Some news. One Piece will be simulcast by Funimation. Some bad news. Their streams will be limited to North America and Canada. Well, I live in the UK, so I’m bang out of luck on that, and now I’m wondering, what the hell is going to happen to the fansubs?
The irony is that I really want to support this whole wave of simulcasts. It’s finally starting to feel like the industry has noticed that there is this cool thing called the internet that people use to watch anime and stuff, but what they apparently still haven’t realised, or simply refuse to believe, is that the internet is borderless.
A lot of anime fans are based in North America, but a lot of us aren’t, all that should matter is that I’m an anime fan, that English is my language and that I love One Piece, so I really can’t understand why I’m being refused access to this series. More to the point, isn’t geoblocking an anime simulcast just blatantly contradicting its supposed alternative to those damn dirty fansubs?
It’s like the industry still doesn’t get it, still doesn’t understand why people like me end up downloading anime. Regardless of whatever legal nonsense always seems to get in the way of a proper, global stream, with enough hard work and guts, it could be possible, but as it is, the anime industry remains utterly clueless, while fansubs will continue to be distributed. One step forward, two steps back. Nothing will change.
Tags: fansubs, funimation, Industry, One Piece, simulcast
There will always be fansubs around, as long as this geo-centric approach exists–apparently it’s something that the licensors request, according to what I’ve read of interviews.
Which is still facetious bullshit, and doesn’t change the fact that the internet isn’t solely composed out of Americans; neither do they make up the majority of English-speaking anime fans.
I’m sure this is something that both you and Bateszi are familiar with: just because English is your first language people assume you’re American! Unfortunately, while this case is a step in the right direction there’s still a ways to go.
What this comes down to is the Japanese refusing to take the responsibility for their anime outside of Japan. They out-source to others because they can’t be bothered to do it themselves. Of course, them changing that will detrimentally effect the businesses that rely on localising anime, Funimation amongst them, but sooner or later, it has to happen.
It’s simply a result of a dated world view from the generation previous to ours, I think.
The thing with the internet is that in reality, it makes physical space nonessential. It doesn’t matter that I’m on the West Coast of Canada, you’re in the UK and Owen is somewhere in the States, we can all converse, albeit in a staggered manner on the same topic at our will and with relatively little effort. On the same strand, this is how we all get fansubs: it doesn’t matter that the members of gg are scattered around the globe, nor does it matter that the people seeding that torrent are either: while speed does decrease over distance, the decrease is fairly small, and in the end we can still get the file.
Geoblocking doesn’t make sense to us because we live borderlessly, in the same way that the region’ed DVD system probably makes little sense to you as well. However, the generation before us - those at the helm of the industry - grew up in a world where physical location was paramount. So, they try to impose an old worldview onto a new system, and everyone punches their monitors in anguish.
On another note, try out Tor (the Onion Router), and try routing your connection through a North American server? that might work, though it’d be slow and a little garbled.
“On another note, try out Tor (the Onion Router), and try routing your connection through a North American server? that might work, though it’d be slow and a little garbled.”
Funimation’s video site is like that anyway, due to the bloated flv files they use.
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In fairness to Funimation, I’m sure they’d love to not geoblock the content, as there’s plenty on their video site that isn’t. The problem is likely that the rights are tied up with someone else in the UK at the moment as we’ve not seen hide nor hair of their One Piece DVDs over here either.
That’s a really logical way of putting it, Celeste. I guess that’s why it’s difficult for me to understand their mindset too, since I’ve basically grown up with the internet and ceased thinking about nationality a long time ago. We’re all just anime fans, I don’t know why borders have to exist online.