclaimer.
Fansubs are superior to official subs. Official subs cannot, nor try to translate certain culture related things like puns.
I’m sick of this guerrilla marketing BS by companies claiming ‘official’ subs are better. They are not. Fansubs have a more literal translation if you are looking to experience culture.
Twitter: anime_gerad
There isn’t really any guerrilla marketing going, Joe. Official subtitles are pretty faithful. With fansubs you risk of people who have less understanding of the Japanese language. Fansubbers are many times people still learning and those who didn’t have it as their first language.
a number 6 reason would be the extra footage or the goodies that sometimes come with your purchase.
There’s plenty of reasons not to buy R1 DVDs.
Most importantly, would be the half-assed mastering process that causes drastic reduction to the quality in domestic releases. Japanese companies spend a lot more time and money into their mastering process, which is also evident from their DVD prices. American releases from six years ago suffer from massive chroma field blending, and all too particular noise which just destroys the grain and detail. It’s not as easy to tell the difference nowadays thanks to Japan’s active involvement in American releases; but with the exclusivity Japan maintains for their productions you can bet it’ll be a long time before Japan sends over first-rate masters to American publishers. Especially with series from ADV, which is thankfully dead now, it is all too apparent American audiences aren’t receiving anywhere near the same experience the Japanese do.
Companies hire out of the community. Chances are high that the person who translated the DVD you are watching used to watch fansubs or poor dubbing a decade ago. They may seem more professional thanks to their fat paycheck, but they’re not perfect in any sense of the word.
Extras usually include trailers and television commercials that weren’t on American television. Sometimes they have rough drafts from the groundwork and most usually always have a character profile section. It is very rarely anything worth paying 23 dollars for. Sometimes they have a making-of featurette or commentaries, which is quite interesting, but I rarely touch unless I am high as a kite.
There is no guarantee that Americans do not censor. It wasn’t safe to mention words such as, uncut, unedited or uncensored until nearly a year ago. Let’s face it, America possesses the presence of soccer moms, and until we do away with all of them, we are forever damned to second-rate content.
Dubs still suck. I like how they release anime sooner now, without the dub. And yet, I feel something is amiss when I see Japanese 2.0 and Japanese 5.1 as the only two options in settings. Oh well.
In any case, the only reason I buy DVDs nowadays is because I harbor some feelings of guilt and just want to support the industry. If possible, I want to save up enough money for a Blu-Ray player and start buying Japanese BDs. But since I’m poor, and American DVDs are all I can afford, I go with that.
Regardless of what the industry entails it cannot survive without customers, they are what keep it afloat without a shadow of a doubt. Although animators work in horrible conditions to my dismay, buying will enable them to keep making shows into the future. I buy DVD’s because I love owning the official product, I do the same with music and manga but only to a point. If I love what I’m seeing then I buy it and nothing that I’ll get sick of after a week.
We’ve moved from an age of people buying DVD’s as their main source of watching something to people downloading their content (videos, music, art, you name it). This is the age of the information highway and I hate to say it, but the only way I see it stopping is to force people to not download by suing. With the economy as bad as it is, people just aren’t going to shell out for something freely available to them. If the industry comes to a halt, it’ll be on everyone’s head.
In terms of how good fansubs are, some are good like dattebayo, but others are shitty. Official products (and I have plenty of DVD’s) don’t have problems at all. Sure the dubs may not be perfect but the translation itself is good. Of all the DVD’s I do have, there are only a few which I’d consider to have a poor dub so the dub sucking thing is of the past. Companies have got their act together, but some companies still make crappy products (hence 4Kids…).
A company can’t live off of liking something, it has to be of monetary value so just keep it in the back of your head.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say there is deliberate propagandizing, but I’ve often been sadly disappointed with official subs in my reviews (most notably the yellow sub fonts for Eureka Seven, which look worse than amateur.) In my experience it’s definitely not the case that official subs are uniformly of high quality.
I do buy anime, both to support the industry and as Jamaipanese said, because I think the idea of getting goodies is neat. I’m skeptical of assertions that downloading is the great evil, however – as Omo pointed out in a recent article, buying DVDs is not the only way to support the industry. I don’t feel it makes sense to automatically condemn those who don’t buy DVDs but put money into buying other products and supporting the industry that way.