This is so going to make me unpopular: On selling out, professionally, about licensed anime and manga.

Ok, so my last post about MangaViews.com may have rubbed people the wrong way. I’m afraid that if I’m going to get anywhere in the blogosphere at all, I’m going to have to enter some minefields. One of the biggest minefields I’ve skirted with in my blogging career wasn’t actually the Screen Play entry where I attempted a proposal for a video game designed to teach dating social skills to socially disabled people, nor was it the ever controversial anti-twincest post I made for personal reasons but had to deal with a bunch of comments from twincest fangirls where I understood where they were coming from but I still didn’t agree with them.

I speak of course on my stance on licensed anime and manga, which is really surprising in that while I think that fansubs and scanlations may be needed for some countries where such anime and manga series isn’t available, and that I try not to judge people who do download fansubs and scanlations, I do think that at this point in my blogging career I should start trying to cover licensed anime and manga only, but I will try and cover anime figures I have of various shows which I will review here.

My opinion stems not so much from my opinions about the anime and manga industry as a whole, but the nature of the local Australian anime and manga industry which relies on local licenses for anime and imports for manga before it can be sold in bookshops. People downloading scanlations and fansubs here really affect the local anime and manga industry in that if nobody buys anime and manga that’s licensed in Australia, the local market for it might disappear. America has far more licenses for anime and manga than Australia does, and they see stuff far before we get to see any of it. What makes it more frustrating is that local distributors like Madman Entertainment here rely on having to buy licensing rights to dubbed and subtitled anime from American companies before it can even be shown here. There is no “localisation” for Australia because we don’t have voice actors to locally dub stuff here, which is expensive to do for such a small market population which is a niche hobby in commercial terms for this country.

For those of you who hate me by now, I understand why the slowness of stuff getting to Australia or even America makes people resort to downloading anime and manga illegally, I understand why the oppressive nature of corporations who own anime licenses not sharing with other countries what they have makes people angry at the anime industry as a whole. But why can’t I personally make a choice to cover licensed anime and manga which is already available here, to make people aware that yes, they can go to a bookshop or a DVD shop and buy this stuff? Just because everybody else is blogging the latest seasons doesn’t mean I have to all the time, it’s frustrating to see how slow licensing is in this country but I really do find new stuff to watch all the time which nobody talks about anymore.

Because of the MangaViews.com site policy I can’t cover scanlations of manga on this site. I don’t think I’ve ever done that here actually, because it’s a lot easier to get hold of manga for me than it is to get hold of anime that’s recent here. I know I’m professionally selling out in doing this, but I feel that all the shows I like are either licensed or about to be licensed, and nobody really talks about them any more and that makes me sad.

I have no doubt this is hard for me to take as it is for you, but even if you do read scanlations and blog about them I’ll still try and comment on your blog. Just don’t keep pressuring me to do the same thing when I struggle to find an audience outside of new ways I can bring awareness to my blog and really make a difference in making people aware of cool anime shows and manga series, locally speaking. People sometimes forget that I’m Australian, and in the sea of the world of bloggers I tend to get lost in the crowd or forgotten about. I took a chance which might bring better awareness to my articles and I’m paying the price of it by not being able to cover scanlations of manga, and eventually perhaps no fansubs either.

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Copyright © Jacob Martin 2009. All Rights Reserved.