Hacker News Reader

Comment by chrischen | Hacker News Reader

How does Anime make money from the US? It seems everyone I know in the US who watches it does so illegally.

I always found Anime piracy kind of impressive since they not only have to rip the material, they have to provide English subtitles, too. Which requires special expertise and is extremely tedious. And people do this work for free.

I find them amazing too - the tools (last i looked) weren't all that impressive, so a lot of manual work is involved.

in my eyes, these fan sub groups aren't classified as pirate (nor are the peopel downloading them), because as far as i m concerned, the anime is recorded off free to air tv, and thus is meant to be freely available to watch. Add to that the fansubbing + cute karaoke, its a product it itself. The american distributors barely make the mark when it comes to anime distribution, and so no one i know buys anime dvds, and only ever watch fansubs.

Most legal systems come to a different decision from you about whether or not this is copyright infringement.

It's a lot of work and there's something to be admired in people putting in that amount of work and effort to spread anime/manga that they really enjoy and think other people should experience (and wouldn't otherwise normally be able to experience).

1) Merchandise 2) Popularity (how popular the anime is, can warrant sales in the US). 3) Licensing (check: Crunchyroll.com)

That's the problem! The reality is that most anime doesn't make money. The anime that does make money are the shows that do well on television and can support merchandise. So for example Bakugan Battle Brawlers is a terrible show, but it sells toys and makes money. And sadly a show like Lucky Star which is quite good can't even get on TV and won't move merchandise so it dies... : (

Surely there's a lot of money changing hands for the ones on Cartoon Network (not to mention the Studio Ghibli releases distributed by Disney).

There's an enormous amount of it on Netflix, Hulu Plus, Crunchyroll and other legal streaming subscription sites. And usually a full movie aisle in every Best Buy in the country.

My cousin's kids are addicted to Cruncyroll. They also like to buy manga and other merchandise.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com