Streaming is kind of bad for fandom lifespans, maybe

[malymin]

Did you know there's currently no streaming service in the USA that offers Princess Tutu?

No streaming service in the USA offers Fullmetal Alchemist (2003), either.

Obviously, I know how to pirate. And I also own the old ADV dvd set for Tutu in particular. But I can't help but think how it's a lot easier for media to maintain steady cult followings if you can find it long after it's being sold... rentals and stores for VHS tapes and DVDs had an important niche in allowing box office bombs to become cult classics, in old shows being watched by new generations.

What do you do if something new is only on streaming, and then gets taken down? I know this happens. These shows and movies arent even given the chance to acquire reputations over time.

I've watched Wolfwalkers via... means. Good movie! Has very little chance of being the generation-defining hit with tweenage wolfaboos god clearly intended it to be, because it's exclusive to Apple TV on streaming, and the only physical edition is hundreds of dollars for a collector's blu-ray set.

Comments

[stardust_rifle]

Shiki, my favorite anime of all time and genuinely one of the best pieces of vampire media I’ve encountered, is not legally available for streaming anywhere in the USA and DVDs of the Funimation release routinely go for hundreds of dollars secondhand. *screams into pillow*

[malymin]

Awful awful awful.

At a certain point it really seems like people might as well just start selling bootlegs at cons. (If people do still do that at anime cons, I wouldn't know - the only con in my area is primarily a comic book convention that happens to have a smattering of anime at the artist's alley.) If companies dont want their copyright infringed, they should make the damn things they own available.

I think it's even worse with videogames. Videogames desperately need some kind of equivalent to a library system for them to be easily discovered by offline people, wheras at least conventional libraries have sub-sections for video media. (Not that most of them are going to have a great selection of anime. The library I work at has some anime dvds - one piece, black butler, a single inuyasha movie, a few BNHA movies - that I think somebody donated, but our selection of manga in YA is bigger. And even the manga selection is, currently, relatively tiny compared to the children's graphic novel section. There's not a section for adult-oriented graphic novels or manga at all, what little we have of it is randomly either in 741.5 of nonfiction or mixed in with the conventional fiction, with no real rhyme or reason to it.)

Sorry for going off rails. ^_^;

Do you at least have some, uh. ☠️ way to watch it in good quality?

[lb_lee]

Piracy will become the new video rental, I guess!

(We have a friend who bought an enormous box of Takarazuka Review VHS tapes to digitize, since good luck ever getting your hands on those performances outside of Japan. Doing the good work!)

[malymin]

I suppose! Though also I've encountered younger people online who are just... terrified of even very basic and safe piracy, as if it's the illegality itself that gives you computer viruses and steals your credit card data.

Oh nice. I feel like digitizing VHS-only material is overlooked, in addition to the importance of making old and foreign media generally accessible.