How / Where to get Anime / Manga

There are a variety of ways and places to get Anime / Manga, here we will attempt to point out the easiest ways, and the best resources. Additionally we hope that the society’s collective experiences will form into useful advice and tips. If you’d like to recommend a store / website, please do! The Webführer’s contact details can be found on our Contact page.

To kick off our advice, we’ll start with some important information on spotting bootlegs.

When you buy DVDs of any sort, you should always make sure they’re genuine - there’s an awful lot of legitimate looking companies (especially on eBay) who sell “bootlegs” and pirate DVDs which have not been legally licensed from their respective owners. This means that by buying them, you’re casting an active vote for not paying the people who made the series, and paying people who illegaly take their business.

Common signs of pirated DVDs:

• Use of the same sort of box for a variety of different series (Almost all boxsets are different from each other; most have a large chunky “artbox” made of cardboard, then the DVDs are in standard DVD boxes inside. It’s pretty rare to see anime boxsets on card-backed DVD sets that “fold out”, like many Western TV series come. (Apart from the Tenchi OVA Boxset ofcourse..)
• Chinese subtitles are an almost definate indication that a particular DVD is fake - properly licensed western DVDs almost always have English subtitles and no other (a few sometimes have subtitles from other countries too).
• No dub. Almost all series that are released in the west are provided with an English dub. There’s a few exceptions, but this is almost always true. If there’s no dub, don’t buy it without making sure this is true of the official DVDs.
• Price is often a huge factor. If it’s less than about 10 pounds per DVD, it’s probably fake, unless it’s a used copy.
• Number of discs. Often the easiest thing to check; DVDs rarely come with more than about 6 episodes per disc. There are exceptions, but the majority have just 5 or less per disc. If you’re getting a 26 episode series on 3 DVDs, it probably really is too-good-to-be-true.

A good page about this sort of thing is “The Pirate Anime FAQ” at Anime Digital: http://www.digital.anime.org.uk/piratefaq.html

A lot of series currently being aired in Japan are released in “fansub” form - subtitled copies made for fans, by fans. This are technically illegal, but it’s up to the owner of the copyright (either the Japanese producer or the US/UK license holder) to prosecute. Japanese companies are too far away from us to really do much about them (despite really not wanting people to produce fansubs - many series actually come with “piracy warnings” to persuade people not to), and US based companies are often quite accepting of so called “ethical” fansubbing.

The idea behind ethical fansubbing is that once a series has been licensed from the Japanese creators (or at least announced to be licensed), the fansubbers will stop producing any more episodes, and cease distribution of the episodes they’ve already subtitled.

Originally, fansubs existed so that the (at the time) very much unknown anime genre could be brought to a US audience - fansubbers would produce VHSs and sell them at cost price, to promote a series to it’s potential audience. Nowadays, most fansubs are produced in “digisub” form - the episodes are taken directly from digital TV or the Japanese DVDs, have the subtitles put onto them, and are released in digital form via the internet. While a large amount of fansub groups still follow the “ethics”, people who download the series often continue to share the fansubs well after the series is announced to be licensed - and masses of people just use them as a sort of alternative to Hong Kong DVDs. In a way, they’re better - you’re not actually paying the companies who steal the series, but you by using them instead of genuine DVDs you are not paying any money to the creators, and in doing so are devaluing the US license - you are in fact taking their money away.

That said, fansubs are often a good way to get a “feel” for a particular series. You can find out more about getting hold of digisubs at http://www.animesuki.com. In order to play them, you’ll need a media play with relavent codecs (more on this below).

You can get a list of all licensed anime from http://www.animesuki.com, or use the Grand High License List at http://www.animeondvd.com.

‘CODEC’ is a short form of ‘COmpressor / DECompressor’, but is usually written in lower case. Basically these little modules of code will compress your audio and video into a file suitable for computers. To watch a video you need to have the correct decompressors installed, and hence it is important to have up-to-date codecs.

