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...Something that the current manga pirating issues brought to mind, that I'm really not sure how I feel about.
In a certain sense, companies that import anime and manga legitimately are parasitic on fansubbers and fan translators, because they're profiting on a market that was in large parts created by fansubbers and fan translators being willing to do the work they're trying to profit on, for free. I don't think anime and manga would have ever become half as popular as it is today if not for the fact that translating and bringing over stuff in another language for free falls into somewhat of a loophole where it's probably technically illegal, but no one gives a shit about prosecuting because no one's making a profit anyway. Except let that run long enough, and suddenly there's a profitable market that can be (theoretically, at least) sued into being properly compliant customers.
To be honest, in general, I dislike the extremes of both sides of the great pirating debate in general. No, I want content creators to be paid so that they are willing to keep creating content, and I find the whole argument that you're somehow entitled to all content ever for free morally repugnant. If you never pay for anything, you're essentially parasitic. On the other hand, no, the translation companies don't deserve to have fandom unhesitatingly hand over money to them. I...frankly find the practice of watching to see what manga are doing well in the scanslations, then licensing it and sending out C&Ds to the scanslators they were using as testing ground to be somewhat morally repugnant. Practical, mind you! But I'm not really seeing any moral high ground there.
But part of my problem with saying "oh, pirating manga is wrong" is...well, what have the companies bringing it over officially brought to the table? Crappy translations bound in cheap-ass paperbacks that fall apart after one read at $10 apiece? (Okay, so none of mine bought after Ranma 1/2 have fallen apart like that. That doesn't make me any less grumpy about wasting my money on those. ...Yes, this was over a decade ago so I really don't hold that much of a grudge.) Oh, and Tokyopop tries to screw their authors! How charming.
Plus, of course, taking away the translations removes the ability of all the English speaking people who don't happen to be in an area where the official translation is being sold to buy. I do think this is an argument frequently appropriated by people who just want to pirate their manga in peace, but I also think that it's important to remember that the US =/ the world.
If a company wants me to give them money? They need to make it worthwhile. Don't be years behind the scanslations, at very least. I mean, I sympathize with the problems inherent of trying to catch up, but ultimately I just don't care. That's not the customer's problem, dudes. Seriously, I would've bought so much more manga over the years if, when companies licensed it, they'd actually gotten to new material before I'd completely forgotten about the series.
Manga companies need to freaking improvise already. Make it available digitally, make it cheaper (sorry dudes, still not paying $10 for a manga that I finish in approximately 45 minutes. I'll buy a token volume or two if I really enjoy the series or think they have a lot of reread value, but I won't buy the entire series. I do not, for example, think Bleach is worth over $300. Seriously, who does?), and just...make it worth paying for. Make new content available that the translators don't. Translate the author's notes. Make the translation good. Make high quality scans available. Do something, because honestly, at the moment, I just don't see much reason to buy more than the occasional token manga, and...considering I'm deliberately trying to move a lot of my reading onto my iPad rather than clutter up my place with more books, I think my buying is going to drop below even the occasional token volume if they don't start selling digitally.
Honestly, and this is something I'm not particularly thrilled with myself, if I'm not interested enough to pirate, I'm not interested enough to buy. And I don't mean in terms of individual series (though there's some of that too). I mean the only time I buy music, anime, or manga is when I'm actively pirating stuff in that general genre, because otherwise...well, I have other hobbies, and those are probably what I'm doing in my spare time. Free stuff is generally the impetus to make my attention shift back, and so I assume, in general, that companies don't mind me pirating some stuff. I could be wrong! Companies could be happier with never getting any money from me than getting some money from me and me pirating the rest. I suppose.
