Since the beginning of the summer 2017 anime season there has been a lot of discussion surrounding, Netflix and Amazon
Particularly the way that these two
Companies have lapped up a bunch of the most popular and highest profile and outright best anime of the season
but have made it somewhat unavailable Amazon Strike in the fact that they put a ridiculous pay wall between you and the anime and
Netflix in that they outright aren't releasing series until a later date people have been asking me to weigh in on this issue
But personally I find it difficult to be bothered a lot of the complaints about this seem to be based around the idealization
Of being able to watch all of your favorite anime legally and at a relatively inexpensive price
But to some extent I have to wonder about the benefits of even doing things that way I'm wondering who it even
Rewards to watch anime legally and to pay money for it. What are you getting out of it as a viewer?
what are you actually throwing your money down for it's difficult for me to see a strong correlation between
The $7 that I pay Crunchyroll to use their service every month and the money that is being made by the people who actually
Created the shows that I want to watch on their network if I am indeed
Supporting those shows in some way by watching them on Crunchyroll
It is such a miniscule amount of support that it's hard for me to even really feel good about it
It's hard for me to feel as though. I've really done anything
I don't necessarily give my money to crunchyroll because I think it's the right way to watch anime
Or that it's the best way to support the industry I give my money to crunchyroll because their service is convenient for me
I think downloading anime is a pain in the ass the way I tend to watch stuff is very spur-of-the-moment
I tend to suddenly have an interest in a show and want to watch it
Immediately, so I'm going to go online and find it as fast as I can and watch it right in that moment
I don't want to have to wait for it to download. I certainly don't want to go around looking for a torrent
I'm personally not the biggest stickler for video quality in the anime that I watch I just want it to look at least
Presentable, I don't really care how good the subtitles are because I can understand Japanese fairly well
And I even kind of enjoy getting to correct the subtitles when I think they're not quite accurate
so for me all that really matters is that the show is of
watchable quality has subtitles at all that aren't in horribly broken English
and is available so 99% of the time when I want to watch a show what I do is I open Google
and I type "watch [the name of the show]"
for instance "watch 'Made in Abyss'" now If I type watch "Made in Abyss" and the first result is crunchyroll?
I'm going to click on Crunchyroll
And I'm going to watch it right there if I type that in and the first result is kiss anime
And there's nothing else on the page that looks official? I'm going to watch it on kiss anime
Why? Because kiss anime is providing the service that I actually want. I want it to be available
I want it to be in halfway decent quality and I want there to be readable subtitles. That's all I want
I have a Netflix account
And I don't watch much anime on there even if it's available
Because the Netflix subtitles are often planted right at the bottom of the screen where they're barely readable while also
looking up at what's happening on the screen and sometimes they're not even
Synchronized correctly the first time I really tried to watch anime on Netflix
I watched Samurai Champloo back in 2014 and the subtitles were like a full second and a half off from the audio
It was extremely jarring. They simply aren't giving me the experience. I want I don't care how legal it is
I don't even care if it's cheap if they're not giving me what I want, they're not getting my money Amazon strike
Just charges too absurd an amount of money for me to throw it at a service that I can't see the clear
Correlation between how my money is supporting the people making the show
I
understand that
Amazon is getting a lot of my money and the production committee behind the show might be getting a lot of my money
But are the people who actually made the show good seeing any of this money?
Is there any way to actually put money in the hands of the people making the show without going through any
middlemen? To be completely honest
I stopped buying anime blu-rays some time ago because I don't want the product I would love to buy blu-rays if I felt that it
Was a direct one-to-one correlation with the director of the show
I love gets to direct another show, but I just don't see that correlation happening
I don't have the data to tell me that that is exactly what's going to happen
I know that Funimation is getting some of my money, and I don't care for Funimation. I don't watch dubs
I think they're subtitles are often inaccurate. They're blu-rays often lie about what level of quality
They're at their streaming service looks like ass. I don't want to give them my money
I don't want to own
Another blu-ray to take up space on my shelf that I will never watch because it's so much more effort to pull a blu-ray out
Of the case than it is to just type "watch 'Log Horizon'" into Google and just watch it on crunchyroll
I will buy anime products sometimes if I like the show and I like the product and I hope that some of that money is
Going to the artists, but do I really want to support the production committees?
do I really want to support the
Industry as a whole when the industry is so badly run when I feel like the industry should be
Taken apart and rebuilt from the ground up on some level like we're not exactly supporting an industry with great business practices
You've probably read a thousand articles by now about how animators are criminally underpaid and how people in this industry are
Constantly overworked and you see every single season the way that this industry
Prioritizes quantity over quality of shows the way that we're throwing more and more and more talent and work into more and more
bullshit anime that doesn't need to exist
If the anime industry dies it won't be because people weren't buying enough blu-rays it won't be because people weren't buying the right
Streaming services it will be because the industry didn't figure out how to get your money from you in an effective way
They didn't figure out how to sell you the product you actually
Want to buy at the price point you'd be willing to buy it which is what?
