A Narrow, Unfortunate Escape
Nov. 23rd, 2014 06:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerThe news some months ago that Viz had licensed the long officially-unavailable-over-here Sailor Moon caught even my attention; long years of history came to mind. I have a recollection of having first seen a bit of it on TV just before first leaving for university, where I saw some posters not that long after arriving and joined the anime club to at last see more of the stuff I'd seen watching Robotech ten years before, and in connection to that I sorted out (much quicker than with Robotech) that Sailor Moon had also come from Japan. Those first glimpses of it pretty much convinced me I wasn't in the target demographic, though (the line from the song "One Week," "the boom anime babe that makes me think the wrong thing," can seem to cut a little close), and the unimpressed opinions the anime club had about it didn't quite seem to just dwell on the "localization." Within a year or so, though, I was getting the sense that whatever disdain those who held themselves in the know had had to start with, the show really was managing to broaden the anime-watching audience over here. Before I'd left university, the club had just happened to show a "fansubbed" short subject attached to one of the Sailor Moon movies when I was there to see it. Beyond that, though, I still didn't count myself as very familiar with something "everyone else" seemed more so, although when a certain memorable MSTing gaped at Sailor Moon and Daria getting crossed over into a "technothriller" I realised I knew more about the Japanese animated series than the American.
Not that long afterwards, all things considered, the first two Sailor Moon anime series were licensed by ADV Films for release on DVD over here, but I did happen to hear the video masters provided looked and sounded pretty bad, and decided my own particular fandom didn't "need" to see the show. The release went out of print apparently fairly quickly, and theories were shared about why. In that in-between time, though, I took a certain controversial step and started getting my hands on "fansubs" of the show (which never seems that hard for me), watching through the first series more or less with the impression that it was amusing how the title character Usagi started more as a cautionary example than an upstanding role model, which was at least a change from my impressions of Cardcaptor Sakura, which the anime club had shown some episodes of and I'd bought all its DVDs when they had seemed acceptable in the opinions of others. With that, though, one of the ways the news the series had been licensed again got my attention was to make me think "the right thing to do," as in certain cases before, was to buy the series.
The steady drip-drip of contempt towards the audiovisual quality, or proclaimed lack thereof, of "domestic" releases on the main anime message board I read has got me to the point where I intend to wait and order releases from Sentai Filmworks and Funimation only after they've been vetted. I've let that rule slip for a few boxes from Funimation, though, and the packaging for the upcoming release of Sailor Moon looked fancy enough that I thought I'd go all in and order it before it was too late. To make the order from the online store Right Stuf large enough to get free shipping, though, I had to add a bunch of other things to it, including some volumes of manga that wouldn't ship until the week after Sailor Moon. That didn't seem too long to wait, even as I started watching the new remake Sailor Moon Crystal only to stop four episodes later with the thought I could at least watch the original anime again. In the last little bit of that wait, though, a familiar aggrieved refrain built on examination of early shipments that the "high-definition" video had been faked up from low-quality masters, and not well either. I started bargaining with myself, in turn telling myself that I surely wouldn't able to tell the difference and I sat so far back from my TV that Blu-Rays looked practically the same as DVDs on it anyway, that I might just stop with the first season because I'd only watched the "fansubs" that far, that I might put the discs at the very bottom of the pile, and that I might even be able to find somewhere to sell the packages. Then, the Friday afternoon before my order was supposed to ship and not that long after a podcast interview with some people from Viz that just seemed to get everyone more angry, I sent off a message to Right Stuf asking if I could remove Sailor Moon from it. On being told this would mean the application of a shipping charge more expensive than the set, I decided to live with it, and then I had second thoughts about what I might substitute for Sailor Moon and sent a second message on the weekend. The substitutions were made and the package was shipped with perhaps a day's delay, although I did have to drive further than usual to collect it with the surprising news the store I've had FedEx packages delivered to before had just closed down.
That Right Stuf has kept up its reputation for customer service seems the one limited good thing about all of this, but I'm very conscious I haven't "denied" myself anything the way some other people have made a big deal of, because I still have the "fansub" files should I decide to find the time for them. I'm also conscious all over again of the corrosive effect the high standards of other people seem to be having on me instead of getting me to emulate them and import the usually unsubtitled Japanese releases to venerate, and of how it had seemed Viz, in releasing more anime series in addition to its manga, had been trying to turn over a new leaf. Still, if they become the "localization company" everyone loves to hate, that might mean releases from Funimation won't be getting quite as much abuse.
Not that long afterwards, all things considered, the first two Sailor Moon anime series were licensed by ADV Films for release on DVD over here, but I did happen to hear the video masters provided looked and sounded pretty bad, and decided my own particular fandom didn't "need" to see the show. The release went out of print apparently fairly quickly, and theories were shared about why. In that in-between time, though, I took a certain controversial step and started getting my hands on "fansubs" of the show (which never seems that hard for me), watching through the first series more or less with the impression that it was amusing how the title character Usagi started more as a cautionary example than an upstanding role model, which was at least a change from my impressions of Cardcaptor Sakura, which the anime club had shown some episodes of and I'd bought all its DVDs when they had seemed acceptable in the opinions of others. With that, though, one of the ways the news the series had been licensed again got my attention was to make me think "the right thing to do," as in certain cases before, was to buy the series.
The steady drip-drip of contempt towards the audiovisual quality, or proclaimed lack thereof, of "domestic" releases on the main anime message board I read has got me to the point where I intend to wait and order releases from Sentai Filmworks and Funimation only after they've been vetted. I've let that rule slip for a few boxes from Funimation, though, and the packaging for the upcoming release of Sailor Moon looked fancy enough that I thought I'd go all in and order it before it was too late. To make the order from the online store Right Stuf large enough to get free shipping, though, I had to add a bunch of other things to it, including some volumes of manga that wouldn't ship until the week after Sailor Moon. That didn't seem too long to wait, even as I started watching the new remake Sailor Moon Crystal only to stop four episodes later with the thought I could at least watch the original anime again. In the last little bit of that wait, though, a familiar aggrieved refrain built on examination of early shipments that the "high-definition" video had been faked up from low-quality masters, and not well either. I started bargaining with myself, in turn telling myself that I surely wouldn't able to tell the difference and I sat so far back from my TV that Blu-Rays looked practically the same as DVDs on it anyway, that I might just stop with the first season because I'd only watched the "fansubs" that far, that I might put the discs at the very bottom of the pile, and that I might even be able to find somewhere to sell the packages. Then, the Friday afternoon before my order was supposed to ship and not that long after a podcast interview with some people from Viz that just seemed to get everyone more angry, I sent off a message to Right Stuf asking if I could remove Sailor Moon from it. On being told this would mean the application of a shipping charge more expensive than the set, I decided to live with it, and then I had second thoughts about what I might substitute for Sailor Moon and sent a second message on the weekend. The substitutions were made and the package was shipped with perhaps a day's delay, although I did have to drive further than usual to collect it with the surprising news the store I've had FedEx packages delivered to before had just closed down.
That Right Stuf has kept up its reputation for customer service seems the one limited good thing about all of this, but I'm very conscious I haven't "denied" myself anything the way some other people have made a big deal of, because I still have the "fansub" files should I decide to find the time for them. I'm also conscious all over again of the corrosive effect the high standards of other people seem to be having on me instead of getting me to emulate them and import the usually unsubtitled Japanese releases to venerate, and of how it had seemed Viz, in releasing more anime series in addition to its manga, had been trying to turn over a new leaf. Still, if they become the "localization company" everyone loves to hate, that might mean releases from Funimation won't be getting quite as much abuse.