In the end, I don’t like to support an industry that makes bad decisions. I remember way back in the day I bought a lot of Pioneer products, remember them? Then again, the now Genon is now gone from the US. Thinking over my collection I have a lot of Urban Vision too, which is funny for me since they don’t really release a lot of popular titles. I also remember (since I’m not home right now I can’t really look at my collection) that I have a few ADV and a ton of Central Park Media. Though thinking back I’m sure I bought a majority of those items relatively cheap. Actually, I’m almost positive that many of the companies I listed had a decent price on the item in question buying them up to six or so years ago.

I’m like any anime fan, if I see a title I love and I believe the dubbers will do a decent job I’ll buy it. I would have purchased Kanon if not for the pure evil produced by the English voice actors (I’m sorry Boone, it’s not for you). Yet I’ve found I’m rare in the fact I actually enjoy some dubs, so this is a crossroad for me. Subtitles are nice, but I like to see what the studio is trying to do as well to almost localize the product. If Bandai continues to make poor decisions then that’s their problem, I don’t see why I should support them for asking me to buy a DVD and make a donation to the ‘save the industry before fansubbers murder us foundation’.

Most companies out there (Bandai specifically) don’t seem to understand the very simple concept of “lower the price, more people will buy it”. Especially nowadays when you can illegitimately download pretty much any show you want for free.

I wouldn’t do so if anime didn’t cost $10, $15 or even $20 per episode.

Another thing, I’m not even sure if I want to support licensing in North America. To be honest, it’s a far better situation to have no licensing, since we’d get the shows through fansubbers anyway.

I’d love to know what kind of cut Japan get’s from the North American market anyway? DrmChsr0 made a good point about Japan. If you want to make the supporting the industry argument, I’d rather support Anime more directly if it were possible.

Anyway, I enjoy your rant Kana! It’s an issue that hit’s a sore spot on many an anime fan (lot’s of replies to this post eh? lol).

~Chris aka CanadaAotS

2. Japan hates the R1 companies, and would love the entire industry to die a horrible death so that they can come in as the “heroes” and trick everyone into directly contributing to their coffers by doing what the people want.

3. Bang for buck? You’ll only want more with that kind of thinking.

If said two episodes where the only two of an epic OVA, than I’d probably buy it.

But I’m not made of money, and I’m not interested at the moment in buying an anime series with just two episodes at a time for a price where I could get an entire series from other companies. :/

As other people have said though, if the bang was worth the buck or if there was more added value-wise than there need to be, if the series was good enough I would buy it.

At the moment, I do think that Shigofumi is good, so we’ll see what happens. :P

I am not located in the US, that’s why I care less about release dates of Anime DVDs in the States (that’s the place where they’re released first after airing on Japanese TV aftrer all), it always takes them another year or two to release the stuff here in Germany. German dubs suck too so I for one am not happy about any licensing at all - to me it just means that the good Fansub Groups will most likely stop releasing the few good anime of the current season.

You’re right Kana, apart from Spice & Wolf, True Tears, and Shigofumi, this season is terribly average. And some shows are just bad; Rosario + Vampire is one of the most stupid ecchi comedies up to date (no, the overly used fanservce is not funny - other shows do that way, WAY better, I’ve seen those, too) and H2O which started off pretty promising started to suck (bad) soon after episode 2. I’ll refrain from listing all the other Winter Anime right now.

So yeah, the prices are rediculous. I’m sticking to my fansubs and no one’s going to stop my anytime soon. Fuck the industry.