Picture Perfect Paranoia

Well, who knew that the anime industry is going through shittier times than prior to the Fansub Era?

What the Japanese media companies are experiencing right now could draw comparisons from the fact that newspaper printings are going digital. That available content can now be found on the Web, as opposed to strictly on print. The change could be slightly drastic, and some companies are taking a hard-line approach to stemming the flow of goods going off the shelves and onto the price listings on the Internet.

Sigh.

When I started immersing myself into anime, the whole industry wasn’t this hesitant in providing fansub groups with leeway to distribute their titles, acting as a sort of middleman between the consumers (that means us) and the producers (distributing companies, animators, artists, etc.). With the advent of the Internet as a distributing medium, this creates an upset in the balance, and now the producers are struggling to recapture their target, now fully or partially realizing the benefits of bypassing this conduit in favor of more accessible, less costly, and thus less restrictive means of obtaining content they are in favor of.

As fellow blogger Nagi now cites:

With the failure of major player Geneon earlier this year and the recent increased Japanese hostility towards fansubs, the future of anime both here and abroad has been a much discussed topic of late, with many greatly differing opinions.

…

It gets worse when the original Japanese rights holders horn in on things and constantly try to push the domestic markets to charge even more for anime to bring the rest of the world in line with their own absurd pricing policies, and prevent Japanese citizens from importing the cheaper foreign anime DVDs to circumvent their own native country’s horrendous practices. It’s bad enough that the Japanese charge domestic licensers two arms and three legs just to make this stuff available to us at all and effectively started this entire mess, but it seems they just won’t be satisfied until they’ve completely changed our market to match theirs and make us pay as much as every starving otaku and hikkomori. It’s now becoming an undisputed fact: prices rising sky high does not correlate with the high demand for anime merchandise and paraphernalia. And it’s this problem that has become the subject of much discussion.

Hopefully, the local industry (that means both in Japan and elsewhere) realizes the kinks in this setup, for the betterment of both them and us.

…at least that’s what I think where the problem lies. If anyone can offer some comments or suggestions concerning this issue, feel free to inform me.

Remember this? Since then, the number of spam comments reaching the comment moderation desk have been at a reasonably manageable portion, so it would be good to say that the situation is under control. A word to spammers out there.

I’m currently in a fit of irritation and jealousy, as my deliberate and planned attempts to purchase my first-ever manga (supposed to be Love Hina, but changed my mind halfway to Chibi Vampire aka Karin) were in vain, going down the drain. Last week, I accidentally spotted the first volume of Love Hina, together with the almost complete collection of volumes in tankoubon form, were it not for the fact that I already have the complete set on my computer (in scanlation form, no doubt). The fact that I failed to complete my manga collection of Karin, since the manga got licensed even before I got the the 3rd chapter, made me even more frustrated when I found out that they also have it at a local bookstore (complete with 5 floors of book heaven) for a much steeper price that at other less-known stores that I’ve been to in the past.

Damnit.

Now that fact about the incomplete collection of Karin further fueled my interest in purchasing manga, when I found out about it. And I already had the moolah for the taking. Damn.

Hurr.

Because, at the moment I am having a hard time to write about articles relating to, remotely or otherwise, to anime (as well as its varying brethren), I decided to write up about something closer to my heart. Video games. Heroes of video games, that is.

Yahoo Games has written an article weeks ago listing and describing the VIP’s of the video game that have made it into the hearts of gamers worldwide. Lest we forget, without these icons the major players in the video game industry wouldn’t be as eponymous as who we have known them as today.

According to the so-called listing, Mario, Sonic, Master Chef are among the inductees, with Lara Croft and Ms. Pacman belonging the female variety. It would seem that most of them are catered for the male crowd, with their awesome curves and equally awesome finesse in handing out the bad guys’ butts. Some of them, in addition, may be familier to those who have obscure memories of video game fandom, even upstarting their more famous counterparts, like Princess Zelda to Link’s own and Ms Pacman to her more famous hubby.

As the gamer demographic ages, and with more newcomers into the fray, it would seem that the industry would grow as big as, but not quite close to, the animation industry. In the coming years, we could see these prophecies (sham or not) come into fruition.

So after the day of my birthday I got slapped with over 900 comments to be moderated. Cue the power of pain. ;_;

I have to do something.

Noticing that without some anti-spam plugins on my blog, and with Akismet not active (since I need a WordPress.com API key for it to work), the current WP comment moderation mechanism is like a neutered dog. As safeguard from even possible magnanimous comment moderation work on my to-do list, I have (as of now) activated the following options:

1. Users must be registered and logged in to comment
2. An administrator must always approve the comment
3. Comment author must fill out name and e-mail
4. Comment author must have a previously approved comment

In case your comment gets detained by the WP anti-spam security forces, I will try to work around this temporary situation until I can further beef up security.

Been quiet in these here parts, so instead of writing something new, I decided to do something else to my blog baby. Yup, reducing the size of the blogroll.

Been noticing that it’s gotten longer than my other list of links. Plus, it somehow dilutes the credibility of this blog, having drawn info from obscure sources, such that no one has been paying any sort of attention to them.

And it is with this understanding that I came upon a decision point.

If you are a blog owner, whose blog (especially those whose link I will be “retiring”) is listed in the blogroll, please notify that the status of your activity is higher than what I occasionally see, and we cam come to an arrangement as to your blog’s visibility.

That is all.