I support giving money to the original content creators, and the official translators are the only practical way to do it. But I don't have any inherent loyalty to the companies bringing my favorite series over just because they're bringing it over. I'll give them a chance, but...I don't support them if they're incompetent and piss me off repeatedly, even if it means I can't finish one of my favorite series. (If you want to see me rant, get me started on MangaGamer bringing over Higurashi! That is one company I will probably never buy from again, barring possibly the second half of Higurashi if they lower the price enough so that I don't feel too screwed before it gets successfully pirated, and actively recommend against buying from in general.) I've never quite refused to buy from a manga company forevermore, though I've skated around the edges. But I do absolutely demand, as a customer, that companies give me something worth paying for. Anime's done better at that historically than manga for me, but manga's what I'm more interested in, so I generally end up buying not that much of either.
There's an underlying attitude in a lot of the more anti-pirating people that somehow the companies deserve your money that I'm really not fond of. They don't, always. There's plenty of series that I've pirated that I'd never pay money for. There's plenty of series that I deliberately pirated or bought used because the authors had offended me enough that I refuse to ever give them money. There's plenty of series I gave up on reading entirely because I was just that offended. I sympathize with that attitude, a little, because it strikes me as much about wanting to make sure the companies they like survive and keep bringing over the series they like as it is about establishing a position of moral superiority.
I don't know, really. Part of me wants to support the companies bringing over anime and manga, and I make a token effort to, but it's very much a token effort because in the end, they very rarely add any actual value to my experience of the series. Honestly, I would be so much happier if fandom worked to provide the translation alone, and you could just like, import the original DVD and patch it with the translation and avoid these problems all together.
In a certain sense, companies that import anime and manga legitimately are parasitic on fansubbers and fan translators, because they're profiting on a market that was in large parts created by fansubbers and fan translators being willing to do the work they're trying to profit on, for free. I don't think anime and manga would have ever become half as popular as it is today if not for the fact that translating and bringing over stuff in another language for free falls into somewhat of a loophole where it's probably technically illegal, but no one gives a shit about prosecuting because no one's making a profit anyway. Except let that run long enough, and suddenly there's a profitable market that can be (theoretically, at least) sued into being properly compliant customers.
To be honest, in general, I dislike the extremes of both sides of the great pirating debate in general. No, I want content creators to be paid so that they are willing to keep creating content, and I find the whole argument that you're somehow entitled to all content ever for free morally repugnant. If you never pay for anything, you're essentially parasitic. On the other hand, no, the translation companies don't deserve to have fandom unhesitatingly hand over money to them. I...frankly find the practice of watching to see what manga are doing well in the scanslations, then licensing it and sending out C&Ds to the scanslators they were using as testing ground to be somewhat morally repugnant. Practical, mind you! But I'm not really seeing any moral high ground there.
But part of my problem with saying "oh, pirating manga is wrong" is...well, what have the companies bringing it over officially brought to the table? Crappy translations bound in cheap-ass paperbacks that fall apart after one read at $10 apiece? (Okay, so none of mine bought after Ranma 1/2 have fallen apart like that. That doesn't make me any less grumpy about wasting my money on those. ...Yes, this was over a decade ago so I really don't hold that much of a grudge.) Oh, and Tokyopop tries to screw their authors! How charming.
Plus, of course, taking away the translations removes the ability of all the English speaking people who don't happen to be in an area where the official translation is being sold to buy. I do think this is an argument frequently appropriated by people who just want to pirate their manga in peace, but I also think that it's important to remember that the US =/ the world.
If a company wants me to give them money? They need to make it worthwhile. Don't be years behind the scanslations, at very least. I mean, I sympathize with the problems inherent of trying to catch up, but ultimately I just don't care. That's not the customer's problem, dudes. Seriously, I would've bought so much more manga over the years if, when companies licensed it, they'd actually gotten to new material before I'd completely forgotten about the series.
Manga companies need to freaking improvise already. Make it available digitally, make it cheaper (sorry dudes, still not paying $10 for a manga that I finish in approximately 45 minutes. I'll buy a token volume or two if I really enjoy the series or think they have a lot of reread value, but I won't buy the entire series. I do not, for example, think Bleach is worth over $300. Seriously, who does?), and just...make it worth paying for. Make new content available that the translators don't. Translate the author's notes. Make the translation good. Make high quality scans available. Do something, because honestly, at the moment, I just don't see much reason to buy more than the occasional token manga, and...considering I'm deliberately trying to move a lot of my reading onto my iPad rather than clutter up my place with more books, I think my buying is going to drop below even the occasional token volume if they don't start selling digitally.
