Piracy and The State of the Anime Industry
This past weekend my friend and I were fortunate enough to attend Animaine. We were introduced to the con’s president Colin Harvie and he described Animaine as a “pro-industry convention.” I do not know much about anime, identifying more with the scifi crowd, so I had no idea what that meant. Fortunately, we had arrived just in time to attend a panel hosted by Greg Ayres called “State of the Anime Industry- A New Perspective” and I was about to have my eyes opened.
Most people don’t have any qualms about downloading music, TV shows or movies. Personally, I ease my guilt by keeping a playlist of all the music I’ve downloaded and telling myself over and over that “I’ll pay for it someday.” However, many of us don’t realize the negative impact our flippant thievery causes, especially in the anime industry.
According to voice actor Greg Aryes an anime is considered successful in the U.S. if it can sell more than 2,000 units. Two thousand? This years’s attendance at Anime Boston was 22,065. Just looking at those numbers starts to make you feel a little guilty and that’s just Anime Boston. If well known animes can’t sell their stories to one tenth of a single convention’s attendees, why should companies invest in new stories and new artists?
We all know stealing is wrong, so why do we feel that we can steal anime? Greg Ayres has been attending conventions across the country trying to spread awareness about the affects of piracy and the negative response from fans is saddening. When Voice actor and director Shinichi Watanabe, commonly known as Nabeshin, stood up against piracy the backlash from fans was tremendous. People claim to be fans of anime, but if you like an artist’s work and you want them to make more, why are you preventing them from making a living off of it? Companies such as Bandai Entertainment have pulled out of the U.S. because of issues with piracy. Even fans have noticed a decline in the number of new quality animes and the answer to why that is is right under our noses.
If you are feeling the blood pounding in your ears and you’re pissed off that someone would blame the decline in the anime industry on your harmless downloading (I’m a poor student, wah! I just wanted to see if I’d like it before I bought it, wah! I didn’t like it enough to pay for it, just enough to watch the entire thing for free, wah!) then try this. Picture yourself standing in front of a booth at a convention. The directors, artists, writers, and voice actors are all sitting behind a beautiful display of an anime that they worked hard on. Would you steal a copy off their table then? Downloading is no different.
My two cents: yup, it is wrong to steal it but the problem with media industries is that they are still doing things the way they did back in the 90s. DvDs aren't worth $20 anymore, and BluRay is of no real difference when it comes to 2D animation. Why can't someone make a NetFlix or Hulu but for only Anime? Pay like $10 a month and watch all the anime you want (it would have a much larger library and new releases than NetFlix has too). This is the same problem with the independent film industry; they only show the films in either New York or LA so people mass pirate the movie online. I'd gladly pay a few dollars a month to watch newly released movies from around the world I could only see if I lived in NYC or Paris as example.
dosnt hulu plus have a ton of anime on it