Arrrrrrgggghhhh...
Okay, knock it off.
First of all, let's just agree to disagree here. Some of us feel that it is horribly bad and wrong and savage and all kinds of ugly to download copyrighted content, even if you later legally purchase the hard copies... and some of us think that's the cat's meow.
Chill and move on with life, please. NEEEEEXXXXXT!
I've got issues about the companies that produce hard copies of English-translated manga here in the US. In no particular order, they are:
Availability
Demand vs. Cost
Timeliness
Quality
Let's start with the availability issue - something that just kills me, really. I see something that is available here in Japan. I can't read it, but it looks DAMN AWESOME. naturally, I want to be able to read it! So what do I do? I go and check on it's availability. For certain, I'm gonna go for a Scan first. If I love it enough to plow through the whole series or keep up with it until it's conclusion, then I'm gonna get myself the printed product... Only come to find it's not available in English dead-tree format. F***ers. Well, the publishers only have themselves to blame then. Especially if they license something in the allusion of gaining a lock-down on the title and wait years before bothering to publish.
That leads to Demand vs. Cost. Publishers simply won't publish something because there is not enough demand to warrant the cost of publishing. Note that I say "publishing" and not "printing". Printing is cheap. Publishing is not. So, titles like Ushio and Tora are left to languish in obscurity, perused only by those that happen upon the scanslation sites and the few interested Americans here in Japan (which is not very many at all).
Timeliness is a big issue for me. If the publisher can't be bothered to get something out on the market in a timely manner then they deserve to lose business. (Seriously, time is money. In the old days of rail transport, conductors of trains that ran even thirty-seconds late got sacked.) This business of waiting months and months for something that has already been published in Japan is retarded, especially when a scanslation group has it out within days.
Finally, quality. This is something where you might think the big publishers have an edge. Most of the time they do. But now and then you get someone who goes cheap on you and then you buy something you thought was gonna be good... but the publisher changed translators and now it sucks... and your the sucker. I know, it doesn't happen often, but it does at times.
A few other points I wanted to argue...
Don't you dare pull the whole Learn Nihongo thing on me. I'm working on it and while the spoken language is easy, the written form is absolute murder. There are three written forms of this language - think of it as having three alphabets - and none of them look anything like English so there's nothing to relate to. And dare I mention that they tend to use all three in combination?
Oh, and just so you know...
Hiragana - 30 character syllabary. Usually used for day-to-day things that don't have commonly recognized Kanji.
Katakana - 300 character syllabary. Usually used for foreign-borrowed words and sounds.
Kanji - 3000+ characters. The Japanese equivalent of hieroglyphics, and based off of the written language of the Chinese. Hard. As. F***. Lemme tell you, my girlfriend, a college graduate with a degree in Japanese Literature, did not ace the test for Kanji they have here. There are actually quite a few Kanji that she is not familiar with and she grew up here!
Oh... and the whole thing about 'piracy' increasing sales? Oh. My. God. Dude, the anime/manga industry in America would not exist if it were not for fansubs and scanslations. Enough said. It started that way, let it end that way. (Hell, to me the publishers are all the intruders, stealing something good away from everyone else.)
So, that's my thoughts on the argument.
Okay, knock it off.
First of all, let's just agree to disagree here. Some of us feel that it is horribly bad and wrong and savage and all kinds of ugly to download copyrighted content, even if you later legally purchase the hard copies... and some of us think that's the cat's meow.
Chill and move on with life, please. NEEEEEXXXXXT!
I've got issues about the companies that produce hard copies of English-translated manga here in the US. In no particular order, they are:
Availability
Demand vs. Cost
Timeliness
Quality
Let's start with the availability issue - something that just kills me, really. I see something that is available here in Japan. I can't read it, but it looks DAMN AWESOME. naturally, I want to be able to read it! So what do I do? I go and check on it's availability. For certain, I'm gonna go for a Scan first. If I love it enough to plow through the whole series or keep up with it until it's conclusion, then I'm gonna get myself the printed product... Only come to find it's not available in English dead-tree format. F***ers. Well, the publishers only have themselves to blame then. Especially if they license something in the allusion of gaining a lock-down on the title and wait years before bothering to publish.
That leads to Demand vs. Cost. Publishers simply won't publish something because there is not enough demand to warrant the cost of publishing. Note that I say "publishing" and not "printing". Printing is cheap. Publishing is not. So, titles like Ushio and Tora are left to languish in obscurity, perused only by those that happen upon the scanslation sites and the few interested Americans here in Japan (which is not very many at all).
Timeliness is a big issue for me. If the publisher can't be bothered to get something out on the market in a timely manner then they deserve to lose business. (Seriously, time is money. In the old days of rail transport, conductors of trains that ran even thirty-seconds late got sacked.) This business of waiting months and months for something that has already been published in Japan is retarded, especially when a scanslation group has it out within days.
Finally, quality. This is something where you might think the big publishers have an edge. Most of the time they do. But now and then you get someone who goes cheap on you and then you buy something you thought was gonna be good... but the publisher changed translators and now it sucks... and your the sucker. I know, it doesn't happen often, but it does at times.
A few other points I wanted to argue...
Don't you dare pull the whole Learn Nihongo thing on me. I'm working on it and while the spoken language is easy, the written form is absolute murder. There are three written forms of this language - think of it as having three alphabets - and none of them look anything like English so there's nothing to relate to. And dare I mention that they tend to use all three in combination?
Oh, and just so you know...
Hiragana - 30 character syllabary. Usually used for day-to-day things that don't have commonly recognized Kanji.
Katakana - 300 character syllabary. Usually used for foreign-borrowed words and sounds.
Kanji - 3000+ characters. The Japanese equivalent of hieroglyphics, and based off of the written language of the Chinese. Hard. As. F***. Lemme tell you, my girlfriend, a college graduate with a degree in Japanese Literature, did not ace the test for Kanji they have here. There are actually quite a few Kanji that she is not familiar with and she grew up here!
Oh... and the whole thing about 'piracy' increasing sales? Oh. My. God. Dude, the anime/manga industry in America would not exist if it were not for fansubs and scanslations. Enough said. It started that way, let it end that way. (Hell, to me the publishers are all the intruders, stealing something good away from everyone else.)
So, that's my thoughts on the argument.