Honestly, and this is something I'm not particularly thrilled with myself, if I'm not interested enough to pirate, I'm not interested enough to buy. And I don't mean in terms of individual series (though there's some of that too). I mean the only time I buy music, anime, or manga is when I'm actively pirating stuff in that general genre, because otherwise...well, I have other hobbies, and those are probably what I'm doing in my spare time. Free stuff is generally the impetus to make my attention shift back, and so I assume, in general, that companies don't mind me pirating some stuff. I could be wrong! Companies could be happier with never getting any money from me than getting some money from me and me pirating the rest. I suppose.
I support giving money to the original content creators, and the official translators are the only practical way to do it. But I don't have any inherent loyalty to the companies bringing my favorite series over just because they're bringing it over. I'll give them a chance, but...I don't support them if they're incompetent and piss me off repeatedly, even if it means I can't finish one of my favorite series. (If you want to see me rant, get me started on MangaGamer bringing over Higurashi! That is one company I will probably never buy from again, barring possibly the second half of Higurashi if they lower the price enough so that I don't feel too screwed before it gets successfully pirated, and actively recommend against buying from in general.) I've never quite refused to buy from a manga company forevermore, though I've skated around the edges. But I do absolutely demand, as a customer, that companies give me something worth paying for. Anime's done better at that historically than manga for me, but manga's what I'm more interested in, so I generally end up buying not that much of either.
There's an underlying attitude in a lot of the more anti-pirating people that somehow the companies deserve your money that I'm really not fond of. They don't, always. There's plenty of series that I've pirated that I'd never pay money for. There's plenty of series that I deliberately pirated or bought used because the authors had offended me enough that I refuse to ever give them money. There's plenty of series I gave up on reading entirely because I was just that offended. I sympathize with that attitude, a little, because it strikes me as much about wanting to make sure the companies they like survive and keep bringing over the series they like as it is about establishing a position of moral superiority.
I don't know, really. Part of me wants to support the companies bringing over anime and manga, and I make a token effort to, but it's very much a token effort because in the end, they very rarely add any actual value to my experience of the series. Honestly, I would be so much happier if fandom worked to provide the translation alone, and you could just like, import the original DVD and patch it with the translation and avoid these problems all together.
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The prices are absolutely ridiculous for the product they provide, and if that's an inherent contradiction of the industry, if their overhead really does cost that much to produce such a crappy end-product... well maybe the industry needs to realize that, yeah, this isn't going to work. If it's genuinely not possible to economically bring a decent product to the customers, then bugger off and go out of business already! And we'll get along with our crappy /free/ translations like we always have!
The lag is what kills it most, I think. No one is going to wait years, dangling on whatever cliff was hanging when the C&D went out. It just isn't going to happen. I have a hard time understanding how anyone could possibly imagine, for one instant, that it would, or that this is a thing they are justified in demanding.
And I really do agree about the parasitism of watching the scanlators for the next big thing. And if they successfully crack down on the distribution of scans, and don't have that anymore? Yen/Hatchett are going to regret their current actions in the long run, I can't help thinking. (And is it just me, or does anyone else think naming it Yen press is either someone's wishful thinking showing or a desperately bad pun?)
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Seriously, I am surprised that there aren't any companies that have tried selling digital manga from the point where the scanslators stopped while also selling hard copies from the beginning. I mean, as it is, when things get licensed and hard to find, the fans just...drift away and suddenly the market that they've hoped to tap into is reduced dramatically. There's this weird gap between using the scanslators to build themselves a market and realizing that they want to retain this market that just makes me wonder what they're even thinking.
And yeah, I really can't help but think that if they do manage to seriously damage scanslation distribution, they're going to seriously hurt their market in the long run. Right now my impression is that their business model is mostly built around people buying token manga of the stuff they really love and mostly getting their material off scanslations. If they kill that, they're suddenly going to have to make the material they provide practical for following whole series on or lose their market. If that happens, I would place serious money on that killing most the companies in the industry, because making that kind of fundamental shift in a business is hard.
