controversy

The AI Anime Generated Art Controversy – My Take

October 28, 2022 by Chikorita157 Leave a Comment

Now anyone can create AI generated art work at their fingertips, but is it a good thing?

Earlier this year, AI advancements were made as DALLE was revealed to the public, making compelling images. It allows users to generate images from a text prompt. However, the latest version is not open to the public.That all changed this month.

Earlier this month, NovelAI released their image generator that uses similar methods as DALLE to generate anime-themed images. While it’s impressive how decent the images are, they caused much controversy in the anime fanart and V-Tuber community. So, you might wonder what my opinion is on this whole thing. I decided to try the image generator on NovelAI, and no, it will not replace fan art and anime art commissions for various reasons, which I will go into.

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Category: EditorialsTag: ai, anime fandom, controversy

Episode 4 – Decline of Crunchyroll and Failure of Originals

April 8, 2021 by Chikorita157

Hana Kouen Podcast

Episode 4 - Decline of Crunchyroll and Failure of Originals

00:00 / 10:50

In this episode, we will discuss the decline of Crunchyroll as it’s catalog shrinks and the failure of Crunchyroll Originals. We also discuss the implications of Sony possibly buying Crunchyroll.

This is an audio version of our post, originally titled Decline of Crunchyroll and Failure of Originals, published on November 17, 2020. If you have any comments, leave a reply in the original post.

This podcast uses the following songs:

Night In Venice by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/5763-night-in-venice
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Ultralounge by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/5010-ultralounge
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Tag: anime industry, controversy, crunchyroll, essay, opinion

Decline of Crunchyroll and Failure of Originals

November 17, 2020 by Chikorita157 1 Comment

For a while now, Crunchyroll is facing a big decline. In recent seasons, Funimation has been getting a lot of high profile shows in the past. To make matters worse, the service has been losing a lot of shows in its catalog while increasing the subscription fees.

Now, WarnerMedia, who owns Crunchyroll wants to sell it to Sony. Not only this will cause the problem of Sony almost controlling the western anime market, Crunchyroll will most likely cease to exist as they will most likely merge it with Funimation.

With the lack of shows that appeal to my tastes, I kind of let my Crunchyroll Premium lapse and I have yet to renew it. This is mostly because the titles I want to watch is now on Funimation or Hidive.

The question remains, what led to this situation? Is it because of Crunchyroll’s ambitious plans to work on creating their originals with the long-term plan of controlling anime? Or is it bad luck caused by the Covid19 induced recession.

Note: An audio version of this post is now available.

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Category: EditorialsTag: anime industry, controversy, crunchyroll, essay, opinion

Pitfalls of Anime Streaming, Competition and Subscription Fatigue – Is It Becoming Too Fragmented?

March 16, 2020 by Chikorita157 1 Comment

It’s obvious that the Novel Coronavirus has caused a lot of public events to become cancelled along with schools. Aside from people who have a job, but can’t telework, most will be at home. In other words, some or most of you would binge watch on anime while being stuck at home.

This of course brings the topic of anime streaming. In recent years, anime has become more accessible legally through legal streaming services like Crunchyroll, Funimation, and others. Not only that, you don’t have to spend $50-250 to buy the whole series on DVD or Blu-ray to watch it. Of course, we started to see Crunchyroll losing the lion share of the anime streaming as competition heated up.

If you recall, Amazon tried to jump in the fray with Anime Strike and Netflix doing its own thing. While competition is good as it doesn’t cause a service to become complacent. During that time, Crunchyroll became a bit lazy by not updating their video player and with poor video quality.

Once competition took hold, they eventually added an HTML5 player. It’s not without consequence. They lost a good amount of their catalog once Funnimation pulled out of the deal.

As expected, exclusive simulcasting is becoming an issue as people have to subscribe to the multiple services to watch the content they enjoy. Otherwise, he or she will miss out unless they subscribe. As they say, each subscription adds up in the end. This phenomenon is called subscription fatigue. While some bloggers have covered this concern, it’s time to go more in depth in it.
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Category: EditorialsTag: analysis, anime industry, controversy, opinion

The Reasons Why You Should (Probably) Not Pirate Anime

February 13, 2020 by Chikorita157 1 Comment

Since 2017, I started the shift towards streaming mostly because it’s convenient and it’s probably the cheapest way to support the industry. From the monthly subscription fees, royalties are paid from the shows you watch, which eventually goes back to the studios and the industry.

