Anime how to spot a bootleg

Ah ... uh ... I'm a dude.

Arigato Gozaimasu ^_^

 

I think this has been pointed out already, but I feel that it bears repeating. IF the companies who produce the anime in the first place hurried up and released offical dvd's in a boxed set within a resonable amount of time, then the bootlegers might not do such a grand business. Look at the US tv shows, "Friends" ended on a Thursday and the boxed set of the final season was out the next week!! Waiting a few months or a year is reasonable, but I've been desperatly trying to find ANY subbed version of 2 Gatchaman series (II and Fighter) and I can not find them anywhere!! This stuff was done back in the late 70's, and only NOW has ADV bought the rights to do offical releases of the FIRST series, although there's still no date yet. I can't find fan subbed versions, either, though I've looked.

Since I love Gatch, I'll buy the offical ones when they come out, but I've puchased the crummy bootlegs in the mean time. Saint Seiya is another old anime that's just now starting to come out with offical dvd's of the first series. But, there are 3 more series, plus 4 movies and an ova that are just not avaliable. I want to see them, so I had to buy the bootlegs. There is no other choice; it's bootlegs or nothing. And, let's face it, they're better than NOTHING.

I've love to buy all the offical stuff, but it's either not avaliable or far too expensive. Samauri X is about $64 for 1 dvd on Amazon.ca, and Demon Eyes Kyo is even more, about $68. Even Wolf's Rain, rather than release it as a boxed set (with maybe an option to buy them seperately) they release one disc at a time with something like 4 episodes on it and they want $38 for it!!! I don't even know how many episodes and therefore disks there are in the series!! To buy it offically, I'm looking at investing anywhere between $100 (at a minimum) to $200 or more!!!

I have text books to buy, which aren't cheap either, and those have to come first. I simply can't spend that kind of money on anime.

So, I either buy the bootlegs, or I learn to speak Japanese. But, if the offical stuff was more widely available, and less expensive, I'd buy that.

The fact is that if the production companies started to realise that they could put a big dent in the bootleggers market by simply putting offical dvd's with subs out there and making them less expensive, then we wouldn't be having this conversation. Fact is, they need to wake up and realize that they could put the bootleggers out of buisness if they wanted to.

And, by the by, I download music, too. I do that because it's like an on-line music library to me; I don't think it's stealing when, after I've downloaded a song and listened to it for a week and get tired of it and deleate it from my hard drive.

In the 3 years before I started downloading, I purchased exactly ZERO cd's since I was tired of buying a cd and then finding out I liked one song on it. In the 2 years that I have been downloading, I have purchased no less than 16 cd's and music dvd's..... all legit.

So much the theory that people who download don't buy music.

I download to "try out" an artist before I buy their stuff. I pick titles of songs that aren't on the radio and listen to them. If, after I've downloaded 10 or 12 different songs and like them all, I go out and buy the cd's from that artist. Right now, I'm listening to Evanescence, deciding if I want to buy their album. I think I probably will, but I simply would not CONSIDER buying a cd without listening to more from that artist than I've heard on the radio.

You get to try on clothes before you buy them, right? You get to test drive a car, don't you? You get to glance through and even start to read a book in the store before you buy it, don't you? You even get to try food before you buy it in some cases, so why should music be any different??

OK, end of rant.

 

true dat just one thing how do u see it.

 