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I do think that a subscription model would give them a steadier cash flow, which can be as important as actual income if they're skating on the edge.
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Now a few people were actively interested in getting the series brought over since it had a anime release in the states, but in the meantime they did their best to translate it. Now this wasn't the time where you could put out a post saying "hey who wants to start a group". No this was entirely "my friend Hiro is willing to translate when he's got time" and/or "I'm semi-fluent in Japanese, when I'm not swamped with work I'll help". So it was slow-moving, but man did the fan translators do their research. This wasn't optional, PSoH has a lot of obscure Japanese idioms and cultural references, even for a series set in America. Moreover the Mangaka would often have a plot point related to something that required a bit of research to make sense. In fact the entire community often helped on these translation efforts and researched what they could. And then it got licensed (by either viz or TP I think) and the mods took down all the translations out of the unspoken fansubber/translator relationship that really existed back then. (note: translations, not scans. You had to buy a Japanese copy of the book and read along. It was a far cry from what's out there today.)
The problem was that volumes 1-3 were TERRIBLE. The translator either was dedicated to "Americanizing" the manga, or the Publishing company was. Either way a lot of important character development got lost along the way. A notable example is a chapter in volume 2 where the two main characters are stuck in a dream landscape and they speak their minds a lot more. D's undercurrent of his problems with humanity comes out, and we see just how deep Leon's racism issues go. Seriously, he uses the term "mushi"(insect/bug) to refer to D's "people"(the Chinese). It sets up a point to show us just how much they've changed by the end... and in the english release a lot of it gets glossed over and whitewashed.
Now from volume 4 on they hired a new translator. Hell he/she actually used the community for some of hir research. Even then zhe commented more then a few times that what ended up on the page was NOT what she had sent in. (moreover iirc zhe also had to get on their cases about actually getting PAID a few times) In any case the community had no option other then to use a resource that wasn't as accurate as it could be, and by now the original translations were long gone.
The belief that the official translations are inherently better somehow is gaining popularity and... frankly it's not true. Sure these days translation jobs are much better and there's less that gets changed, but it's still open to executive meddling. Fan translations don't have that. Yes they have fanBRAT translations, but those are easy to spot and avoid.
-And that's the major problem with the official companies pulling the c&d card. When people do academic research on a foreign work, they tend to use multiple translations because that's how you get the most complete picture. Imagine if the 1001 Arabian nights only had one translation (most editions leave a different stories out). Imagine if nobody ever re-translated a work after people better understood a ancient language. Imagine if all biblical scholars had to only work from the King James version? Yeah these are grandiose examples but the idea is the same. One translation of something is narrowing the possible interpretations down to one individuals' ideas about the work.
Frankly I like holding a book. I like it a hell of a lot more then I like lugging around a laptop or being chained to a computer. Also paying ten bucks is expensive for me, but I get iconing material out of it too. In my opinion books > computer reading. But I haven't gone out in bought much manga at all these days. Aside from my cashflow issues, I also want a good translation. I'm not guaranteed that when I pick up a official release. I have no idea what's been changed, if that particular fandom is going to maul me for only being familiar with the official release. Simply put, I can't trust the official release, because I don't have anything to compare it to.
Yeah some people can say "that doesn't happen much anymore", but until recently the only way I read Air Gear was through the official releases. Look at the wank about THAT and tell me that crap isn't still going on today.
tl;dr publishing companies are shooting themselves in the foot.
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But yeah, I think there's a giant tendency in fandom lately to start thinking the official translation is always the best! I really don't particularly enjoy trusting in a company's ~good intentions~ and hoping that they'll do what fandom wants them to, because I've seen them fuck that up way too many times. I guess what it comes down to for me is that I don't want them to shut down scanslation distribution because I don't trust the current manga companies enough to feel comfortable with them being my only possible manga suppliers. I just...don't.