Feed the Starving Manga Artists

 Anime News Network recently posted an article about Yana Toboso, the creator of the successfull manga and anime Black Butler. Toboso recently posted on her blog, condemning illegal downloads of her creations.

Toboso reports that she has been getting more email messages and letters from fans like the following:

"I read them from ROMs I borrowed from a friend. LOL"

"I found and watched all of them on an overseas video site!"

"I became a fan with the second season, and then I watched the entire first season on an overseas video site. lol It was very amusing!"

Toboso said these actions are "unmistakably" illegal and added, "It is the same as shoplifting or leaving a restaurant without paying the bill." According to Toboso, if people watch anime illegally or download them without authorization, "we creators and voice actors will not eat; this is no joke, we will starve and die. This is not 'lol.'" She then said, "These actions, to paraphrase a certain Fullmetal character, goes against the Law of Equivalent Exchange! If you continue doing them, I really cannot make either anime or manga again. […] Unauthorized videos + downloads are wrong, absolutely!"

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Original article at Anime News Network 

An argument that many people who download anime and manga use (flawed though it is), is that while the North American industry might suffer from their lack of purchases, the Japanese industry remains completely unaffected. This is not true. The Japanese anime industry has nearly failed several times, and it's only still here today because it was bailed out by the United States and Canada. There are even several anime series, such as The Big O, which were only given a second season because the US Networks that had licensed it were providing the funding. Shinjichi Watanabe, director of popular anime like Excel Saga and The Wallflower, stated in an interview that he has been forced to give up smoking, because it came down to a choice between buying his cigarettes, or buying food for his newborn son.  As Toboso says, "we creators and voice actors will not eat; this is no joke, we will starve and die."

The Black Butler manga and anime were only recently licensed in North America, by Yen Press and Funimation Entertainment respectively. Many people who download anime believe that it's legal so long as the anime or manga in question has not been licensed yet. I myself was under that assumption, back when I also downloaded the latest fan subtitled anime from Japan. However, this is not the case.

On March 1, 1989, the United States became party to the Berne Convention, an international treaty where all parties agree to uphold and respect the copyrights of all member countries, including Japan. As a result, if it's illegal to download material copyrighted in the US, it is also illegal to download material copyrighted in Japan.

North American fans need to realize that if the North American anime industry collapses, odds are that Japan will soon follow. The industry is doing everything it can to combat piracy, but it's not enough. Fans need to step up and do their part, giving the industry what it needs in order to grow, instead of feeding off of it whilst giving nothing in return.

Don't be a parasite.