Given the problem that studios are facing with low pay and poor working conditions, if more switched to legal alternatives, it would help the industry. After all, revenue generated overseas will become more important given the change in demographics in Japan.

While streaming is not the ideal solution mostly because of region restrictions, it’s not a problem if you live in North America. Of course, exclusivity of titles and fragmentation is another issue. Certain titles will only be available on Crunchyroll, HIDIVE, Amazon, Netflix or Funimation. In other words, this will require subscribing to multiple services.

If you take these drawbacks from the picture, it’s a better way to watch anime as it’s convenient. One doesn’t have to mess around with Bittorrent, worry about what video players to use, and having enough disk space. You just watch whatever you want.

However, people who live in regions where legal options are readily available and can afford it still choose to pirate. People have to realize that not only this is selfish and immoral given the poor state of the animation industry, you are also putting your information security at risk. Not to mention, piracy or rather the correct term, copyright infringement is illegal. I will explain why you should probably stop pirating anime and consider legal options if available.

(Note: Pardon the lack of images, they are coming in a few days)
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Category: EditorialsTag: anime industry, controversy, essay, opinion

Transfer Limitations in Pocket Monsters Sword and Shield, Is Game Freak Betraying their Fans?

June 12, 2019 by Chikorita157 5 Comments

Back in February 2019, Game Freak finally announced their next generation games, Pocket Monsters Sword and Shield for the Nintendo Switch. This game will finally have a third person view in an open world compared to the previous games. However, after showing off new features at E3, a lot of people became upset. News broke that you won’t be able to transfer all your Pokémon from the Pokémon Home service to the new games. This is because of Game Freak’s change in direction.

To me, this decision is a big betrayal to the loyal Pokémon fan base. Of course, many people are angry about this decision and for good reasons. He or she won’t be able to use all of their favorite Pokémon in the new games. With that, I want to share my thoughts on why Game Freak is out of touch with the fan base.
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Category: EditorialsTag: analysis, controversy, opinion, pokemon, Video Games

The Sad State of Legal Anime Streaming or Why Anime Strike is Cancer – Update: It’s Dead

July 24, 2017 by Chikorita157 6 Comments

In recent years, there is a big shift towards legal streaming. As mentioned in an earlier editorial, streaming sites like Crunchyroll makes anime more accessible. While there are drawbacks such as region restrictions and lack of offline viewing, it keeps most people from pirating anime. Legal streaming overall allows anime to become more mainstream than it did in the past. Of course, this spawned more competition such as Funimation, Daisuki and others.

However, in 2017, the state of streaming deteriorated. It’s obvious that Amazon and Netflix now wants the piece of the streaming pie. Earlier this year Amazon launched Anime Strike. Meanwhile, Netflix becomes a serious contender by taking more high-profile titles such as Little Witch Academia and Fate/Apocrypha. While competition is good as it prevents companies from being too lazy, it has a lot of drawbacks. As seen with the huge backlash towards Anime Strike, it can have negative impacts to the fandom as a whole. Moreover, it can derail the trend towards legal streaming and drive people back to piracy.
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Category: EditorialsTag: Amazon, anime industry, Anime Strike, controversy, legal streaming, Netflix, opinion

Avex Export Ban and Why It’s Bad for the Anime Industry

February 16, 2017 by Chikorita157 Leave a Comment

Just a few days ago, something blew up in the fandom. Apparently, Avex Pictures have banned exports of Blu-rays, DVDs and CDs to countries outside of Japan. While this does not affect the music division, it does bring negative implications for people who imports Anime Blu-rays, DVDs and CDs. I will share my thoughts about the Avex export ban along with background information behind it.
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Category: EditorialsTag: anaysis, anime industry, avex, controversy, export ban, opinion

Another Dark Side of the Anime Fandumb – The Toxic Purity Culture

May 18, 2016 by Chikorita157 1 Comment

Last fall, I have focused on the voice acting industry in a similar way I did with the animation production industry. Believe it or not, voice acting is not only very difficult to break into unless you are very talented along with low pay, especially for those who are not as popular, there is a dark side to the fandom that creeps from the idol fandom. This is what many refer to as the purity culture, a very toxic aspect of the fandom, which I will explain.
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Category: EditorialsTag: analysis, anime fandom, controversy, purity culture

Does Downloading Anime Makes You Less of an Anime Fan?

April 7, 2016 by Chikorita157 3 Comments

In the past, I have touched upon thoughts about piracy and how they are taking a wrong approach. Although legal alternatives have made some strides, it has shortcomings besides other issues like region locking and that the subs have quality issues in the viewer’s eyes.