Although it appears that I somehow managed to kill this thread :sad: I thought I'd just add a little tidbit:
I just a week ago received the Saint Seiya dvd's I bought from ebay. All of them are of series (Asguard, Posideon and the Hades OVA) and 4 movies, none of which are avaliable offically sub-titled. And, having watched some of them, I have this to say:

~~~~!!!!!!YAY FOR BOOTLEGS!!!!!!~~~~


Ok, some of the sub-titles require a bit of effort, but the picture quality is wonderful and the majority of the subs (so far) are just fine. I'm tickled!!! I'm also seriously happy that I bought them!! I'm really enjoying all of them and there is just no way I could have seen any of them if I hadn't bought the bootlegs.
I know that some bootlegs are better than others, and some are totally junky, but I'm more than pleased.
Just thought you'd like to know.

 

Hmmmm I got an idea.

The Idea would be to grab the bootlegs, sub them with the purchased subtitles, then cast them back to the hell wherever they cameth from!

Anyway I don't know if this is a good idea since that would be illegal.

Hmmm wait a minute. You say the quality of the bootlegs is better. So you'd be releasing info that is _NOT_ present in the originals. How could that be defined?


Hmmmm.... (wonders)

 

Hmm, I've also got an idea.

Go to Hong Kong, make sure the authorities know what you're doing, hunt down all bootleggers, and shut them down. Violently.

I swear, if I ever find those jerks who bootlegged Saber Marionette J, I won't be responsible for my actions.

(Note, underlined material is altered from its original form.)

 

Actually, I'm not saying that the quality of the Seiya bootlegs that I bought is better than the official stuff. I've ordered the first 2 offical dvd's, (used) but I'm still waiting for them. :sad: So, I really can't compare them to the offical Seiya stuff. What I mean is that the quality is much better than the Gatchaman I stuff that I have; the first two of the 3 part boxed set anyway. The picture is not at all dark or muddy and the subs are not bad at all. OK, there's one part in the Hades Sanctuary Chapter OVA (say that 3 times fast! :glazed: ) where there are strange numbers that pop up at the end of some sentences. Stuff like "where are you going 24."

But, I also think that whoever did the subbing actually does know and understand English very well. I'm in the middle of watching the Assguard series and there's a point where Shun decides that he has to focus his cosmo better (anybody who's seen Saint Seiya knows what I'm talking about) and the sub-titler actually put a joke beneath the sub-title! ("Use the force, Luke. ") I just cracked up!!

I know that not all bootlegs are created equal :sweat: and some are bound to be less well done than others. I think that I've been lucky in getting a set of stuff that I can't get offically that's been well done. (Does anybody know if ADV is going to do the other Seiya series and movies?) I still say that a bootleg is better than nothing; unless you want to learn Japanese. But, I still say that the production companies could put these people out of buisness if they wanted to. I'm seriously tempted to write to some of them and put a proverbial flea in their ear!

Anybody know where I get some addresses? :anime:

 

That makes me wonder if what you got was a bootleg that had ripped off a fansub. The only "decent" bootleg company I know of is FX, which only has decent subtitles because they supposedly wait until the official releases are out and then copy them. -_-;; But in general, most bootlegs you can get which aren't ripped from fansubs are VERY poor quality because they're done primarily for a Chinese/Asian audience, so the English translation stinks.

For the most part, yes. They could release official stuff more quickly and not charge such ungodly prices - you'd think they would realize that a large segment of their audience is on a limited income.

But then again, I think they also know that most of us will buy their releases anyway, when they come out, simply because most bootlegs are of such low quality. -_-

 

Well, I threatened to and so now it's time to put my money where my proverbial mouth is!
I found the mailing address for Tatsunoko productions on the Home of the White Shadow website. Tatsunoko did the three Gatchaman series, amoung a heck of a lot of other things. So, I'm going to write them what will likely turn out to be a long letter, suggesting that they should release the second and third Gatch series subbed as well as pointing out that they could do serious damage to the bootleg buisiness if they wanted to.

Hey, it's not all that likely to help much, but I figure that it can't hurt, right?? If anyone else wants the address, pm me and I'll give it to you.

I've also decided to splurge and buy a copy of Wolf's Rain, again, it's unoffical because the idea of paying $38 per dvd leaves me rather cold! I'm not counting on it being as good as my Saint Seiya stuff, but hope springs eternal!!

If I do get an answer from Tatsunoko of any kind, I'll let you know. Keep your fingers crossed!

 

I've recently purchased a title I could not find ANYWHERE other than on ebay... Tales of Eternia.

Subtitles sucked, but it was still entertaining. Now that i have received it, I suspect the one i have is a bootleg copy. At the time i didnt know bootleg DVD's were so comun.

check out these images of the dvd:
http://pupp.edgeemu.com/IMG_3267.jpg
http://pupp.edgeemu.com/IMG_3268.jpg

Notice the mark on the DVD as if something was burned off. hmmm...
Also I couldent find any info from the UPC.
Ah well. Now i know better.

BTW, it shipped from HongKong and arrived in 2 weeks.

If you have played the Game Tales of Destiny, you will reconize this anime. its like a sidequest that never existed in the game. Something to please fans of Tales of destiny. It was not all that bad, but it sure could have been better.

 

Don't jump out the window, dear!! Trust me, it's not worth it!!! LOL!!! I was looking at the offical Gatch dvd's and they want $450 US for the entire series!!! I nearly passed out!! Is that normal for a boxed set over there, and, if it is, what the heck are saleries like over there???? How much money does someone make in an average year??

I've screamed about that myself!! LOL!! And import prices on amazon.ca are even worse than the US ones, if you can believe it!!

 

Also, and I noticed this when watching Yu Yu Hakusho (in my younger days), that sometimes the people supplying these bootlegs do not even have the correct names on the characters in the episodes. For instance: whenever someone is speaking to Kurama the subtitles say Hiei and whenever Hiei is being talked to, Kurama appears. Kinda sad that these people don't even know how to listen to what they are saying.

 

Bootlegs suck. I got a few a while ago, and all I got was a bunch of crappy subtitled anime....waste of 10 bucks....

 

about boot leg dvd's, the ones I have(and friends of mine) look axactly like the original and play like the original, there were only 2 things that I saw that you could tell it was a boot leg( its not the same for all the ones I have)

*the quality of the picture on the dvd is a little lighter

*usually they dont have the words, "All rights reserved, No copying, Subject to applicable laws"

 

This is something I take extreme caution with. I hate bootlegs, and think that bootleg DVDs count against the total number of DVDs in your collection. This means that I have friends with negative numbers of anime DVDs.

Anyway, I have always taken care with my purchases, and carefully checked every DVD before I purchased it, and I can safely say, I do not own any bootlegged DVDs. Unfortunately, the same is not true of wall scrolls. They're harder to spot, and I suspect that 2 of mine are, in fact, bootlegs.

 

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I accidentily bought a bootleg from a bootleg. I thought I was buying the anime but it turned out to be really poor quailty. I just wanted to give people a warning. If it is really cheap bootleg but if the whole season is cheap then the chances are that it is a bootleg from a bootleg or fansubed.

 

just to clarify, i found out a while back that fansubs are as illegal as bootlegs. In any form. bugger...