[what] do you rewatch?

[suquamish]

So I went and visited the "Member's Private Collections," and I'm --- agog. I'm not a collector -- never will be. I tend to only purchase those series or movies I know I'll re-watch on a regular basis. Which, after balancing out fincances, time, and other *yawn* pragmatic measurements, is precious little.
[Also, what I re-watch regularly doesn't jive with what I consider my all time favorites. For example, I really think "Grave of The Fireflies" is a masterpiece. One that I'll never, ever watch again.]

So my question to you (yes, you!) is:

Out of your collection, are there series/movies that you go back and watch regularly? If so, what makes them near and dear to you?

[Merciless</3]

hahaha. i know a few ppl that will agree w/ me on CardCaptor Sakura series - 70eps + 2movies + manga series. its a classic magical, original, CLAMP girl. A gateway drug, if you will, to the CLAMP legacy leading you in a downward spiral of an anime obsession. haha. kawaii desu yo. i loved this series so much i bought it all. and i know alot of you are out there looking for the complete collection w/o donating organs. =0P

another series would be rurouin kenshin. god knows how many times i've rewatced the ovas and the entire 95ep series. same goes for the manga series. my favorite samurai drama anime by far.

[Orion1]

I'm re-watching AfroSamurai right now, re-watched Mushi-shi last week and loved them again for the second time. I've watched Robotech more times than I can remember. I try to re-watch it at least once a year. I've been doing that for at least five years. There was a time when I was a broke ass college student and couldn't afford to collect, so I had my precious VHS tapes which I had taped off the tv so many years ago of Robotech. Those were lost and or later to find out confiscated by a roommate. I was actually flattered to find out he had secretly really enjoyed Robotech too so I used it as and excuse to actually go out and collect the Harmony gold dvd collection. I've watched Samurai Champloo twice, Inyuasha two times, Cowboy Bebop three times, Big O twice, Full Metal Alchemist twice... ironically I don't own any of these and re-watched them each time Adult Swim replayed them, but I will eventually get to owning them. There are many more titles that I have watched more than once, but agree with you that a lot of Anime has zero re-watch value.

Lets get to the real issue though and that is why should someone that loves to watch Anime collect Anime. The simple answer is you can only free ride for so long until distributors like Geneon and ADV start to go out of Business.

What does this mean?

I can't be completely sure but it does mean that purchasing titles that you love becomes incredibly difficult. As for if there would be any backlash for Japanese corporations that create what we love, the answer is definitely. If these corporations cannot make as much money off there product they will not be able to create as much of what we love.

Is that bad?

Some might say that just means the Anime that is made will be better because only the really good creators will survive. I say not necessarily. It could be that only really popular stuff like Bleach, Naruto, and Onepiece will survive and that studios will start dropping really amazing projects like Mushi-shi because of their lack marketability. In other words the Anime industry would go through what I call the Hip-Hop is dead syndrome. What sells the most will be deemed the market direction and producers will only attempt to create block busters if you will instead of taking time to make the really thought provoking and inspiration stuff that I like.

Could this really Happen? Or maybe the real question do you want to find out?

Well the Anime industry is currently loosing money due to new technologies like the internet and file sharing. The well established fansubbing communities around the world make sure that Japanese product can get to nonpaying customers. If the Japanese Anime corporations where completely self sufficient on Japanese sales this would not be a problem, but this is not completely the case, they are increasingly relying on monies received from the licensing of their product to foreign markets. For more on Fansubbing go here.

What am I saying?

Basically I'm trying to make the point that if you love Anime you should be willing to help support the industry. This includes buying titles that you love. Here's a new strategy that I've started. I will watch part of series with fansubs and if I like it I don't finish it, so when it comes out here in the R1 I will have a good reason to buy the series to finish it. If distributors like FUNimation can make a profit they can afford to license more product, which means that other titles that have since been forgotten and are impossible to find might have a chance of being picked up. If not I guess everyone can continue to free ride on fansubs until there are no Anime distributors in the R1. Then hope and pray that the fansub community continues to find value in working for free. I doubt it!!!!