With that in mind, while fans tend to look down other fans because of their tastes of Anime, there is another issue that is also apparent, people chastising people because they prefer to download anime opposed to streaming it legally or buying Blu-rays. While I will share why this practice is counterproductive, there are various reasons why people choose to continue to download instead of watching it on a legal streaming site.
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Category: EditorialsTag: anime industry, controversy, fandom, opinion

Thoughts on Oversensitive People and Creative Media – Are They Harming it?

March 1, 2016 by Chikorita157 8 Comments

In the past, I tend not to talk about these issues.. Sadly, it has gotten to the point that the mainstream media is using them as a scapegoat for all these issues including sites like Anime News Network inserting politics to some of their reviews, thus the discussion becomes polarized. In some cases, this eventually lead to censorship and lack of localization while people shaming others who enjoy these types of media.
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Category: EditorialsTag: analysis, controversy, fandom, opinion

The Trans-Pacific Partnership – The Trade Agreement that will Destroy the Anime Fandom as We Know It

October 19, 2015 by Chikorita157 6 Comments

Remember the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act from 2011? These acts aimed to stop piracy, but at the same time introduced unintended consequences since the legislation was so broad that companies and government can use it to request internet service providers to censor sites. If thy were to pass, companies can use it to censor your content and limit free speech. Thankfully, people protested and these two legislations died. ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) faced the same fate since it was SOPA-like.

Now, we have a new bogeyman that will threaten free speech, reign in censorship and limit free speech. This will not only destroy anime blogging, but the anime fandom as we know it. That is the TPP, which is commonly referred to as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a secret trade deal that involves the United States and other Asian countries in the pacific, including Australia, Canada, Japan and others.

This recently leaked treaty has a lot of nasty copyright restrictions that will undermine fair use and make copyright violations a criminal offense. This mean that you might get a hefty fine or even get thrown into jail. With that, I’m going to share some background information about the treaty and then go into certain provisions that will possibly impact the anime fandom as a whole.
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Category: EditorialsTag: censorship, controversy, fandom, politics, trans pacific partnership

Overly Obsessive and Misbehaving Anime Fans – How it Negatively Impact Normal Fans

September 5, 2015 by Chikorita157 4 Comments

For a while now, I have covered several aspects of the fandom and of course there are always going to be good and bad fans. However, after hearing news about fans threatening others through violence over other fans opinions and such, it makes you wonder if there are some really bad apples and messed up people in the fandom that are worse than the anime fandumb since their behavior hurt the overall reputation of ordinary people like you and me who happens to enjoy anime or even video games.
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Category: Editorials, Love LiveTag: analysis, controversy, fandom, opinion

Thoughts on Tastes and Why There is No Such Thing as Good/Bad Taste

November 6, 2014 by Chikorita157 2 Comments

For a long time, I avoided sharing my views on how people view tastes in Anime since it is a controversial issue in the fandom. While some anime bloggers shared their thoughts on the issue, there are many reasons why I do not subscribe to the view there is such thing as good/bad tastes.
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Category: EditorialsTag: bullying, controversy, essay, fandom, opinion, tastes

Thoughts about Japan’s crackdown on Anime/Manga Piracy and How they should deal with it

August 31, 2014 by Chikorita157 1 Comment

Just last month, the Anime and Manga Industry have started to crack down piracy of Anime and Manga. While I believe that these creators should get the credit they deserve and the industry made some progress in doing so with legal streaming sites, there are still some shortcomings, especially in regards to Manga. I think there are ways to fix it that would benefit the industry rather than fighting an endless battle on piracy.
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Category: About the Japanese Animation Industry, EditorialsTag: analysis, anime industry, controversy, crunchyroll, opinion

The Stale State of the Pokemon Anime – Should Game Freak Finally Revamp the Anime?

July 12, 2014 by Chikorita157 10 Comments

Pokémon was one of the first shows besides Miyazaki films that helped me gain an interest in Anime. While I remained a fan of Pokémon (or Pocket Monsters) since my childhood, I gradually lost interest in the Anime in the mid 2000s because it got dull and bland.

After watching and reviewing Pokémon the Origin special late last year and reading this controversial thread on Bulbagarden Forums, I have a feeling that Game Freak should revamp the Pokémon Anime to be more like Origins and make Satoshi age or change the protagonist every few years.
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Category: EditorialsTag: controversy, opinion, pokemon

Fandom Rivalries and Fanboys – Are They Harmful to the Anime Fandom?

