I said it was an issue meaning not OK on any level I rarely do now-a-days. I know that everytime I do though is bad. It's also very nerve-recking that hardly any network shows much anime here, really just main stream, and 4Kids, that doesn't help them either.

What about us?
 

Well i live in Pakistan and regardless of the low pay rates here i'm willing to save up to buy licensed manga and anime but my problem is that no one here sells that stuff. The only option for me and many other fans around the world is to get them online and because the base price + shipping costs and custom pay on the goods there's no way im going to pay that much. I would benefit from such an online service. If such a service is available

I fully agree with this. Here it's slightly easier as there's Amazon/Ebay etc. but the cost of buying some anime/manga here is outrageous, because a lot of the time (to get the latest stuff) I'd have to get it shipped from abroad, and then if it's over a certain ammount pay a huge tax. If I don't buy it abroad I have to wait six-twelve months for it to get released here, and the animes are rarely (if ever) aired on television here, so I have no choice but to buy it abroad too.

I also want to add I think 'stealing' manga and anime can be justified. I'm quite a fan of Bleach (for example) and the latest chapters/episodes I have to read/watch online, because by the time it takes for it to get translated officially and published/aired I'll be years behind the rest of the world. If my only choice is to 'steal' manga online and read it there, or wait over a year in hopes that it'll finally be out for an outrageous cost, then I'll read it free online. It isn't fair to expect people to wait or pay such costs.

Edit: For the record, I would buy anime/manga if it was made available for a reasonable price. A lot of the time I watch anime online, but then later buy it when it finally becomes avaliable because I enjoy it. I think sometimes watching things online gets people interested in a series, thus making them more inclined to buy a series (sometimes, of course not always). Although for the series that never get translated or are not avaliable to buy overseas there isn't a choice but to watch online.

I like buying manga and anime just because I like owning them. They are nice and shiney. :)

If the manga or anime is good enough, I buy it. When I was younger I was stupid and thought I had a right to these things. WELL GUESS WHAT, you don't.

Saying you 'don't want to pay that much' is utterly stupid. If you don't want to pay that much, THEN DON'T WATCH ANIME. You can't go in a shop and say 'I don't want to pay that much,' and then steal the thing.

If you are stealing anime then stop making excuses and just admit it. If you don't like how the industry is then there are a few options:

a) Stop being an ass and watching/reading things you have no right to.
b) If you can't afford it - GET A HOBBY YOU CAN. Stop ruining the industry for hard working people who SAVE UP to afford it.
c) Invest money in it so the industry BECOMES something you like.

The more you steal stuff the worse the industry is going to become. If you complain about the industry but won't invest any money in it, then you are just an idiot. It's like planting some vegetables and complaining they won't grow when you don't want to water them :p

The companies will charge a lot because people pirate a lot. If they don't charge enough for the business to survive, they wouldn't last 5 minutes. The anime business is TEENY, they can't afford piracy. It's called common sense, not capitalism. Thanks to people like you, these things cost so much. If everyone bought anime they'd be able to bring the prices down.

You don't have the right to call yourself an anime fan if you are doing this crap. If you say 'I'm willing to buy it' and then say 'It's too expensive' then YOU ARE NOT WILLING TO BUY IT.

If you cared about anime and manga, then you wouldn't care about paying a little extra or waiting a little longer to help out the industry. You don't have a RIGHT to watch anime. It's not something you need.

[Sarcasm] I'm a fan of the iphone, but oh look, I can't afford it. Maybe I'll walk in the shop and take it because I'm a big fan of it, so it's my right to take things I want. [/Sarcasm]

To be fair, I would happily pay an extra dollar or two a month to have access to up-to-date digital versions simply because it's way easier for me to read than paper versions.

(I'll first say that I neither watch anime nor read manga, so my opinion is solely based on how I see things from an outside looking in perspective from a business standpoint)

I'm going to try and keep this short, because I don't feel like rattling on only to have someone dissect everything I'm saying to try and validate their point, and then myself having to counter that the same way.

So essentially, the anime/manga market is weak. Everyone knows that. It's not that there aren't fans of the market, or that the market has been saturated. Rather, restrictions are put on the products trying to be sold that drive the consumers away.

The problem with this market is the kink in the "elasticity" of the products. Elasticity is a term used in business to essentially describe how much consumers are willing to pay for a certain product before they seek an alternative (in the case of anime, to not watch, find another hobby, pirate, etc).

In this case, anime is extremely elastic. The general price for anime and the time it takes to produce it for a western audience murders the market itself.
People can use the principle that if one person steals, it only increases the burden for others. Conversely, one can say that at what point can a business raise its prices before it's not just one person stealing, but a mass. This is why the concept of elasticity is important. Many companies are self defeating.

As for the concept of something like streaming videos for a premium, there really isn't anything to comment on. We all see how this effects music in a much larger market, so it's pretty N/A here. If someone could either get something for free or pay a dollar, that makes them no more inclined to pay a dollar.

What does this all mean? That the anime market is not lucrative to begin with. Not because of the consumers, but because of the hurdles required to produce the anime to westerners, which jack up prices and make the product not readily available. Saying the company is the victim when they've decided to partake in a self-failing venture does not sit well with me.

The western anime industry has been somewhat 'fine' for a while. People have just become more greedy and demanding, and in my opinion, with the recession the companies are now failing because piracy has tipped it over the edge.

Is it greed from the consumer, or the high prices and long waiting periods of the market? There is a correlation, but these are two different things.

Why is everyone talking like the Anime/Manga industry is about to go bankrupt any minute now? Where the hell are the sources that say it's in that kind of trouble! And for all those geniuses that list a couple of companies that went bankrupt, then maybe you should go back to Economics 101, or whatever it is they teach you in school! A company going bankrupt does NOT necessarily indicate that the INDUSTRY is going down the drain! Most of the time, it's because the business is dumb!

EDIT: MissMisa, I can't be bothered to reply to your rant up there, but are you really gonna stand there and say the Anime industry is TEENY?????????!?!?!?!!!! WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT? What world are you in?

Is The Anime Market Collapsing?: DVD Sales Down by 50%, Says ICv2 President Milton Griepp

Attacked by Gorillas

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2009-04-01/n-america-2007-anime-market-pegged-at-us$2.8-billion

I didn't feel like sifting through Google too much, but one of these links offers some great data (and bar graphs!) on the drastic decline of the anime market as far as DVD sales go over the past few years (averaging around 40-50 %). If you want to do any digging yourself, you can.

You say that it's just poor decisions by certain companies, but you're acting as if any of these commanies have as much pull as an oligopolistic market. IMO, the market is filled with starving artists more than anything.

And you shouldn't tell anyone to go back to Econ 101 if you're going to treat "industry" and "market" as synonymous.