Okay so there’s been this petition going around about people wanting to get Toku shows on Crunchyroll.
Which number one is super naive and number two is just a bad idea considering how asshattish Crunchyroll can be.
But the point is that Bandai, and Toei as a whole, really do not give a shit about you pirating their toku.
Here’s why:
Point One:
Kamen Rider and Super Sentai are prime examples of merchandise driven shows. That means their primary function, apart from being made to entertain, is to sell toys. Which means all of the ridiculous funding that goes into the series doesn’t just come from when you watch it on TV or buy the DVDs- if anything that shit is secondary revenue. The big money comes from when those Kamen Rider Fourze belts sell out during christmas. The big money comes from when a die hard fan spends over twenty bucks on a gashapon machine trying to get that one phone charm he really wants. It comes from saving money by releasing a new Climax Heroes every year. It comes from music sales. It comes from merchandise sales. Nothing more, nothing less.
Shows are created with the toy line in mind. Rider seasons, for example, are usually planned two seasons ahead - The concept for W was more or less finished when Kiva started airing. This is not uncommon for most places - I have literally been a fly on the wall in business meetings for publishers and people who run TV shows where the focus is ‘Yes this is a great show, but how many toys can we sell from it?” Hasbro does it and you can bet your ass Toei does that too.
Why was Hibiki changed halfway through to Toshiki Inoue as the head writer? Because the toys weren’t selling. They thought that by changing the head writer they could get people interested in the series again and make sure toy sales picked up. It of course, had the opposite fucking effect because the man essentially fucked the series, but that’s another thing entirely.
So yeah, even if you download the series and pirate and torrent it or whatever, but at any point ever have bought something from Bandai and Toei because you wanted Kamen Rider/Sentai merchandise, then they have done their jobs.
Point Two:
You guys know that Toei is aware of TV-Nihon’s existence, right? They have contacted TV-N once and only once about something, and that is when they requested they take down their sub of Kamen Rider The
First, because it got DVD release in the States. Hence TV-N actually having subbed it, but it being unavailable to download on the site itself. They’ve only ever acted out once before, and that was to ask another separate group to take down their V3 subs, since they had just released a V3 DVD in the states with their own subs, because it was big in Hawaii back in the day.
But more or less, the company’s attitude seems to be the same as most anime companies who do not mind their work being fansubbed - it’s free advertising for the merchandise they’re selling. If anything, the shit you buy is just a little extra bonus cash for the monstrous cash cow that is Toei.
Point Three:
Funnily enough, the west is not, and never has been Toei/Bandai’s main target in terms of making money with Sentai or Kamen Rider. That distinction of course belongs to Japan, Korea, and most of East Asian region. Hence localized content in Korea, with Kamen Rider merchandise seeing release there every other year. Latin countries such as Brazil also are big on toku, but don’t really see the actual merchandising side of it.
In conjunction to the point above, anything that you buy for them is just a bonus. Tokusatsu has already proven it’s never going to be a massive force in the west, apart from Power Rangers.
(And while we’re speaking about Power Rangers, I would much rather spend my money on Gokaiger merchandise than support the horrid, fucked up, racist train wreck that is Samurai. But that’s neither here nor there.)
You have to realize that you are not their target audience. People in Japan have been arrested for pirating that shit, sure. But in conjunction to the fact that Toei knows about TV-N, and yet has only asked them to ever take down one thing, it’s that they’re smart. They get to sell more toys without having to even bring the show over and go through the messy process of localization.
Who bought Shinkenger toys while that show was airing? I did. And my money went straight to Bandai. It didn’t go through Bandai America when so that Bandai of Japan would lose cash, my money went soley to online distributor to Bandai of Japan. How much easier and better is that for the company?
To conclude although people’s passion for toku is admirable, and so forceful that they would try to get it on a distributor like Crunchyroll, is admirable. However, it’s also stupid, and I’m not even going to get into the problems that Crunchyroll has anyway. Toku like Sentai and Kamen Rider is, and always has been, a niche genre. It’s never going to be big in the west, and it’s never going to receive the amount of support , that say, Batman has in the US. It’s not. It’s something intrinsically and culturally important to Asia, and that’s where their focus is.
Reblog, spread this around, because it is surprising how many people don’t know how this industry works. But the bottom line is you should not feel guilty for doing something that isn’t really illegal. The US holds no rights to any of the Rider shows for example, so you having watched that footage doesn’t really hurt anyone anyway, especially if you’re buying their merchandise.
And like hell I would ever give Crunchyroll any of my money anyway.
Keep enjoying tokusatsu, folks, and enjoy it on great websites like TV-Nihon or KRDL.
--reblog, repost, recopied and repasted from this http://diaxiann.tumblr.com/post/17019380617/why-no-one-gives-a-shit-about-you-pirating-toku-and
full credit goes to the original blogger.
--some comments.
True to the point. I do hope the fansub scene continue to thrive amidst these days of anti-piracy laws and stuff like that. Everyone has their two-sides of the coin on that one..
