Where do you buy anime?

[Rui]

Nope not bootlegs at all.
Not unless this person goes to lengths in making the Orignial casing and putting the Orignial images on the disks >.>;
Then wouldnt that cost them alot? ; making them high in price?
I think the fact there cheap is the way the currencey works with ours. Tis why I like to buy from the USA now and then. Tee hee

Another easy way to tell is which company releases the discs? If their name includes the words Cartoon, Manga or Anime, chances are they're bootlegs. There are other bootlegs too. They clone fansubs or even the R1 discs, photoshop some packaging and print labels on the discs, and sometimes even put holograms on the boxes to pretend to be legit - but none of the legal creators are getting a penny.

They can afford to look like legit discs because they sell so many (not to mention DVD duplication isn't expensive, it's creating the originals and remastering which takes effort. An estimate in the US of all places was that 1/3 of sales, a while back, was of HK bootleg discs rather than the legitimate ones. Kind of sick, when you take into account the HK distributors pay *nothing* except the cost of pressing the discs and downloading a fansub or DVD-rip of a real release.

R

 

[MaxonTreik]

Nope not bootlegs at all.
Not unless this person goes to lengths in making the Orignial casing and putting the Orignial images on the disks >.>;
Then wouldnt that cost them alot? ; making them high in price?
I think the fact there cheap is the way the currencey works with ours. Tis why I like to buy from the USA now and then. Tee hee

Another easy way to tell is which company releases the discs? If their name includes the words Cartoon, Manga or Anime, chances are they're bootlegs. There are other bootlegs too. They clone fansubs or even the R1 discs, photoshop some packaging and print labels on the discs, and sometimes even put holograms on the boxes to pretend to be legit - but none of the legal creators are getting a penny.

They can afford to look like legit discs because they sell so many (not to mention DVD duplication isn't expensive, it's creating the originals and remastering which takes effort. An estimate in the US of all places was that 1/3 of sales, a while back, was of HK bootleg discs rather than the legitimate ones. Kind of sick, when you take into account the HK distributors pay *nothing* except the cost of pressing the discs and downloading a fansub or DVD-rip of a real release.

R

I've been duped when it comes to bootlegs. I stupidly bought a Da Capo bootleg without checking to see if it was legit. The discs have images of random girls that don't even appear in the anime.

I think the biggest tell-tale sign is the fact that the DVDs are region 0. If they are, stay the hell away.

 

[Mantis]

I accidentally bought a bootleg off ebay once, should have realised by the fact that it was 26 episodes on 3 discs and the box art was different to the official one. Quickly realised by the poor quality that it wasn't legit, and when I skipped to the last few episodes (being the savvy punter that I am) I saw they were actually blank as he hadn't bothered to record them! He didn't respond to my requests for a refund and ebay were no hope at all, I eventually told him I was contacting Trading Standards, at which point he quickly apologised and gave me a refund, begged me not to get them involved. (I did anyway).

Ebay are still terrible with bootlegs and pirate copies, I try reporting them sometimes and they give me their standard "thank you for taking the time to report this, ebay takes this very seriously blah blah blah" but they never do anything and I see the item that I reported remaining up there until it sells.

 

[Rui]

I've been lucky with DVDs, having educated myself on the HK situation in the VHS days (and before the mp3 age when Son May/Everanime CDs were the infamous bastions of dodgy ripped off anime music). Though once someone bought me a bootleg of X TV episode 1-2. It really bugged me. Got the book set now though and threw the boot in the bin where it belongs.

R

 

[Sy]

I've only ever bought one bootleg off of ebay but this is before I knew anything about bootlegging really. It was the Trigun complete collection on 3 disks for a tenner. It looked really professionally packaged, optional Japanese or English language with removeable subtitles but the video quality was pretty low (due the compression needed to fit that many episodes per disk) and the subtitles were terrible (spelling errors, sentences that make no sense). The usual case with subtitles on bootleg releases is that they are translated from the original Japanese to Chinese and then to English leaving a lot to be desired about the quality of the translation.

 

[MaxonTreik]

Ebay are still terrible with bootlegs and pirate copies, I try reporting them sometimes and they give me their standard "thank you for taking the time to report this, ebay takes this very seriously blah blah blah" but they never do anything and I see the item that I reported remaining up there until it sells.

If it persists, I suggest you report eBay themselves to Trading Standards.

I was considering reporting the people who sent me bootlegs, but I realised it was my own fault.

 

[animegoth666]

Okies this boxset of Ikki Tousen I have is all in chinese at the back so I cant really tell who Puplished it ? the region is all and it has english and chinese subs.
The casing is plastic and looks like the real thing. even the disks are the real disks prints with all the authorisation stuff in fine print on top of it.
It has Japanese audio and english audio. Also subtile off with translations of Japanese Kanji.
Eps 1 - 13 on 2 disks.
I also have the 51 ep Saiyuki boxset off the same people that comes as 6 disks ;
Same stuff all over ect as above.
I dunno if its bootleg or not.
It's bloody good quality though, even pirate movie dvd's never come out this good! lol XD

 

[Sy]

I dunno if its bootleg or not.

I do and it is.