[suquamish]

I don't think this is the real issue at hand, and is a whole discussion unto itself. However it's one that I'm very animated (bah-dah-ching) about. Copyright, fair use, and digital rights have been a pet cause for me -- my congressional representatives over the last decade (plus) have been on the receiving end of a lot of vitriol from me on these subjects (minus Jay Inslee, who actually seems to have a clue).

> Well the Anime industry is currently loosing money due to new technologies
> like the internet and file sharing.

That is a specious argument, and one that the likes of the RIAA and MPAA have been using for awhile. To anyone interested, I suggest the Intellectual Property Policy Directorate's study on p2p file sharing and music sales if you want some interesting data on what internet sharing does. You can find the summary here: http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/ippd-dppi.nsf/eng/ip01462.html. The long and the short of it; in niche markets file sharing increases hard media (CD & DVD) sales.

Unfortunately, the anime industry is losing market because they're failing to evolve into the new market place while simultaneously being held back be the existing media distribution system. Disc releases that are regioned hamstring them by artificially inflating the cost of distribution and create barriers to reaching customers. Likewise failing to take advantage of new digital distribution methods is essentially the same as actively avoiding your customers. While the anime media sources aren't nearly as vile as the music industry, they are making a lot of the same mistakes -- and just like the music industry found out, if you leave a vacuum in a market, someone will fill it.
(there are other factors also, such as the extreme diversification in the genre's available, and the flood of inane anime that got imported in reaction to the realization of the new anime market.)

I wholly agree with your notion about supporting the anime industry with your money. If they've got a product worth buying, by all means, do so. However, I will not buy things simply to support the industry. They're not a charity, and they've got to do their part to survive.

And for the record, I really dislike bootlegging, but I think it serves a purpose. When a market has exhausted it's pool of legitimate copies of a title (be it music or video), and a studio refuses to (or cannot) make additional copies available, then I think there's a case to be made for free bootlegs.

Likewise, I consider fansubs nothing better than bootlegs, and I wish the providers of fan-subs would peddle their wares only for titles that were never going to be anglicized (or gaellicized, or castilianized, or....).

[Orion1]

I completely agree with you about the industry loosing money over file sharing argument being a spacious argument and have myself argued in favor of Fansubbing and p2p quite a lot. Here is the link again. I've also been advocating the idea that the real reason the market is losing money is because there inability to recognize where their market is, which is increasing on the net. I agree with you that the region system can create problems but I remember reading some quite compelling reasons to why they have the region system. The the best reason was so that specific markets can specialize product to their specific customers culture. There are more reasons I'm sure, which includes marketing.... The idea that many anime fans don't want any homogenized material, we want the original Japanese culture is also a good counter argument, but the fact that Anime is still a Niche market means that companies should still have the option of attempting to market and distribute product that they feel will be culturally sensitive to larger markets. This means that the region system does still serve the greater interests of parent corporations. Similar to there being different branches of different corporations like Warner Bros USA and Warner Bros JP.
But you are also right in that in that this really isn't the forum for this subject. I was just trying to justify all of my spending on Anime merchandise. I think people like me, Merciless and Origami are single handedly floating the industry. LoL

[suquamish]

I actually did read the link -- with quite a lot of interest. I should have thanked you for pointing me to it originally.

We're in heated agreement on multiple points, but just for clarification, while I don't buy argument that file sharing equates to money lost, I don't think bootleg or fansub distributions are acceptable except in the most narrow of situations. They are,to borrow your phrasing, a reality one has to accept.

> but I remember reading some quite compelling reasons to why they have the region system.

And this ends our heated agreement. ;)

I'm very familiar with the reasons that are being used to tout the existence of region encoding. Region encoding is, first and foremost, DRM that allows price discrimination. Simply put, region encoding allows distributor to demand a higher price from buyers who are willing to pay more. That's why the region encoding system was created. Any other reasons given are just marketing sugar to make that bitter pill go down easier.

> The the best reason was so that specific markets can specialize product
> to their specific customers culture.

Region encoding doesn't enhance that -- in fact it raises a barrier to that also. That argument assumes that all your customers are in the same artificially determined geographical area. Alternatively removing region encoding does nothing to hinder your ability to market specialized DVDs to particular cultures.

In fact the AAAC successfully argued that very point, along with the fact that DVD region encoding breaks international fair trade practices.

