[Super Angillis]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Guyver Spawn

With niche shows, I do have no choice to watch it illegally until a official release is out. Some people in the industry are okay with it, while others are not. Kamen Rider is more niche than something like anime which I always support officially since fan subs for anime have hurt companies before.

Which is my general policy too. I mean I'm hardly guilt free on this myself. If you don't have any actual official releases you really don't have any options. Course once you do have an official release, you can then use it, and support it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by KaijuUltraFan

I figure I may download the shows I like, like Kamen Rider and Sentai, but I spend $1,000's on the toys that I wouldn't have bought if I didn't watch the shows.

So while they may be losing licensing money because I downloaded a fan-sub, they gained a bunch of licensing money because I buy a ton of SHF/SHM/SIC/NECA/BANDAI "collectibles" I would not have bought had I not watched the show in the first place.

No matter what, they win:

I can not watch the show and then they lose no money because I didn't watch the show for free. But they make no money on toy sales.

Or I can watch the show for free and then they get a bunch of money they wouldn't have otherwise gotten that they only received because I watched the show.

And if the show is good and I like it I'm more inclined to buy even more toys/figures/belts/whatever from that particular series.

So maybe a show I'm not as crazy about I'll buy one figure to pay some dues for watching the show for free. But then a show I liked a lot I'll buy all the figures.

or something like the original Kamen Rider 1971, I buy multiples and many versions of the same figure. I've probably got around 10 different v1 figures.

I really liked Kamen Rider Double. I bought the vinyl figure, all the SHF figures, and the Belt/Driver. I wouldn't have bought all that if I didn't see the show.

Counting my Godzilla figures I probably have somewhere around 70-75 figures total. None of which I would've bought if I hadn't downloaded the shows.

So in my mind they're making money off of me even if I'm not buying dvd collections of all the shows I want to watch.

(plus I'd rather have a 2TB external hard drive full of Toku shows rather then a bookshelf clogged with dvds. That takes up space I'd rather put figures in.)

Which is fine. I've done that too. Though I'm the sort who prefers to have the DVDs. I'm just old fashioned like that where it doesn't feel like I truly own it if I don't have a physical copy.

In this case the official licensee doesn't get any money, which hurts their ability to continue bringing it over. But again you don't have much choice if it hasn't been licensed. If you do feel the urge to watch something that is licensed and on a free stream like the Shout Site though, it'd probably be a good thing Again, I've heard that Bandai likes the relationship with shout in the hopes it'll get people buying all those nice expensive figures. We've seen an upswing in Gundam Kits for example due to bluefin group, and if someone imports SH Figarts of Sentai, or a Soul of Chokogin, yeah Bandai makes money. In this case it's Shout Factory who's loosing money, but only if it's a series they have currently. Or if enough people decide they've already seen that series, so they don't care about seeing Shout's subs.

If the only way you'll ever see it is to pirate you don't have much choice, but it is a good thing to support the franchise in some offcial way. And if their is an official stream you can watch for free, then there's not much reason to not do that instead.