 

[Rui]

Okies this boxset of Ikki Tousen I have is all in chinese at the back so I cant really tell who Puplished it ? the region is all and it has english and chinese subs.
The casing is plastic and looks like the real thing. even the disks are the real disks prints with all the authorisation stuff in fine print on top of it.
It has Japanese audio and english audio. Also subtile off with translations of Japanese Kanji.
Eps 1 - 13 on 2 disks.
I also have the 51 ep Saiyuki boxset off the same people that comes as 6 disks ;
Same stuff all over ect as above.
I dunno if its bootleg or not.
It's bloody good quality though, even pirate movie dvd's never come out this good! lol XD

I would be willing to bet money that those are bootlegs. The reason quality can be identical to the legit ones is that all they have to do at worst is clone the real discs and add their own packaging. At best they "translate" it themselves or use fansub scripts and reencode it down to squash onto fewer discs with variable results.

Very few legitimate asian discs come with English subtitles at all. Mainly Odex (Singapore) or Korean discs, or big budget live action releases. And those are just about always region locked. I know it's not one of those as Odex can be read without speaking Chinese, the Koreans don't print Chinese boxes, and Ikkitousen is not and (hopefully!) never will be a big budget live action film.

Copyright information etc means nothing - I can print out a DVD sleeve myself on shiny paper and copy words from a real release to forge - doesn't make it legal.

And the fact that your Ikkitousen has English audio is particularly telling. It costs thousands of pounds to make a dub. Why would they bother in HK? They do in some asian countries where it might go on TV, but I am, again, prepared to bet that that's Geneon's R1 dub pirated you have there. Particularly galling since poor Geneon went down in part due to piracy and lack of support despite funding the production of those dubs.

R

 

[Aion]

If the DVD's have Chinese subtitles, it's a bootleg. If the DVD's are region 0/free, it's a bootleg. If it's a 26 episode series put on 3 DVD's, it's a bootleg.

Always check what region the DVD's are, check to see if the DVD's have Chinese subtitles and check how many DVD's are included when buying anime on eBay. Don't buy if you aren't sure.

Chinese bootlegs come in high quality boxes; that's how people less smart than myself get tricked. However, I would guess that the video quality is awful and the Engrish subtitles are just as bad.

If you want an example, look here at idiotic people bidding on a bootleg set: FMA

 

[Dan]

If the DVD's are region 0/free, it's a bootleg.

Always check what region the DVD's are

[/b]

Although region free usually means its a bootleg. Its not the case with the Manga Corps Stuff which can be region free, so don't be confused by those

 

[Dracos]

There are actually a couple of Chinese companies that do have the rights for marketing anime in China and some of Asia. However because of the poor copyright laws in China they are as bad as the bootleggers, even though they have the rights to a distribute a Chinese version they don’t have the rights to most of the other stuff on the discs. If there are English subs or dubs on the disc they have normally been lifted from an official English language release or other release with English subs as it costs money to do their own but having them makes the discs more marketable.

 

[Arbalest]

Erm, although i said rarely in the shops, mostly on the internet, its more evened out than that. Most of the time i will buy most if not all of my region 2 DVD's in the shops. When i can't find them there though then i look to the internet. All my region 1 DVD's, as you'd expect, i buy online.

 

[IKnight]

Internet most of the time, barring impulse buys - not that there are many of those, given that I live on loans.

That said, it was physically renting anime from a DVD rental store which got me into it in the first place.

 

[animegoth666]

Aw damn, oh wells there brought now nothing much I can do. >.<;
But at least I know what to look out for next time thanks guys

 

[Al]

I tend to get most of my anime from an actual HMV store because I like stumbling upon DVDs that I hadn't considered buying before I walked into the shop; for some reason, when I buy online I am more likely to stick to my shopping list and only buy things I'm familiar with. (If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say that it simply takes too much time and effort to browse the entire on-line catalogue and read the product information for each entry compared to the amount of time it takes me to flip through the DVD racks at HMV.) Having said which: if I'm after a specific product, I tend to buy it online as it's much quicker (and often cheaper) to do so.

 

[goddessofwings]

Where I Buy Anime

I buy most of my anime online because the shops charge a lot more and don't have much choice.They also have sales especially in HMV and hardly ever have any anime included.
I also prefer boxsets because they take up less space as i have far too many dvds already.

I also buy them on ebay but i make sure that they are official ones and i get fed up with the bootlegs looking like the official ones but having twice as many episodes on them or the complete series on 2 discs or something stupid like that.

 

[Chaz]

Okies this boxset of Ikki Tousen I have is all in chinese at the back so I cant really tell who Puplished it ? the region is all and it has english and chinese subs.
The casing is plastic and looks like the real thing. even the disks are the real disks prints with all the authorisation stuff in fine print on top of it.
It has Japanese audio and english audio. Also subtile off with translations of Japanese Kanji.
Eps 1 - 13 on 2 disks.

Heh, I got a bootleg of Ikki Tousen, for sure... (I was naive, so I didn't know what "bootleg" meant back then).
Eps 1-13 on 2 disks, quite a good box/pack, although there's a wrinkle on the back of it, clearly showing that it was stuck on. Picture quality is ok from afar, but up-close, you can see some pixel distortion. Also region 0.
All was covered in a plastic sleeve.
Funny thing is they have the nerve to add "All rights reserved," "For private viewing only," and the whole law thing against "unauthorised distribution or exhibition of copyrighted" stuff. Cheeky gits. :lol:

So like a total idiot, I just looked at the price, thought that 6 eps-per-disks was pretty cool, and bought it on ebay.
But I've learnt now, since I bought it 2 years ago (at least). Sorry for the off-topic post, but this is one reason I rarely use ebay for DVDs now, etc. Stick with the high-street and recommended shops!

 

[Churchy99]

I usually buy from the internet because theres more available, its usually cheaper and there aren't to many shops which stock anime around here!

But if it is a good price in stores then I will get it!