Despite my arguments, I get and share your concern Orion. Anime in North America is a troubled market, and if we anime fans want to continue getting the nice stuff (subs and dubs from/by professionals), something has got to change. I just don't think the responsibility of change falls to the people who already consume the content legitimately.

(oh.. and ugh.. substitute gallicized for gaellicized in my previous message... Technically there could be some Gaelic fansubs out there, but that wasn't my intent.)

[Orion1]

Ok so I went ahead and read your posted link and actually found a more in depth paper that helps support your argument a little bit better but not completely. Actually going back and doing all this research really makes me wish I still had access to the UC library system. Unfortunately I don't, but that link is to a paper that does an effective job of arguing the issue of DVD region coding. Emily Dunt, Joshua S. Gans, and Stephen P. King, elaborately described the region coding system in detail. They state that the main reason for region coding was to "protect the staggered
release of movies around the world," and to prevent piracy of copy righted materials. One of their arguemenst also pointed out that movie industries wanted this staggering right so that they would be able to test markets before they released titles. A good example would be when I was in Italy, I asked a girlfriend of mine if she had seen 50 first dates? She replied that Italians don't really like Adam Sander and therefor the movie was not released there. As I continued to grill here I she made it out to be that it was his humor that didn't translate well.

Is the market testing really a great reason to not release movies simultaneously around the world, thereby getting rid of the need for region coding? I'd say market testing does still have some necessity for the owners of the material, obviously it doesn't for the purchaser. If they were to get rid of the idea that a movie must first be played in theaters and then distributed on DVD that would also solve the problem. Some revolutionary studios have been doing just this in the US. Simultaneous releases of movies in the theater and DVD's of their titles. There have also been some world wide releases of Movies to attempt to deal with the issues of Piracy and Bootlegging. The results of these experiments require more research on my part, but I've always been of the opinion that these region restrictions should be lifted But then again I am a consumer and I always want companies to compete.

As for the argument of cultural sensitivity the paper that I'm using does not address the issue but the AAAC article that was quoted did discuss how different countries or cultures have different ways of looking at things like violence, sex and sexuality. Certain cultural sensitivities are better handled by those individual markets, in which a regional distributor would be better versed in the language and cultures of it's regions. Another example here would be how terrible some of translations that come out of Asian imports are. If I was given the choice between purchasing an Anime with subtitles or heaven forbid a dubbed version of Anime that was produced in a foreign country with non native English speaking North Americans, and a non-professional subbed bootleg, I'd buy the bootleg in a heartbeat. Can you imagine how much more complex making a movie or anime would become if while you where making the the production it was necessary to also coordinate foreign dubbed and subbed version into the production process. How much money would it cost and how much time would it take to produce a single title if this became the standard. In my opinion it easier for a company to produce a title and then license their intellectual property either to one of their subsidiaries oversees or another company. Region codes attempt to protect the rights of each of those regional production companies and distributors who produce product specifically tailored for those markets.

Wow this discussion is getting long, but I wanted add one more thing that came across my mind and it was that within the English speaking world like Australia where these articles we are discussing come from, it is quite obvious to me that region coding is pretty stupid. I may miss a few words when an Aussie or Brit speaks but I can definitely understand and would never, Never want a dub for an English speaking title. Of course this could lead to greater argument about how English has become the international language and therefor..... but I'm going to stop right here and say that free market capitalism is not without many many flaws. The region coding system could be seen as just another extension of how imperialist nations control capitol and are designed to profit the host countries involved, which are currently the US, Japan and Europe. In our case here in North America right now, the fact that we are in a market with less demand for Anime actually benefits us. We pay less for Anime than the Japanese who created it.

[suquamish]

I disagree with your argument that region-encoding supports releasing content targeted for specific cultural sensitivities. It make it even more difficult for the reasons I've stated earlier. None-the-less, we seem to be coming to a point of heated agreement, again.

> In our case here in North America right now, the fact that we are in a market
> with less demand for Anime actually benefits us. We pay less for Anime than
> the Japanese who created it.

I get your point, region-encoding allows the content owners to practice price discrimination between the American and Japanese DVD markets. ~.^

Don't expect that to last much longer. With Blu-ray, iirc, America and Japan are in the same region. Expect to pay higher prices.

