Anime bootlegs

chaos

chaos

The Boss
Before moving to UK, I've bought me very few anime, as the cost your soul down there... literally.

And one day I've ran into two not too expensive, great titles - Chobits and Hellsing. What coould I do but buy them right away... Litle did I know, that those were bootlegs.

Before you turn you blaming finger at me an yell "Hey, you're stoopid, next time you'll be buying fan sub on ebay", the quality of the covers really impressed me.

The video inside of them was less impressive though, not bad, but I could tell the quality was the same as the original release.

My point here is, if bootlegs can come with packaging like this, why can't we have more than the vanilla packaging we get? Seriously, it looks so cool and professional, that if you don't know how the official release looks like, you would be deceived as well.
 
Heh, it's true. Despite the lower quality of the disk content the sets usually look really good. The Trigun set I accidentally bought when I was first buying anime looked great.

I have been very tempted to by Lupin on bootleg though since the second half of the second series eludes me...
 
Yep, no extras but 26 eps in 3 dvds.... I guess that if they did in 4, they could even have the same quality as the oficial release.

But, I believe that bootlegs are evil... While I understand fan sub is wrong, but I fail to grasp the evilness in it. But bootlegs, needs money to do something like that and it makes the whole "finance organized crime" seems really true, which I believe it is, to some extent...
 
I don't know if its just the camera, but the Hellsing covers look very faded and not bright and colorful, like they should be. Although, the Chobbits one is very realistic looking, although, it is still lacking color. If you look very closely, from the back of it, you will see that the sides of the case are visible, because it is slightly overlapped. This is how I could tell it is a bootleg, because, in real dvds, all the covers will be made for perfection; Especially if it is Japanese! You will see, on region 2 discs and things, there are nearly no little mistakes, everything is trying to be perfect as possible.

I don't know if you can understand what I'm blabbering on about here, so I made a picture (The contents inside the yellow circle is what I mean):

2v9di1h.jpg
 
Yagami said:
This is how I could tell it is a bootleg, because, in real dvds, all the covers will be made for perfection
Click to expand...
I don't know. There's been some pretty dodgy looking official region 2 releases in the past. Mainly from MVM, though they've gotten better more recently.

I'll say this about that hellsing bootleg. The artwork is a lot nicer than the current UK boxset we have.
 
My Da Capo bootleg boxset would look legit if it didn't have random girls from random anime on the bloody discs. The box art is nice though.
 
Yagami said:
I don't know if its just the camera, but the Hellsing covers look very faded and not bright and colorful, like they should be. Although, the Chobbits one is very realistic looking, although, it is still lacking color. If you look very closely, from the back of it, you will see that the sides of the case are visible, because it is slightly overlapped. This is how I could tell it is a bootleg, because, in real dvds, all the covers will be made for perfection; Especially if it is Japanese! You will see, on region 2 discs and things, there are nearly no little mistakes, everything is trying to be perfect as possible.

I don't know if you can understand what I'm blabbering on about here, so I made a picture (The contents inside the yellow circle is what I mean):

2v9di1h.jpg
Click to expand...

Depending on the angle I took the photo, it woult be possible to see the sides. And I never said they were japanese...

Believe me, I'm not a person who would spot a dead pixel in a monitor right away, but I can definitely look at something and say "Mmm, looks dodgy". Blame the colours on the bad photographer...
 
Yes, even I have been subjugated to bootleg copies, though this was way,way before I joined AUKN.
This was because I wouldn't of considered that they were bootlegs, I mean, what real reason do they have too.
Get money for themselves? drive professional distributers to the ground?

cause it's not like any of this anime is illegal
 
Otaku-san said:
Yes, even I have been subjugated to bootleg copies, though this was way,way before I joined AUKN.
This was because I wouldn't of considered that they were bootlegs, I mean, what real reason do they have too.
Get money for themselves? drive professional distributers to the ground?

cause it's not like any of this anime is illegal
Click to expand...