July 4, 2014 by Chikorita157 3 Comments

In the past, I shared my thoughts about the Anime Fandumb where fans become obsessive to the point where they berate people. Of course, there is another ugly aspect of the fandom that I haven’t touched upon: fandom rivalry and fanboys.
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Category: EditorialsTag: analysis, anime fandom, controversy, fanboys, Fandom Rivalries, opinion

Net Neutrality and Anime – Why you should care?

April 25, 2014 by Chikorita157 1 Comment

Back in 2012, many people in the Anime Blogosphere protested against the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP because it would have ended the Internet as we know it. These two bills eventually caused so much backlash that Congress had to shelve it.

In January of this year, the Supreme Court has shot down FCC’s Net Neutrality rules, which would have protected the free Internet. Just a few days ago, the FCC has decided that they are not going to keep it, thus effectively killing Net Neutrality.

I know that most Anime fans won’t care about this for the fact that he or she might not know what all of this means and/or just want to watch Anime and interact with the community. However, ignoring this will eventually lead to a rude awakening as it can adversely affect legal streaming sites, Anime related blogs, etc., which is why I wanted to share my thoughts about the whole issue.
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Category: EditorialsTag: <, anime streaming, censorship, controversy, fandom, net neutrality, politics, United States

Thoughts about Otaku and Its Influence in the Industry – Is it a bad thing?

February 11, 2014 by Chikorita157 7 Comments

In the past, I tend to avoid the topic on the Otaku for the fact that they are viewed negatively by Japanese society while the west tends to view the word in a more positive manner.

Of course, in a recent interview from the famous Hayao Miyazaki has stirred controversy when he stated that the Anime Industry is “full of Otaku.” While it’s understandable why he would feel this way considering his age, he brings up an interesting point that eventually lead me to share my thoughts about the whole thing. (Image Source)
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Category: EditorialsTag: analysis, controversy, fandom, Hayao Miyazaki, opinion, otaku

Nostalgia Filter and the Anime Fandom

November 19, 2013 by Chikorita157 11 Comments

During the summer, I have shared my thoughts about the Anime Fandumb. Of course, I forgot to write about the very thing that also fuels the whole moe debate and the old versus the new, the Nostalgia Filter.

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Category: EditorialsTag: controversy, fandom, nostalgia filter, opinion

Evolving Views on Fanservice – Why it’s not so bad after all.

September 3, 2013 by Chikorita157 9 Comments

A long time ago, I have been against fanservice in Anime as myself and some people perceive this as a bad thing for Anime. However, I have seen the light after watching and reviewing a lot of shows. Now, I want to share my reason fanservice and ecchi is not necessarily a bad thing as some people make it out to be.
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Category: EditorialsTag: commentary, controversy, fandom, fanservice

Damsel and Distress Redux – Is there a Sexism Problem in Video Games?

August 20, 2013 by Chikorita157 2 Comments

For a while now, I have been silent on gender issues in video games because it’s very controversial. But today, I’m going to share my thoughts about it and why the issue is overblown. At the same time, the video game industry needs to be addressed because more females are playing video games. (Image Source)
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Category: EditorialsTag: controversy, Damsel in Distress, essay, opinion, Video Games

More on Region Locking – Why this practice needs to be abolished.

July 26, 2013 by Chikorita157 8 Comments

In an editorial several months ago, I criticized briefly on region locking on streams. This month, Ryu Shoji from Bulbanews wrote a good editorial on why Nintendo should go region free after Microsoft changed their DRM policy, effectively abolishing region locks. Considering that licensed Anime and streams is region locked and most Anime fans play video games, I think this will be a great topic to talk about since I am against region locking for various reasons. (Image Source)
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Category: EditorialsTag: anime industry, controversy, essay, nintendo, personal experiences, region locking

Examining the Dark Side of the Anime Fandom – The Anime Fan Dumb

July 9, 2013 by Chikorita157 18 Comments

If you look at any fandom, you will bound to find obsessive fans that take things seriously and start berating people for not having the true fans or going on the rampage when the couple he/she wanted doesn’t happen. Or maybe you might come across an elitist anime fan that says your taste in Anime is crap. To me, I think an Anime Fan Dumb exists for the fact that a small percentage of the fans in the whole fandom are obsessive. (Image Source)

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Category: EditorialsTag: analysis, anime fandom, controversy, essay, opinion

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