The Real Reason Behind Anime Piracy

Anime is heavily pirated, and today, we'll explore why, what causes it, and what its effects are. Does it really affect the industry like we're lead to believe?

Hey, I'm Saioren! I'm a small YouTube channel that focuses on anime content. This is the first video of this format I've made, and definitely not the last. If you liked it or found it informative, please comment and subscribe!

My socials -

I am a small YouTube creator, and I am not an expert. I can, however, provide insight into what piracy is, regardless of that. I hope you learned something with my video.

Q & A CORNER -

Q: What about issues like region locking that cause people to pirate?

A: That is a big issue. I figured if I kept anime piracy in the scope of where I live it'd make things more narrow. We experience the same region locking here, but usually on different levels with smaller shows. But that is a massive deal.

Tags - Anime, AnimePiracy, Piracy, AnimeIndustry, OnlineStreaming, Copyright, Fansubs, AnimeCommunity, DigitalRights, PiracyAwareness, Animation, AnimeCulture, MediaEthics, ContentCreators, IntellectualProperty, education, attack on titan, spy x family, one punch man, violet evergarden, one piece, hunter x hunter, neon genesis evangelion, mappa, wit studio,

#anime #piracy #documentary #saioren

[Saioren]

Thanks for watching. Comment any thoughts you have, I'd love to read them, and I hope you have a great day.

[chaselowell]

I love netflix having over 300 anime available and region locking the majority of it. Thank you corporations

[tropes]

One thing to consider is the age of a lot of anme viewers... A lot of people that watch are actually pretty young and don't have the finances to pay for a subscription and a lot are like twelve years old and are finding it online without their parents permission.

[lazyllama]

Theres netfilx jail, crunchyroll constantly censuring and banning shit, region locking, Im not paing for that man.

[JuhoPurola]

From someone who grew up in Northern Europe, the issue with anime was and is not only lack of availability but also poor quality of the products officially brought to us. This has been an issue with even western media, where the quality of the streams or blurays and dvds was/is sub-par, often also with horrid localizations or subtitles. So a lot of the time we receive the product super late if at all, and when we do, it is much worse in quality compared to fan provided piracy options. Also, licensing prevented us from getting tons of classic shows, with the entire Funimation catalogue, for example, being entirely out of reach officially until a year or two ago.

Sadly, it is also a negative feedback loop, with poor products selling worse, therefore making the rights holders hesitant to put any effort in future releases.

[bidossessi]

Your analysis of why people are "choosing piracy" is incomplete because it ignores an as-of-yet unquantified but largely underestimated part of the fandom.

You should wonder where most of the piracy is coming from nowadays, thanks to the reach of internet. Anime is HUGE in Asia, South America and Africa as well, btw, and these regions may very well be weighting much more heavily in the balance than most people think. What percentage of the world population do you think these zones represent? What percentage of anime's target audience (young people) do these regions contain?

You should also consider :
- what is the relative cost of these subscriptions (in USD or euros) given the local GDPs,
- the level of access to online payment solutions *ACCEPTED* (very important!) by the big online platforms
- the severe geofencing that has been historically put in place for online services in general, often making the extra cost of a VPN service a must for those who are willing to go "legal"

You could also add in the total absence of derivative merchandise on the local markets, but that's peripheral to the issue of online piracy.

Factoring in these facts, you may very well get a totally different picture than what you imagine.

[gerdanbombales]

I hope there will be more anime channels in Youtube.
Channels like Muse Asia ans Ani-one doing God's Work. Its basically free and the most you can spend is membership that is way cheaper than streaming services.

[drfoto]

In the words of GabeN "piracy is not a pricing issue, it's a service issue".

You also have to take the "monetary loss from piracy" number with some scepticism, as these are usually calculated by the industry people with heavy bias. Back in the music piracy days they'd look at the amount of times a song was downloaded and calculate each of those as the loss of a full sale, which isn't reasonable.

Another problem with just going the official route is the abysmal state of the streaming services themselves. You can only get shows that they have distribution rights for in your area, and you can only get whatever version the streaming sites choose to give you. Most of the qol improvement in the actual usage of the site itself and the player itself had been a thing on piracy streaming sites for ages.

The problem is the industry itself, just like Hollywood, the hyper-focus on profits and payouts to the top of the top and the shareholders. The focus on quantity over quality, on product over art, etc. You'd think with the massive growth they have been having they'd be happy right? They could afford to pay workers better, give them better working conditions etc? Where does that money go do you think?

[wazukyan]

Without piracy only a few million people would watch anime . It's no longer a niche .

[Huru_]

Man, if only gogo had them all like you claimed. They mostly have what people look for, which are not the most obscure classics. Plus, something happened a few years ago that had them "reset" the site, losing most of the obscure gems they'd already managed to find. They're back at it though. Albeit a bit slowly, which is understandable (no one comments on them).

[Inotsquad]

Nah but crunchy roll is just making everything require crunchy roll premium I can only watch 2 seasons of an anime before having to spend money to watch the rest :/

[MoosGoCow]

Due to their history and shady business practices, I will NEVER pay for or support CrunchyRoll. If another streaming service comes out that competes with it, then I will consider paying.

[anmolsharma]

You can not just calculate traffic of pirate sites and multiply it to Subscription cost of counterpart. Most of people won't bother watching it. Also there are ton of people who watch anime just because they got introduced via pirate sites. Conversion rate is also great. People buy subscription for crunchy roll or other platform after understanding value of catalogue which they would not have done if faced subscription first hand

[Atsiou]

im from cyprus and the amount of region locked anime on netflix and even crunchyroll for us is huge, we also dont have disney+, hulu, max and a bunch of other streaming sites. a show i love i will try and support through merch! Also thinking of starting and supporting through blurays to also preserve physical media with streaming sites becoming a reason some shows could get lost forever, which is something on my mind lately!

[ToonMc]

Very high quality video dawg you need a couple million subs

[Jaskiify]

There is no choice. For example in Poland there is no streaming service with anime. Crunchyroll exists but without Polish subtitles. And you can have subs only if you pirate it. There is no other way

[stanhry]

This is an opportunity for the industry. Ad supported streaming and more direct sales Could be answer. Exclusive content through direct sales also

[madhukarg]

I am from India, I am using Crunchyroll for 5 years at this point in time, last one year ago, I paid for the ultimate fan yearly subscription, in spite of paying it, the Crunchyroll indian catalogue does not worth it, not all of it are available, Naruto Shippuden is, but Naruto is not, JoJo 1, 2, 3 not 4&5, even part 1 re edition is available, we have all of Bleach, so you know but not TYBW, these specific reasons will make piracy the answer

[revalantt]

I started watching anime by having a Crunchyroll subscription but I kept having this problem where they didn’t have the shows I wanted or they didn’t have all the seasons so I turned to pirating where I never have to worry about them not having the show I want to watch and they always have every season sub and dub

[jasonarigoni]

i can find all of the anime i'm looking for...

...on my shelves haha

i haven't pirated a single thing in 23+ years. i was one of those tape traders you mention in the beginning of the video.