Canada Bans selected 'dark' Hentai Anime Titles.

Citing Canada's - "Criminal Code Subsection 163(8) reads: "For the purposes of this Act, any publication a dominant characteristic of which is the undue exploitation of sex, or of sex and any one or more of the following subjects, namely, crime, horror, cruelty and violence, shall be deemed to be obscene." - a number of selected anime titles have effectively been BANNED in Canada.

Of concern is the statement that these titles may not be legally brought into the country.

Now what about EBAY purchases? Mailorders? And torrent downloads?

The source of this info is an ANN news article.

You do consider torrents "legal"?

Too bad they banned Words worth That's a great hentai title.

Actually for the most part - fansubs and the method of their distribution (known as torrents) are ambiguously gray. A public broadcast series that is subtitled by fans and then distributed (free of charge) to other fans in areas of the world where the material is not currently available.

Absent a profit motive (common to fansubs), one could say that Japanese companies cannot claim to be loosing money on something that they could never sell to a non-Japanese or overseas market. But this is the classic argument used by those in support of fansubs. But to be fair, this is ‘in an absolute sense’ the theft of someone else’s creative efforts and the uncontrolled distribution of their products - without any regard for their concerns or long-term intentions.

What concerns me is the latest trend of R1/USA companies forgoing on dubbing all together, choosing to release new titles as subtitled only and then distributing the material at market rate (DVD) costs. One could say that as the US companies have chosen not to spend any money on dubbing scripts, voice actors and sound editors, so they should be able to sell these new titles at a lower cost, but they choose not to. One could say that they have learned from fansubs and are trying to emulate their efforts (but with a legitimate & licensed profit motive).

What I am wondering is that if the subtitled anime actually sells well, what is to prevent the Japanese distributors from changing their DVD formats – to support R1-R? DVD machines, including English, Spanish & whatever subtitles and then just market their products directly to their overseas anime fans. They could then just cut out the American companies almost completely, knock the feet out from under then entire fansub premise and then allow them to just take over a fair % of the vertical market (wiki) – from the creation of anime right up to the distributor. That would be an interesting move that could force a real change the Japanese anime DVD costs (currently about $30 to $50 each). Of note – if you check this site, many of the new titles COME WITH English subtitles - hummmm.

I don’t know if you are aware, but much/most of the R1 licensed dubbed anime is not really American anyways. Most of it recorded and synced up in Canada where the costs of production are a lot less.

As it looks like a large number of American anime-related companies are currently in deep trouble, some shake up in the anime market place is probably going to have to happen – especially with the current economic woes that are bedeviling the US, and befuddling our elected (son-of-a-Bush) President and his stalwart collection of appointed YES-Men.

On the note of Canadian Censorship, I have been wondering when someone would notice some of the more nasty and troublesome Hentai anime titles and then begin asking questions about their legality – especially with the current US trend of aggressively pursuing those interested in some of the more-darker material.

Now ---- the single most burning question that I would like to have answered is --- Just who is choosing what material gets licensed by some of these companies? And what are they high on when they make their selection? Some of the doggy-titles that get licensed are just completely beyond my comprehension and cognitive ability.

That's not a burning question.

To get property 'A' you have to take 'B' 'C' 'D' along with it. Or for Bandai to get 'Melancholy' they had to take 'Simoun' and sell simoun and Japanese prices. (This is an example, I have no idea which of their first born they had to sell to get Haruhi)

ADV also did this when they got a bunch of Gonzo titles. Magikano was last on the list and it didn't fit in at all with the other titles. It was a 'rider' title.

Fansubs are illegal, period.

This should prove interesting (and perhaps disturbing, too): Interview With The Fansubber

I read your post, Devil Doll! I was reading all the posts with the authors' names missing from the left edge of my screen, but I got the feeling that this long one sounded familiar, and I checked who wrote it--I was right! I don't know for sure if this was what you meant, but the thought has occured to me that the fact that I read a lot of subtitles might keep my literacy skills from going to hell altogether.

What I meant is that nowadays kids growing up with everything being animated (TV, PC, console games, cellphones) don't experience the need of understanding subtleties of written language (which they will sorely miss when applying for any decent job as we're in an information society), thus being less annoyed by third-class fansubs... which makes the "time gap" issue even harder for the industry because they can't reasonably go for the same level of "quality".

Having grown up long before the PC was even invented, in a decade where a TV set in a kid's room was unthinkable and books were the primary source of entertainment, I almost feel like a dinosaur with my attitude to accuracy of expressing thoughts in anime dialogs, and the more fighting shounen series will hit the market the more irrelevant will my attitude become in the future.

It's just that anime is able to be more than fighting shounen (and more than Mickey Mouse) and I don't see that idea being actively advertised by the industry (the only anime regularly airing on German TV being fighting shounens heavily censored/butchered down to being "kid compatible", and thus giving the industry as a whole a bad name, plus a handful of hentais airing at some obscure stations after midnight). During the last five years of German anime TV there have been basically Jin-Roh plus five Ghibli Movies in free TV before midnight, plus the series Gantz, GitS SAC, Wolf's Rain, and Escaflowne (not a single Romantic Comedy!). It's no surprise that anime still remains a niche market even though the first anime-only pay TV station just opened in Germany.

Yeah, that's a scary concept. I guess I'm lucky I was born when I was; I remember the days when you either watched a TV show when the networks chose to air it or not at all (and I read a lot of books when I was young, too).

I read your second post, too. It sounds like "Talon87" completely misunderstood you, however, and thinks you are praising the German professional anime makers and panning the fansubbers.

That "Interview With The Fansubber" and the countless comments people have made about it is addictive! Anyone who is interested in the state of the anime industry, fansubbing, and what the future is liable to hold should check it out.

As for this "praising the German professional anime makers and panning the fansubbers": I just watched a certain romance anime as German FanSub.

The key triangle is between a girl and two boys, one of which has been the girl's boyfriend some time ago and now returned to the town where the story takes place and the girl has begun to like the other boy. Both boys happen to know each other and now compete for this girl, and during the final confrontation the ex-friend tells his rival: "You may as well give up, I just proposed to her". Guess what the German fansubbers did? They understood: "I just made a proposal to her" and translated that literally to German (completely ignoring the context of the scene, and not even wondering what the boy might have proposed... argh!!!)

You see, this way German fansubs just aren't fun to me if I permanently have to translate the English idioms the "translator" failed to understand back to English in order to understand what actually happened... Talon87 wasn't completely off target with his interpretation as this example actually was one of the better German fansubs... sigh.

Just wanted to share a strange story that could (probably) only happen in Japan.

Watch your whopper and don't ask about fur-burgers.

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/culture/waiwai/news/20080428p2g00m0dm003000c.html