Avoiding Bootlegs - A Noobs Guide

[ai-chan]

What is a bootleg?
Bootlegs are merchandise (DVDs, CDs, figures, art books) which are released by the manufacturers who don't permission/license from the creators/studios/artists to release them legally. Effectively, these are illegal items.

Unfortunately, the menace of bootlegs in anime is more wide spread than the mainstream DVD/CD because they don't pay any licensing fees to any series creators or official producers in any country and in process rake in huge profit margins.

Why should one not buy a bootleg?
Contrary to general perception, anime is one of the lowly paid sectors in entrainment industry. Sometimes back the industry had to set up a minimum wage because of this reason.

The money one spends on buying illegal merchandise goes into the pocket of these dubious manufactures and deprives the creators and artists in the anime industry, who put their time and effort into this trade.

What about the quality of bootleg?
The quality of the bootleg is way inferior to the originals - be it the DVD, CD, figure or art books. The DVDs usually are out of sync, have poor audio and video quality. The subtitles are often very poorly translated or even missing. The figures are often horrible reincarnation of the original.

How to avoid buying a bootleg?
A lot people can't tell the difference between official licensed anime merchandise and the illegal bootleg versions. This article is intended to give a few pointers to help people spot the differences between them.

[ai-chan]

Things one should look out for while buying DVDs:

0 or All Region Code:
Official anime DVDs - be it R1 (US/Canada), R2 (Japan), R4 (Australia) - all have region codes, except blu-ray DVDs.

No. of Episodes Per Disc:
Bootleg DVDs cram as many as 8 - 10 episodes in one DVD (example, 26 episodes in 3 DVD).

Chinese Subtitle:
DVDs having Chinese subtitle is a sure sign of bootleg.

Pricing:
If price looks too tempting be cautious.

Seller Location:
DVDs from China, Hong Kong, Malaysia are bootlegs.

Other tell-tale signs:
Is there any bleeding on the text or pictures?
Is there copyright information on the back of the box?
Is there any spelling mistakes either on the box or the discs?
Is there any signs of manufacturing defects on the discs?
Is there any signs of lines/banding on either the box or discs?
Does the quality of the pictures used look professional?

List of some bootleg anime DVD manufacturers:

• Anime Cartoon International (AC)
• Anime International Inc.
• Anime International Trading
• Animation Japan International (K)
• Anime Studio Inc (Another DVD Company or Mac or Fansnear Animation, Japan or AS)
• Animation Video (AV)
• Digital International (DVD Ani)
• FX
• Manga Anime Cartoon DVD
• Manga Cartoon International
• Manga International (MI)
• RNA

[6pack]

^ These guys operate on ebay mostly right?
Thanks for the info

[ai-chan]

Yes, mostly on ebay, but there are many online sites as well:

http://animeoftheday.com/
http://animeniacs.com/catalog/category/import/index.html
http://import-anime.com/
http://sundevildvd.com/

[shadee88]

It seems like buying merchandise is the primary way the anime industry makes money

[carbuncle776]

But sometimes you have to buy bootleg for a show thats never going to be release here.

For example Funimation stopped Kodocha. They never finished the show.
Also sailor moon is long out of print in the USA.
Plus some shows like Pita ten dont even have a release.

[BarizAjaz]

thanks for the advice....i will surely keep in mind that

[shadee88]

Animax's K-ON is available only in Bootlegs.

[anime_fan]

I would buy animax dubs in bootleg, theres a lot of maylay bootlegs out now, funnist thing is all they use is downloaded stuff an them put em on presed dvds. there all fansubs or dvd rips. They were bad on ebay for a while but there mostly shut down now. Even if they say there aproved by there government there still bootlegs.

[san203]

I think one should check for sample clips.
If you see any kind of watermarks then that is a Definite Bootleg.

[nickjeromana]

Type the question:

Which is worse?

 Bootlegs?

or

ISOhunt.com - PirateBay.org - Demonoid.de - TorrentFactor.net...........
(((Torrenting)))

In my neighborhood may stores would purchase DVD sets from FX and/or other BootLeg groups.  How they got away with it is beyond my knowledge, but it seems like there was some sort of lawsuit issues that could have been declared.

I did end up buying one or two of them, but I didn't know the company, nor understood the vendor/legal aspect of these DVDs.

I never once liked FUNimation, so this was my way to avoid FUNi-anything, but I realize now that FUNimation disks are still better than Bootleg "TV recordings"  As if you couldn't tell the TV logo at the bottom of the screen.