Entitlement

Let’s talk about entitlement. Because when I woke up this morning, I said to myself, “Hey, I want to be pissed off about things today.”

First up, a disclaimer, because this is by no means exclusive to anime. That’s evident in the very fact that gamers have thought of the word “freeware” as being a thing. And there are the people that take video cameras into the theater and record the movie in awful, awful quality and then put it up on the internet. And those other people that put up full CDs online for everyone to access (made famous by the Napster stuff of the late 90s or early 2000s).

So, really, this is everywhere. But anime is an industry that can’t hold its own as much as the gaming industry or the film industry or the music industry. Not to say that it can, and has, survived through illegally downloaded content. But it’s going to have a much bigger struggle to recover from illegal downloads on a large scale without the fan backing that it has. So this is speaking really more in general terms that specifically to anime fans.

Anyway…Anime fans (not ALL of them, but a good enough chunk of them) believe that they are entitled to anime the way they want it. That means that it has to have the honorifics in the subtitles and it has to have the names in the Japanese order and it has to be released within the day of it airing in Japan and a whole laundry list of other things that HAVE to be there for them to buy it.

A complaint that I had heard, which I didn’t even know was a complaint, is that anime isn’t being released fast enough here in physical media. It’s released in 13 episode sets whereas American shows are released in full season sets. Well, anime is typically 13 episodes a season, but beyond that, it’s kind of just how the industry is working right now. A few years back, it was $20 for 2-4 episodes, so the industry at large has grown. But also, to make profit in a niche market like this, it could be necessary to sell sets for ~$50 for 13 episodes.

I think what irks me the most about anime fans is that they seemingly HAVE to have their anime right now, subtitled, and in high definition. It can’t be on a one day delay or a few day delay, like Crunchyroll and Funimation’s simulcasts are. That would be ridiculous to wait a few days to watch anime for free and legally.

Really, anime is coming to the States faster and en masse. We have reached a near pinnacle in anime exposure for fans here because of Crunchyroll and Funimation and The Anime Network and even Hulu. These streaming services are bringing over what has to be over 90 percent of the new anime airing on TV each season, and yet fans as a whole will still find something to complain about.

So guys…can’t we all just get along? If you’re worried about price, and you only want subs, then why not just get a subscription to Crunchyroll? If you follow every series that comes out, that’s about 14 episodes of anime PER WEEK. And you pay $7/month. So that’s 56 episodes of anime for $7.

The way I see it, there’s no excuses about “too expensive” or “not fast enough” anymore. You can get 50+ episodes of anime from Crunchyroll for $7/month and they come out the day of or the day after the original air date. So man up and pay for what you love or shut up.