Which number one is super naive and number two is just a bad idea considering how asshattish Crunchyroll can be.
But the point is that Bandai, and Toei as a whole, really do not give a shit about you pirating their toku.
Here’s why:
Point One:
Kamen Rider and Super Sentai are prime examples of merchandise driven shows. That means their primary function, apart from being made to entertain, is to sell toys. Which means all of the ridiculous funding that goes into the series doesn’t just come from when you watch it on TV or buy the DVDs- if anything that shit is secondary revenue. The big money comes from when those Kamen Rider Fourze belts sell out during christmas. The big money comes from when a die hard fan spends over twenty bucks on a gashapon machine trying to get that one phone charm he really wants. It comes from saving money by releasing a new Climax Heroes every year. It comes from music sales. It comes from merchandise sales. Nothing more, nothing less.
Shows are created with the toy line in mind. Rider seasons, for example, are usually planned two seasons ahead - The concept for W was more or less finished when Kiva started airing. This is not uncommon for most places - I have literally been a fly on the wall in business meetings for publishers and people who run TV shows where the focus is ‘Yes this is a great show, but how many toys can we sell from it?” Hasbro does it and you can bet your ass Toei does that too.
Why was Hibiki changed halfway through to Toshiki Inoue as the head writer? Because the toys weren’t selling. They thought that by changing the head writer they could get people interested in the series again and make sure toy sales picked up. It of course, had the opposite fucking effect because the man essentially fucked the series, but that’s another thing entirely.
So yeah, even if you download the series and pirate and torrent it or whatever, but at any point ever have bought something from Bandai and Toei because you wanted Kamen Rider/Sentai merchandise, then they have done their jobs.
Point Two:
You guys know that Toei is aware of TV-Nihon’s existence, right? They have contacted TV-N once and only once about something, and that is when they requested they take down their sub of Kamen Rider The
First, because it got DVD release in the States. Hence TV-N actually having subbed it, but it being unavailable to download on the site itself. They’ve only ever acted out once before, and that was to ask another separate group to take down their V3 subs, since they had just released a V3 DVD in the states with their own subs, because it was big in Hawaii back in the day.
But more or less, the company’s attitude seems to be the same as most anime companies who do not mind their work being fansubbed - it’s free advertising for the merchandise they’re selling. If anything, the shit you buy is just a little extra bonus cash for the monstrous cash cow that is Toei.
Point Three:
Funnily enough, the west is not, and never has been Toei/Bandai’s main target in terms of making money with Sentai or Kamen Rider. That distinction of course belongs to Japan, Korea, and most of East Asian region. Hence localized content in Korea, with Kamen Rider merchandise seeing release there every other year. Latin countries such as Brazil also are big on toku, but don’t really see the actual merchandising side of it.
In conjunction to the point above, anything that you buy for them is just a bonus. Tokusatsu has already proven it’s never going to be a massive force in the west, apart from Power Rangers.
(And while we’re speaking about Power Rangers, I would much rather spend my money on Gokaiger merchandise than support the horrid, fucked up, racist train wreck that is Samurai. But that’s neither here nor there.)
You have to realize that you are not their target audience. People in Japan have been arrested for pirating that shit, sure. But in conjunction to the fact that Toei knows about TV-N, and yet has only asked them to ever take down one thing, it’s that they’re smart. They get to sell more toys without having to even bring the show over and go through the messy process of localization.
Who bought Shinkenger toys while that show was airing? I did. And my money went straight to Bandai. It didn’t go through Bandai America when so that Bandai of Japan would lose cash, my money went soley to online distributor to Bandai of Japan. How much easier and better is that for the company?
To conclude although people’s passion for toku is admirable, and so forceful that they would try to get it on a distributor like Crunchyroll, is admirable. However, it’s also stupid, and I’m not even going to get into the problems that Crunchyroll has anyway. Toku like Sentai and Kamen Rider is, and always has been, a niche genre. It’s never going to be big in the west, and it’s never going to receive the amount of support , that say, Batman has in the US. It’s not. It’s something intrinsically and culturally important to Asia, and that’s where their focus is.
Reblog, spread this around, because it is surprising how many people don’t know how this industry works. But the bottom line is you should not feel guilty for doing something that isn’t really illegal. The US holds no rights to any of the Rider shows for example, so you having watched that footage doesn’t really hurt anyone anyway, especially if you’re buying their merchandise.
And like hell I would ever give Crunchyroll any of my money anyway.
Keep enjoying tokusatsu, folks, and enjoy it on great websites like TV-Nihon or KRDL.
--reblog, repost, recopied and repasted from this http://diaxiann.tumblr.com/post/17019380617/why-no-one-gives-a-shit-about-you-pirating-toku-and
full credit goes to the original blogger.
--some comments.
True to the point. I do hope the fansub scene continue to thrive amidst these days of anti-piracy laws and stuff like that. Everyone has their two-sides of the coin on that one..
