to all those people out there who think they are supporting the industry by buying anime in malaysia , you have been tricked and terribly misinformed .

anime license need to be purchased before you can sell any anime if not they are considered bootleg .

all shop in malaysia I have see so far they are selling bootleg from taiwan or hong kong . just see where they come from . go back home and google the company see if they are licensed to sell anime . I can bet with you they arent .

Im so sick and tired of seeing people buying anime from shop and say Im supporting the industry or Im buying original . if you want original go amazon , odex , madman , tokyopop to buy .

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http://forum.lowyat.net/index.php?showtopic=352018 <- LordSeta's Guide to identifying Bootleg Anime DVD

Buying anime in Malaysia is a joke. I'd rather buy US-licensed manga and novels and support the original creators.

lots of manga they only took the license but they never really translated it, they declare all the titles cos they have an exclusive agreement with the company japan manga publisher... they will list the title but it's up to them to translate and sell or not.

LOL Malay version of One Piece is licensed lar (if you read SBS section in the tankoubon, Oda did mentioned Malaysia as one of the countries that have OP translated in their respective native language), and it's RM 4.30. The original one (I assumed you talked about the japanese version) is RM 24 due to difference in currencies.

BTW, AFAIK, Comics House got license for all of the manga they printed.

Though the "international" one is more exp. at least you will get the uncensored version

I am a little surprised how uniformed and naive (and also dumb if you want to put it harsher) the mass is. It really shouldn't take a genius to realize all the "tulen" chopped stuff are just pirated things, most people should be able to observe how large the price gap is between the actual legit stuff you can get online and the stuff you can buy at your local shop. The reason why the pirated things are able to get the tulen sign is because they are legitimate copies from taiwan or china, but they aren't legitimately produced in taiwan or china in the first place, to put it another way it is a legit copy of a pirated product.

And personally I find it worse to buy pirated things than downloading them. By downloading it illegally, the original maker loses money. By paying money for illegal copies, the original maker loses money and the pirates earn money for doing nothing.

So stop and think again before you hop to your local SPEED store thinking of buying a few series or soundtracks next time.

I really lol'd at some of the so called ori subs. Tetsu becomes Iron. Straight translation!

- nice package and *KINDA* original license stripe means shit

- and lol hologram tulen sticker

- TVB != anime, this is /AS/

as for ur question:

US license
http://www.rightstuf.com/cgi-bin/catalogmg...tem/84585/4/0/0
pretty fukken cheap, but they dont have the coin given out to those lucky draw bastards so i skipped this lol!
and per dvd (or 2 IINM) including everything is very VERY rare. this is pretty much considered a low production release and it includes nothing (as in no extras) but subtitles.

Japanese license
http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E7%8B%BC%E3%81%A8...8274284&sr=8-37
more expensive compared to english license, however, you'll get more out of what you purchase in terms of packaging, more "collector's value" with the included extras/physical items or even merchandises.

price breakdown:
36 usd is aprox RM126 for 13 episodes dual layer DVD

5k yen is aprox RM200, for 3 episodes DVD

keyword: considered

and no, it is not legal. customs being ignorant is one thing, it doesnt make an illegal item legal.

yeap. lol

that word reminds me of a certain idiot troll person who came here parading his "local ori, legal" anime merchandises

xD those people at the video stores still have the balls to say " yes its ORI, Government censorship board approved "

Of course, they are 'legal' since the government censorship board already allegedly 'filtered' and approved 'em for sell, licensed authorization of release doesn't concern them at all.   

They all bother, by circumstance only... If something is known to be 'illegal' and properly notified then they would bother to take action (ordered to do so), but if that one thing is an 'unknown' and there is no Notice to look out for it nor there is any particular legal claim by any party related, then they wouldn't be bother to do anything. Jumping to conclusion that one boxset of DVD might be bootleg (paranoid much?) would lead to a lot work and head will spin, why bother?

That one set of DVD would probably be hard to determine if it's legal or bootleg- it might be possibly legal in a country but illegal in another country, but there's no way to differentiate them without going through a proper processing channel...

Imagine this, in a perfect world where rules are strictly and properly enforced and the government officer cared and bothered -

a)The custom detained a DVD set at an airport, sent the owner off giving the fella some documents and asking him to wait for further confirmation while they process it.

b)The custom then sent the DVD to a processing channel, it's taken apart, the wrappers torn off, the box and the disc are carefully check for chemical residue (bootleg used cheap glue betwen the dvd and the protective membrane ).

c)They cross-referenced the information from the invoice and the dvd set by communicating with the original merchant and the original distributor to determine the originality.

d)They probably screen it, to check any unappropriate stuff (for the sake of morale and religion and ect). ~ probably decide to confiscate it if it doesn't meet their standard.

e)The whole processing would probably take alot of time since they cared and bothered and detained every parcels (all are potential candidates) to determine if they are legit or bootleg.

g)Voila, 4-12 weeks later (or more if counting public holidays), the poor fella finally received a call or a letter telling him to pick his genuine original dvd set at a certain address and reminded to pay a certain fee and filled a certain form and stick 'Ori' stickers on them to prove that it's legal and original. Or it's consficated for being to violence and it's against the law and furthermore it will from now on be banned and so the copy will be rid off. Or it's being determined as a bootleg. it will be confiscated and act as an evidence as the government as a representative of the public and the copyright and license holder will proceed to prosecute the fella... 


So.... Since processing takes time, and pretty much a chore, why bother doing so? And don't forget that people already complaint whenever their stuff are detained, then going through the so called 'rape' process, and possibly then tainted with a shiny 'Ori' sticker and a big filtered and approved sticker and not to mentioned that they have to pay a certain fee to let the government do that. The stickers was an idea created to simplify the identification of an original release and a bootleg but all it did was worsen the matter...

And what if the DVD set turned out to be a parallel import, a grey product licensed only to be sold at a certain country, but with a simple click online it flew across the globe to another country that is outside the legal regional licensing agreement. It might already been licensed in said country, and the existance of this foreign DVD set goes against the agreement between the local distributor and the copyright owner, more head will probably spin... So why bother?

So...

After reading some of the post in here as well as in the Anime Shrine website and Sankaku Complex, I can consider that I am an otaku but I am a Type A otaku and not a Type B otaku.

As for supporting the anime industry, I try to support it the best I can.

Some of the way that I use to support it are:

1.) Watching it at cinema
2.) Not buying bootleg "original anime"
3.) Not buying Odex's anime

I also watch anime through streaming although it sort of fall in the grey area.