[SSJup81]

Originally Posted by Nyororin

On the other hand, from what I have seen of US sales, if there is the option to get it for free or close to it - except for a small percentage of fans - pretty much everyone will take that route. Why pay when you can get it for free?

Or...they want to watch it first, see if they like it, and then buy it, especially if they're in places where renting isn't much of an option, 'cept with the mainstream junk, like Naruto, Bleach, One Piece, etc., or either they don't have the cable to watch it at all. I don't have a station that plays anime on my television, so watching anime period has become a rarity for me...but for the most part, I'm not missing much. Most of my interest is with older series, or either with series that deserve a re-release (Yoroiden Samurai Troopers/Ronin Warriors).

The same goes for manga - it isn`t that hard at all to track down scanned copies on the net the very day they`re published...

Wish I could find Yoroiden Samurai Troopers manga...very rare in general.

But in Japan it isn`t popular at ALL. 95% of people head to the bookstore and buy, as the price range for a manga/manga compilation magazine is perfect for the marketplace.

IMO, in the US, manga really isn't that expensive. It's about $10 per book. If you get one volume of a series every so many months, that's not much at all, especially with the way it's released.

That aside, I wish we had that luxury, but, if a series isn't popular enough, it's not going to get a license in other countries, more than likely. I'm still waiting for Gokusen's manga to get licensed and Hunter x Hunter's anime to get licensed. I just don't get why these two series don't have this. I was so happy when Hunter x Hunter got a manga release here. I stopped with the scanlations and started collecting the series. I'm also glad that finally after all of these years, that a good amount of The Legend of Zelda manga series have been licensed and released here in the US and Europe. It's about darn time!! I can now ditch the scanlations and just buy them now. I just hope it doesn't go the route of the Gundam Wing manga (which was also hard to collect the entirety of, due to the rarity of them).

Anime is cheap in the US. Extremely cheap, in my opinion, if you take into account all the extra costs of localization. Citing costs as the reason for downloading is silly, as no matter how cheap they make it someone out there still won`t be able to afford it.

Yeah it is cheap in the US. It's just easier to download and watch some series, see if you like it enough to want to purchase and own it. I still see it as sampling before purchasing. I used to watch Bleach. I would've kicked myself if I'd actually bought this series because I got so bored of it. Same with Naruto and Inuyasha and a bunch of other series. I must have a terrible attention span or something.

Either way, it's sorta like how one can rent a movie from a video store and if the person likes it enough, will just go out and buy it to own. Or, when a movie comes out in the theatre, one might opt out of going because he/she doesn't feel the movie is wroth the $10 ticket price and just wait until it comes on television and make a decision then on whether or not to go out and buy it. Same goes with music stores (not sure if they still do this), but they have headphones and stuff set up so that you can listen to certain cds or certain tracks. You're pretty much sampling there too.

The point still stands. If a person truly enjoys something, in other words, a fan of said work, he or she will probably invest in it at some point. Of course, for me, I don't own too much anime, due to the fact that there isn't much that interests me enough to want to own it and seems that most of what I want, don't have DVD releases for it (with a sub/dub option) or is either something older.