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The #kissanime fiasco is so multifaceted. I understand why people are celebrating, piracy harms creators - but I worry that bigger issues arent being recognized here.
Kissanime, kumby etc., rose to meet a demand. Crunchyroll and funimation didnt exist, at least not how they do now, and american studios were slow, selective, and often not very good, when it came to translation and dubbing.
And so a fan-made culture rose to meet the demand. Its pretty incredible when you think about the sheer breadth and depth of stuff that was available on those sites. Stuff that no studio would ever bother with, translated - usually well - by hobbyists.
They were practically museums. Nothing too obscure or old, everything available to everyone at a click. Unfortunately, like many museums, what they had basically amounted to stolen goods. T
The streaming services that have stepped up their game in this regard deserve credit. They do great work and their subscriptions are reasonable. How they managed to convince rigid Japanese companies to embrace them is nothing short of a miracle.
But to say "piracy harms animators" is far too simplistic. There are countless articles about how poorly Japanese animators are paid, how their passion is exploited, so many that I couldnt pick one to link. Just google it, they're all depressing.
And rarely - if ever - is piracy mentioned as a factor. Because, as everyone in the industry knows, but no one wants to admit, the real reason is grossly misaligned pay scaling.
In Japan - I have no idea about elsewhere - voice actors make IN.FUCKING.SANE money in relation to just about everyone else on the production. As much as 5 times what the animators do, and almost always more than even the director/producer.
You can argue that va's bring that value to the product overall, and you might be right - but that return is not fairly distributed. It makes little to no difference to an animator if you watch via kissanime or crunchyroll. The system is setup to keep that money from them anyway.
Piracy is a distribution issue. Always has been. And while the infrastructure exists now to distribute even niche anime globally in a way that makes financial sense, it doesnt solve the wider issues of exploitation and unfair practices in the industry.
And ultimately it resigns a lot of anime to history. There were shows on kissanime that would never have seen an english translation anyway, and likely never will again. Perhaps these sites could serve as preservation. We'll likely never know.
So yeah, piracy is generally bad - but dont fool yourself into thinking its totally black and white. And definitely dont be naive enough to think moves like this will help anyone except those with the money and power to make them in the first place.
#ripkissanime #anime
#ripkissanime #anime