[BuBBa]

Well I'll give you that you guys do buy a bit more then me. it seems that every time we start this conversion it leads to fan subbing Which of course I'm in favor of if the corporations that control the anime market would put out a good product at a reasonable price I'll buy as for rewatching material from my anime collection yea not all but I think I have seen gunslinger girls about 6 times now Good investment there. And Appleseed's all 3 I have or had the first one on VHS somewhere and Serial Experiments Lain I have watched at least 3 times. and I have no Idea how many times I have watched and rewatched all my GITS movies and series Oh yea and I think I have seen Akira and Bleach several times with Bleach I have of course done the fan subs then adult swim then as they come out Best Buy $19.95 along with renting from NF which is probably Insane by normal standards but If I see something that I really like I will support the company by buying the Title a for the out of the Bizz companies well there is nothing any of us can do now to help

[suquamish]

Serendipity. A friend forwarded this onto me because it refrenced Avatar in the article, and she knows that I have a avid (rabid?) Avatar fan living in my house:

This is sorta on the topic.. Well the topic of the beleaguered anime industry, availability, and cultural nuances, not the "what anime do you rewatch" topic:

Frames Per Second Magazine; "Fund Animators not Adaptations"

If I had to distill the article down to one key sentence, it'd be:: "...if the recent developments at Crunchyroll have proven anything, it's that anime fans want anime, and they want it animated, and soon, not months or years from now."

[Orion1]

I loved the article and completely agree with the idea that Hollywood continues to follow the principles of Orientalism. I'm also a starch supporter and member of Cruchyroll. There word is still out though on just how successful cruchyroll will be. It has had some success, but whether or not it is going to revolutionize the way we get anime is a different argument all together and merits more scrutiny. It certain seems that Internet media is the wave of the future and will eventually supersede Television as the way people get their media entertainment. It certainly is the case for myself. The reluctance of these same studios in question to embrace the new frontier is the only stopping this. However studios are increasing creating websites and releasing their material online for streaming purposes so.....

As for the Argument about whether or not cultural sensitivities merit the need for regional dvd codes, I don't think the argument holds it's ground in a sense that there really doesn't need to be a structure like the coding system in place for it. However the fact that it is their makes it more convent for the companies that are specializing in certain regions. The best argument that the major distributors today have is that it is in place to thwart bootlegging, which it might be doing on a small level with the new technologies like RCE encoding making more and more difficult to watch dvd's from different regions. Anyone with some knowledge in computers will be able to decrypt and recode this information for bootleg mass consumption.

[Origami]

I have re-watched "Air" and "Kanon" both at least twice.

You are correct, there are some titles I have in my collection that I would most likely not re-watch anytime soon. But that does not mean that I would never re-watch them. If I come across a title that is good, I will usually purchase a copy (if the price is reasonable). Just because I love to eat steak does not mean that it is the only thing I will ever eat. Every now-and-then I actually do like to eat brussel sprouts (believe it or not). In the same light, I will go back to re-watch something that I haven't seen in a long time just for variety sake.

There is also the possibility that when I do want to go back and re-watch something that I have seen, it might not be available for rent, for online viewing, etc. If I have a copy then this would not be a problem. Also, I like to share my addiction with friends by recommending the more eclectic titles and loaning out (yes, I am a pusher). And finally, someday, when I get tired of a title I might turn around and resell the anime. By then, who knows, it might be out-of-print or rare making it financially valuable.

[Unique Aizen]

Originally id have to go with DBZ seeing as it was my first ever anime to watch, But id have to go with Cowboy Bebop, that show was the anime that really got me into anime and open the doors to a hole new style of cartoon. I remember watching it when it had just came out on Cartoon Network under the new late night showings of Adult Swim, Actually i still watch Cowboy Bebop now *lost count on how many times if seen the eps* lolz

Then theirs a few chosen few that i actuallly go out and buy the dvd collection set, right now I'm collecting on Code Geass the storyline is really cool and its a show that keeps me intrigued.

Also Gundams series like Wing, S.E.E.D., Destiny, 00, and i could keep the list going =D