Sakura Doujin

Japan has long provided us with Anime shows and funny television series and we will always go online to watch it. No matter whether it is on youtube or other video hosting sites. But that soon, will eventually come to an end.

Last week, the Japanese Parliament has passed a law criminalizing  people who upload content on their computer without the copyright holder permission. Which means this could be a big problem for people outside Japan waiting for the latest episode of an anime series. But let’s take a look at a bigger picture here.

What these people at the Parliament don’t realize is that they are killing their own economy. The thing is very simple, if you cut off the supply of anime online this means that nobody will watch latest anime series. If nobody watch, then nobody would buy figurines and anime merchandise from that anime series anymore. This means that figurine and anime merchandise companies would lose quite a lot of money because they have lost almost all of their overseas customer.

Losing overseas customer could be dangerous for these companies especially when the economy of Japan is weak and they are already in the recession since the 90′s. Their base of operation are huge, cater to overseas customer and local customer too. But without overseas customer, this means that their base of operation will shrink and there will be a huge loss of  jobs. Which only worsen the economy because unemployment rate will go higher.

There will also be a loss of culture influence, Japan are also well known to the rest of the world for anime. Without anime series online, the cultural impact of anime will start to weaken. It is almost like Japan shutting itself from the rest of the world.

So what’s the big deal? There must be some other way to get around right? Well, there is. You could find out the latest upcoming anime series and buy a copy of the DVD from Japan to watch it. But the problem is would anyone buy? Some Otakus don’t have the money to buy both figurines and anime DVD or Blu-ray. They can only do one. The another problem would be some anime titles that have a lot of ecchi scene like “Queen blade” or “Yosuga no Sora”  will have problem entering your country due to censorship and laws that forbids procession of such DVDs.

So how about asking local or cable TV to broadcast anime in your country? As far as I am concern, it is almost impossible. There are some anime series that could be broadcast overseas. But with the amount of ecchi and obscene stuff shown in the anime nowadays, you will never get approval by your government. Especially in the conservative society like Asia and the Middle East. Even countries like America or Europe also find some of the anime series disturbing because all the character are child like and are doing obscene stuff which people will criticize as virtual child porno.

How about online service that allows you to pay and watch anime? Well, this probably the best option so far. But with everyone mindset of finding it “free” on the internet. This could be quite a problem for those who love to download anime series.

The people in the Parliament should have seen this coming, they should have know that they will only cause more problem to their economy. The bill has passed and the law will go into full effect on October. So keep your finger cross guys. Let’s just hope those uploaders in japan are willing to take the risk and upload online for all of us.