By far the most popular in the fan-subbing world are DivX and XviD, which just happen to be very similar. Most sound is in MP3 format, much like the music MP3s. So if you get an error about a “stream”, “codec” then these links ought to help you out:

K-lite Codec Pack, a comprehensive, interactive installing package filled with most things you need, and also removes the ones you don’t (which often cause problems). If you are not technically minded, simply download and install the lastest version with the default settings and your file should play (possibly after a restart). Depending on which version you choose to get, this pack also comes with Media Player Classic and similar useful software (such as GSpot)

Video Codec Swapper, only for technically minded people - this allows you to (de)activate video codecs on the fly, which is useful your video appears corrupted, but you are sure the file is not corrupted.

DivX offical website (a common video codec)

XviD offical website (a common video codec)

Did you know? MPEG (Motion Picture Expert’s Group) files are also fairly common, most PCs can play these files without installing special software, but did you know that MP3 comes from MPEG Layer-3? It was the standard audio compression that MPEG used for their standard, presumably it was the third layer in their model.

“Soft subs” usually refers to subtitles which are seperate from the video ( ie can be turned off ) like on a DVD. To view soft subs (*.srt, *.sub, *.ssa) you generally need to install a plugin for your media player, or download a new media player.

I highly reccommend Media Player Classic which has minimal bulk, and maximal functionality. It supports soft subs, and even has features built in to allow you to correct the subtitles as you watch, it also supports a “Boss Key” and allows you to strech video while in fullscreen ( useful for fixing ‘squashed’ video ) among other great features.

This site contains a highly readable article on some of MPC’s more useful features. Check it out here: Media Player Classic.

You could check out our library's small range of manga, which our members are free to borrow off us (for free!), or look in many bookshops. Amazon.co.uk seem to have a nice range of titles that have been translated into English, for instance. Most manga available in the west is published in graphic novel form, but some places (for instance archonia.com) often have the individual volumes as they’re released on import.

In the UK, anime that’s been released is available through the normal mail order companies (check out http://films.kelkoo.co.uk). You can find a list of recently released and soon-to-be-released titles at http://www.animejin.org.uk.

Due to censorship laws in effect in the UK, however, anime isn’t nearly so easy to get hold of as manga and foreign music - the “supply” of any unrated video material is illegal. This means you’re unlikely to find many companies in the UK willing to import anything from the US for you. The cost of remastering and rating for the UK has put many companies off publishing anything here (eg. Pioneer have stopped releasing anything here). For a list of things that have been released, and the companies who are doing so, see the UK anime FAQ, available at http://www.animejin.org.uk.

It is possible to import anime from the US, Europe and even Japan, however. Importing from Europe (for example http://www.archonia.com) normally avoids any customs charges being placed on your stuff. If you order from the US or Japan, beware of the customs charge that you’ll incur. This is typically a fixed £3 from the post office for paying customs for you, 17.5% of the value of everything in the parcel, and an additional 4% (from the US at least) import tax. In addition to that, it’s often not cheap to have goods shipped over (values listed here are not to be taken to be definitive). Also be aware that customs are free to seize any unrated content you import, especially if it’s of a particularly adult nature. You won’t be re-imbursed for the loss, and you may even be liable yourself.

You can check import charges at the European TARIC site: http://europa.eu.int/comm/taxation_customs/dds/en/tarhome.htm You can find reviews of region 1 (US) and region 2 (UK) DVDs at http://www.animeondvd.com.

However, despite the above, there is a personal import threshold: any package where the value of the package (not including delivery charges) is below £18, is exempt from VAT and duty. Once the value of the package goes over this, you’re charged on the whole value including delivery. Shops such as www.dvdboxoffice.com and www.play.com are particularly useful because their delivery is free - so you can order one DVD at a time, and keep the value of each package below £18 easily.

With that said, Customs isn’t strict beyond belief on this, and while you shouldn’t count on it, packages below £30 or so aren’t often charged. Finally, books (meaning manga) are exempt from VAT in this country (although not other European countries) and usually are zero-rated for import duty too, so an order consisting of solely manga may well get away free regardless of value.

The society frequently make new purchases for our library, and as such have quite a bit of experience in hunting down complete collections and some of the slightly rarer stuff. It has been suggested that members of the society could ‘piggy-back’ on the society’s orders and save on the costs of shipping, and also avoid the need for debit/credit cards.

If you are interested in this idea, please have a look at the Shopping thread in the forum, or contact one of the exec.