4 ms·

> I sincerely do not believe you can turn a substantial amount of the people pirating anime into e.g. Crunchyroll subscribers. Yeah, not a chance. I periodica

> I sincerely do not believe you can turn a substantial amount of the people pirating anime into e.g. Crunchyroll subscribers. Yeah, not a chance. I periodically check what Crunchyroll has available, and it's always abysmal. Virtually nothing I'm interested in watching is ever on Crunchyroll. I don't think my tastes are very obscure, they don't even have Bubblegum Crisis, Patlabor or Macross right now. So even if they took away all possibilities for me to pirate anime, I still wouldn't subscribe to Crunchyroll.

yieldcrv 3y ago
Its straight up scary how much quality anime is jettisoned off of all streaming services and almost the internet entirely! A lot of the highest quality and revered things have owners that are too comfortable with their pre-streaming syndication options, and are too expensive to license. This is a dystopia, piracy is definitely the way. I always have to check that I’m not being a hipster about it, and I’ve shown lots of 20 year olds some older stuff and they’re all enamored with it and can see how their current options are functionally trash. (But the silver lining is that hot women are into anime now. Its not a counterculture thing for maladjusted people and its great to share this experience so casually)
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  It's really concerning to me, young people today seem to get stuck in these content ghettos and a lot of them don't even seem to be aware of it. If it's not in the streaming catalogue, they probably haven't heard of it. And when they hear about something they might initially be interested, but then all interest evaporates once you tell them they'll have to pirate it. It almost feels like media companies are erasing the past so that their modern slop doesn't have to compete with the portion of past content that was good (I'm not saying that all old anime was good of course. I just want to say this before somebody trots out the "ackshully, most old stuff was bad and you just don't hear about it anymore" argument.) Piracy lets you watch the best content of past eras, which gives you context to evaluate modern content. And a lot of modern content doesn't come out looking very good once you have this context. Fortunately classic literature is still easy to get, but with anime/movies it's becoming difficult.
  - yieldcrv 3y ago
    Hmm I hadn't noticed that as I find a way to download the thing and watch it with people I wouldn't say interest evaporates out of principle, they just arent set up to enjoy it. There are many hoops to jump through and then they cant play it on their same devices, more hoops if its possible at all.
jncfhnb 3y ago
As someone who watches a few shoes per year, I haven’t heard of any of these. Wikipedia says bubblegum crisis is an 8 episode one off from over 30 years ago. I’m amused at your definition of obscure.
- throwaway6734 3y ago
  Macross isn't an obscure show for those interested in Mecha shows like Gundam
  - erik_seaberg 3y ago
    They dubbed and spliced Macross with two other series to get enough episodes to syndicate as “Robotech,” which made it to a local TV station after school.
    - astrange 3y ago
      And the company who made Robotech has been legally blocking actual Macross ever since. It hasn't come out in any other form because they have the exclusive license and refuse to let anyone else touch it. …But that changed last year, so it may now appear somewhere, somehow.
  - jncfhnb 3y ago
    I’m sure you’re not wrong And yet https://xkcd.com/2501/ https://xkcd.com/2501/
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  Search for some "Top N anime" lists and you'll very frequently run into the names I mentioned. For instance: https://myanimelist.net/featured/1408/Top_10_Best_Cyberpunk_Anime_of_All_Time https://myanimelist.net/featured/1408/Top_10_Best_Cyberpunk_... Some more prominent examples they don't have: Ghost in the Shell (except for Arise, which TBQH is slop), Serial Experiments Lain, even Neon Genesis Evangelion (tbf, I think Netflix has it?). Here's a nice little taste of Bubblegum Crisis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an_0IIRDlc4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an_0IIRDlc4
omoikane 3y ago
> Virtually nothing I'm interested in watching is ever on Crunchyroll Curiously, Crunchyroll had virtually everything that we wanted to fansub back then. Their licensing coverage was sufficiently wide that a lot of us just stopped fansubbing, because everything had been "crunchyrolled".
hakfoo 3y ago
Much more than with many other media, anime/manga collections are a signal of personal allegiance and preference. For example, I can still recall the bitterness in the early US One Piece fandom when it seemed like Naruto and Bleach got all the marketing, the high-quality dubs, and merchandise galore, while they had to suffer through one of the most atrocious dubs in modern history and a manga release schedule that was 40 volumes behind Japan. I still have the tokens of this-- some untranslated copies found in secondhand shops and from fan-forum group buys, terrible figures, artbooks purchased at conventions long before the translated versions existed. Bookshelves full of print manga will not disappear for anything short of a house fire. The same with owned DVDs, or properly maintained pirate content. They remain an ongoing symbol of the commitment to these franchises. In a way that would make sense to mainstream marketers, it's more like sports memorabelia-- keeping the cards/jerseys/etc. of their favourite baseball players from their childhood-- than a bookshelf full of novels. Conversely, anything you consume on a "subscription service" basis will go poof when some MBA sees a KPI trending in the wrong direction. Can you really build the same anchored relationship with that sort of fragile foundation?
mike50 3y ago
Macross has been in licensing hell since the VHS days if I recall correctly.
ThrowawayR2 3y ago
And I thought I was an old fogey. That's like griping that today's broadcast television networks don't show the Andy Griffith Show[1], Leave It To Beaver, Mr. Ed., and the original Star Trek. [1] Which modern gamers may at least minimally know since Barney from the Half-Life series got his name from one of its characters.