Economics is all about I shouldn't have to feel cheated out of my money
I shouldn't have to feel like I'm giving money to people who I don't even know what they did really this is why I've been
Such a huge proponent of this idea. That's been going around that is supposedly going to happen of Trigger
Opening a patreon page because I understand exactly what's happening there
Especially if they lay out the way that the money will be working when they do it
I understand who Trigger are, I've seen them all around they talk about their shows they explain exactly what they did
And if I was giving money to Trigger, I would know hey
I'm giving my money to the people who make the shows I like that's where the money is going I don't even need a product
The product is to show I don't want a blu-ray of Little Witch Academia
I just want to pay them to make Little Witch Academia. If they just hosted up on a website with decent subtitles
I'll be fuckin gold and before you say "Isn't that exactly what crunchyroll is?" When I pay for crunchyroll
I'm paying for the entire service. I'm paying for all the shows that are on there, and I don't want that.
I just want to pay the people who make the things I like I don't want to have to buy the entire
Anime industry (which I don't necessarily want to support) in order to pay some pittance to these
Few companies that I actually care about now I do realize that crowdfunding
Is not likely to work for anime because anime requires a lot of money to be made and most people aren't willing to shell out
Just for a show what they would shell out for a blu-Ray, and so for those blu-rays to exist
You've got to involve all these other companies who are going to co fund the anime?
But again the problem is a shifting dynamic. Nobody wants blu-rays anymore
We have to make it clear to people what they have to pay to get anime. They want
We have to make it clear that if you want to have a show of this certain level of production quality
here's how much that show costs
Here's how much we need to make from you
And if we can cut out some of those middlemen and just make it a direct
Understanding between the fans and the people creating the shows I think we'd be in a much healthier spot here different
Businesses are run differently not everybody wants to be completely transparent about things
But that's just the way that the world kind of works now
It's hard to make people want to pay for something that they can get for free
Especially if you're not going to offer a better version of the product then the free one. Selling anime cannot be an easy business
Right now, but the solutions that are in place
Just don't seem to work all that well in my opinion
And it's especially hard when the model by which anime is released is still this kind of antiquated
TV release style, shows coming out one episode per week
And you don't know if it's going to be a good show all the way through until the end
You're basically buying a product in piecemeal that you hope will eventually be satisfying if you asked me
What would be the ideal model for me personally?
for viewing and purchasing anime
it would be like this a
13 episode series drops on a streaming service that I may be paying for then at the end a little
Donation box opens up and says put in how much money you thought that show was worth
And then I put in oh that show is great. I put in $50. Oh that show was kind of
It's 10 bucks
You know I didn't enjoy it you guys didn't give me the product I wanted so I'm not gonna fucking pay you or you know
This show sucked. I'm not gonna pay for it. I guess that's all
I really would ask for it's just a donation button at the end of the last episode of every video that comes on
crunchyroll
Just give me a way to Fuckin pay for the product
I actually want that's why I can't be too bothered about the Netflix and Amazon shit
I already wasn't watching shows if they get on Netflix or Amazon or funimation. I only watch it
If it's on crunchyroll because crunchyroll makes things really fucking convenient for me
And if these services aren't going to offer something as convenient as crunchyroll or at least as convenient as kiss fucking anime
Then well they can fuck off
I am not going to feel any moral guilt for refusing to pay for a product that I do not want anyway
That's all for this rant
I hope you enjoyed I probably didn't put any footage or anything on this just because of what the hell would I?
Stick around on my channel for some more regular content coming soon check out my playlist
of every YouTube video featuring digibro
If you want to see more from me check out my new music channel if you happen to be into music
It's called digibro's Turntable. I've been putting out a ton of content over there
I've been really excited about it, and you should check it out. Thanks again for watching and I'll see you in the next one