Err, the bootleg is illegal actually... =P

I've got them in a high street store, so it just didn't occurred to me it would be a bootleg and not an official release. Then, I've moved to UK and no way to go back to the same store and try a refund...

Anyway, I just felt really impressed they evolved bootlegs to such extents as having really good professional looking package.

As I mentioned, the quality of the content is ok, but clearly not 100%. only the packaging is really good.
 
RetroRainbow said:
I bought a bootleg of Chobits before. It has a different cover to the one you have, but it looked pretty official at the time- when I didn't know much about bootlegs. Until I got it. It only had three disks, and I knew that there should be four episodes for everyone one disk. Another thing were the fuzzy preview pictures at the back- made me wonder. Subs are pretty meh as well.
Click to expand...

possibly same vids, different cover...
it was release by a company called FX or something...
 
i own 3 Dragon ball boxsets and they are obviously gotta be bootleg, but the packaging was too good. just like the official HK release counterpart.
I bought those when i was in Malaysia, and boy....bootleg galore. but having said that, almost all their bootleg dvd's have the official malaysian goverment stickers which ''authenticate' them as original. now it may indicate that these are official within Malaysia...but then again, it could be aload of bull and the bootlegers may just be making copies of those stamps/stickers....
 
chaos said:
Otaku-san said:
Yes, even I have been subjugated to bootleg copies, though this was way,way before I joined AUKN.
This was because I wouldn't of considered that they were bootlegs, I mean, what real reason do they have too.
Get money for themselves? drive professional distributers to the ground?

cause it's not like any of this anime is illegal
Click to expand...

Err, the bootleg is illegal actually... =P
Click to expand...
Actually, if it's a Hong Kong bootleg, then it's kind of a grey area.
 
chaos said:
it was release by a company called FX or something...
Click to expand...

I think if memory serves me FX stuff technically is not bootleg. They and a couple of other companies do have the rights for DVD releases of a lot of shows, but only in Asia. Where this stuff falls on the side of bootleg is that they do not normally own the rights to all the stuff they put on the discs. The main one being if they have an English dub it is normally ripped off from an official US, UK or Aussie release. Same goes for English subs these can be anything from a poor translation on their part, fansubs or again ripped off from an official release.
 
interesting.. I would never know... so they are not bootlegs, and then I can sell them on the market place.. =P
 
chaos said:
interesting.. I would never know... so they are not bootlegs, and then I can sell them on the market place.. =P
Click to expand...

I would not quote me on this as I am not 100% sure on which companies have legit Asian rights. And again as I said it is a bit of a grey area as even if they have the rights to release the DVDs in Asian countries other than Japan, they tend not to have the legal rights to everything they put on the DVDs. So technically they are still bootlegs to some extent, but the money is less likey to be going to organised crime (again don't quote me on that last bit). Also China just turns a blind eye to most of this stuff produced over there.
 
i see... :) I wanted to sell that stuff and get the proper release as the quality of it is not top. It would be ok for someone curious about the series, but I actually like to collect.. :/
 
On the subject of bootlegs i remember looking through a hmv once and found them selling an obviousley bootleg copy of love hina,(which was obviouse because instead of the main logo it had a microsoft word word art and the entire thing was miscoloured)i was just wondering how this could have happened?
 
evangelion rocks said:
On the subject of bootlegs i remember looking through a hmv once and found them selling an obviousley bootleg copy of love hina,(which was obviouse because instead of the main logo it had a microsoft word word art and the entire thing was miscoloured)i was just wondering how this could have happened?
Click to expand...
*sigh* No, I saw one of those too. That was an official MVM release. This was a time when their cover artwork... well lets just say it was less than poor. Chobits cover art was so faded you couldn't see it and ROD the TV had ugly wordart plastered all over it too.
 
evangelion rocks said:
really?!wow i didn't know that thanks sy!^_^Looking back on that release, mvm really has come a long way hasn't it?
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Yeah I guess they have. The releases really did look terrible and slapped together from back then. Still I think their presentation could still be improved upon somewhat for the boxsets but hey at least they aren't faded anymore and the content is what counts.
 
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