yieldcrv 3y ago

Its straight up scary how much quality anime is jettisoned off of all streaming services and almost the internet entirely! A lot of the highest quality and revered things have owners that are too comfortable with their pre-streaming syndication options, and are too expensive to license. This is a dystopia, piracy is definitely the way. I always have to check that I’m not being a hipster about it, and I’ve shown lots of 20 year olds some older stuff and they’re all enamored with it and can see how their current options are functionally trash. (But the silver lining is that hot women are into anime now. Its not a counterculture thing for maladjusted people and its great to share this experience so casually)

mcpackieh 3y ago
It's really concerning to me, young people today seem to get stuck in these content ghettos and a lot of them don't even seem to be aware of it. If it's not in the streaming catalogue, they probably haven't heard of it. And when they hear about something they might initially be interested, but then all interest evaporates once you tell them they'll have to pirate it. It almost feels like media companies are erasing the past so that their modern slop doesn't have to compete with the portion of past content that was good (I'm not saying that all old anime was good of course. I just want to say this before somebody trots out the "ackshully, most old stuff was bad and you just don't hear about it anymore" argument.) Piracy lets you watch the best content of past eras, which gives you context to evaluate modern content. And a lot of modern content doesn't come out looking very good once you have this context. Fortunately classic literature is still easy to get, but with anime/movies it's becoming difficult.
- yieldcrv 3y ago
  Hmm I hadn't noticed that as I find a way to download the thing and watch it with people I wouldn't say interest evaporates out of principle, they just arent set up to enjoy it. There are many hoops to jump through and then they cant play it on their same devices, more hoops if its possible at all.

jncfhnb 3y ago

As someone who watches a few shoes per year, I haven’t heard of any of these. Wikipedia says bubblegum crisis is an 8 episode one off from over 30 years ago. I’m amused at your definition of obscure.

throwaway6734 3y ago
Macross isn't an obscure show for those interested in Mecha shows like Gundam
- erik_seaberg 3y ago
  They dubbed and spliced Macross with two other series to get enough episodes to syndicate as “Robotech,” which made it to a local TV station after school.
  - astrange 3y ago
    And the company who made Robotech has been legally blocking actual Macross ever since. It hasn't come out in any other form because they have the exclusive license and refuse to let anyone else touch it. …But that changed last year, so it may now appear somewhere, somehow.
- jncfhnb 3y ago
  I’m sure you’re not wrong And yet https://xkcd.com/2501/ https://xkcd.com/2501/
mcpackieh 3y ago
Search for some "Top N anime" lists and you'll very frequently run into the names I mentioned. For instance: https://myanimelist.net/featured/1408/Top_10_Best_Cyberpunk_Anime_of_All_Time https://myanimelist.net/featured/1408/Top_10_Best_Cyberpunk_... Some more prominent examples they don't have: Ghost in the Shell (except for Arise, which TBQH is slop), Serial Experiments Lain, even Neon Genesis Evangelion (tbf, I think Netflix has it?). Here's a nice little taste of Bubblegum Crisis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an_0IIRDlc4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an_0IIRDlc4

omoikane 3y ago

> Virtually nothing I'm interested in watching is ever on Crunchyroll Curiously, Crunchyroll had virtually everything that we wanted to fansub back then. Their licensing coverage was sufficiently wide that a lot of us just stopped fansubbing, because everything had been "crunchyrolled".

hakfoo 3y ago

Much more than with many other media, anime/manga collections are a signal of personal allegiance and preference. For example, I can still recall the bitterness in the early US One Piece fandom when it seemed like Naruto and Bleach got all the marketing, the high-quality dubs, and merchandise galore, while they had to suffer through one of the most atrocious dubs in modern history and a manga release schedule that was 40 volumes behind Japan. I still have the tokens of this-- some untranslated copies found in secondhand shops and from fan-forum group buys, terrible figures, artbooks purchased at conventions long before the translated versions existed. Bookshelves full of print manga will not disappear for anything short of a house fire. The same with owned DVDs, or properly maintained pirate content. They remain an ongoing symbol of the commitment to these franchises. In a way that would make sense to mainstream marketers, it's more like sports memorabelia-- keeping the cards/jerseys/etc. of their favourite baseball players from their childhood-- than a bookshelf full of novels. Conversely, anything you consume on a "subscription service" basis will go poof when some MBA sees a KPI trending in the wrong direction. Can you really build the same anchored relationship with that sort of fragile foundation?

mike50 3y ago

Macross has been in licensing hell since the VHS days if I recall correctly.

ThrowawayR2 3y ago

And I thought I was an old fogey. That's like griping that today's broadcast television networks don't show the Andy Griffith Show[1], Leave It To Beaver, Mr. Ed., and the original Star Trek. [1] Which modern gamers may at least minimally know since Barney from the Half-Life series got his name from one of its characters.