Watching Unlicensed Anime
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So I recently started to watch all my anime through legal streaming sites such as Crunchyroll and Funimation, but one problem that I have is that I have been wanting to watch some unlicensed anime, so my question is, would it be legal to watch fansubs for an anime series that I own? For example, if I were to buy a series or movie from amazon.jp, could I than watch it with the fansubs? Thanks for any help. And I hope this is the right place to post this question.
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There is no right place for this question here. ~_^
Honestly, there's no legality involved with fansubs, ever.
Let your moral compass be your guide.
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First off, this doesn't really have much to do with FUNimation in general, so I'm going to move it over to the general Anime forum.
Secondly, if it was ME, I don't personally do it. If a show gets licensed, great. I'll watch it on Crunchyroll or FUNi and buy the disc when it comes out to watch the dub.
If it never gets licensed though, it's no biggie. I have come to the realization that there is SOOOOOO much anime in the world that I will never realistically be able to watch all of it. So if one or two shows go unlicensed, I won't worry too much about them. I'll just dip into my ever-growing massive backlog and watch something else instead.
Just remember: Even though something isn't licensed for viewing in our country does not give you the right to watch it through questionable means. At that point, it simply becomes a matter of personal morals. Like my man Jiminy Cricket always said, "Let your conscience be your guide."
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I know that if something is not available in my country it doesn't give me right to watch it. So that's why I wanted to import them, and since I don't understand Japanese language, I would use fan subtitles to understand it. I would think it's NOT stealing or unlawful since I would buy the DVD, I assumed fansubs were illegal only because people would watch them without owning them. Anyways thanks for the replies.
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Well, technically there wouldn't be anything wrong with that. HOWEVER, just be aware that Japanese blurays are MUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCH more expensive than the ones released over here.
A typical one cour (12-13 episode) show will cost you well over $300 in Japan. Plus shipping and import fees on top of that. If you're planning to go through with your idea, I certainly hope that you're willing to spend some serious cash to do it. :hmm:
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What I'm gathering from the responses, is that there is no legal way to get it here with the English translation. Fansubs are basically someone's intellectual and/or artistic property that someone has taken without regard to copyrights and translated into English. In other words, it's pirated.
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Yep, basically. Although, temporarily flying the flag of a pirate is the only way to ever see certain shows if you don't know Japanese, some of which are really great, like say Legend of the Galactic Heroes, and all the sequels to franchises dropped by Funimation and other companies.
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Well if you can afford to pay $80 a volume with 2 or 3 episodes plus shipping and tax then I say it isn't morally wrong to watch fansubs along with the DVDs to get a better understanding of whats going on.
I personally mostly watch fansubs and download LQ/HQ fansubbed files cause my ISP is a pile of trash and can't load streams from CR,Hulu, or Funimation. I only get 1.30 down at the crack of dawn or late at night (past midnight) and during congestion/holidays/weekends its like .60 or below. As much as I would love to watch anime legally most of the time I can't cause my speeds are very unstable so the stream buffers a lot or the ads will never load. I buy what I love if it is licensed in the US and not handled by AoA to make up for it my terrible deeds. It wasn't like this until 2011 I used to be able to watch Crunchyroll all the time with little problems now I can't even load a SD video during congestion. -__-
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Unlicensed anime is like porn, everyone says that they don't watch it, but they do anyways.
Not all people though, just a good amount.
