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[Tack]

So I bought the blu-ray of Redline off Amazon because 'support the developers' and all of that nonsense, turns out the thing is region locked. (I assume to America)
I've since come to my senses and pirated it, but I am also stuck with a blu-ray I cannot use (can't change the console without a factory reset, PC doesn't have a drive, and blu-ray player can only unlock for DVD's.)

So if any USA dudes or dudettes want to pay the horrendous Pacific shipping costs, it's all theirs.

[Reelya]

Try and flog if off on ebay. Someone else local to you might be able to play it.

EDIT: BTW I just thought I'd mention it, but if you want to legally stream anime but don't want one of those Crunchyroll accounts or similar, recently other sites such as myanimelist have embedded a lot of shows from other services such as Crunchyroll and Hulu into their pages so you can watch stuff there legally and for free.

[MrWiggles]

I dont see how that is legal, or any different from one of those agrigate sites.

[Reelya]

It's legal because myanimelist has a licensing agreement with the providers. Myanimelist is actually owned by a Japanese company, called DeNA, who make mobile games, some of which have actually become anime. So it's not really some dodgy amateur site or anything, it's a legit company with industry connections.

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2016-04-09/myanimelist-adds-more-anime-from-hulu-crunchyroll/.100716

Mobile app developer DeNA confirmed via a press release on Monday that its MyAnimeList.net website has added anime embedded from Hulu and Crunchyroll. The videos are accessible to selected regions outside of Japan. The number of anime episodes available on the site now numbers over 20,000.

DeNA has already partnered with Anime Consortium Japan (ACJ) to stream anime on MyAnimeList by embedding videos from ACJ's Daisuki streaming service.

DeNA acquired the MyAnimeList.net website in January 2015.

DeNA Co., Ltd. is the creator of the Manga Box app, which gives users free access to a selection of manga on their tablets and smartphones. DeNA also released the Hacka Doll news app, which inspired a TV series of anime shorts that aired in October.

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2018-03-15/myanimelist-opens-manga-store-with-titles-from-viz-kodansha/.128912

The MyAnimeList.net website opened a digital manga store in partnership with Viz Media and Kodansha Comics on March 8. The store was initially only available in Canada, but is now available in the United States, the United Kingdom, and several other English-speaking countries worldwide as of Thursday. The launch includes 200 titles from both publishers, with more titles being added in the future.

So rather than giving your $7 a month to Crunchyroll to watch this stuff you can watch on myanimelist legally and support a Japanese company directly (via ad revenue) who are offering the same basic service, except integrated with a much better anime-tracking / database system than Crunchyroll offers.

Some of the revenue from myanimelist is going to Crunchyroll, but not all of it (since they can select between Hulu, Crunchyroll, or Daisuki for each show), so by doing that you're also supporting more diversity in the streaming market, without needing to sign up to zillions of monthly subscriptions.

[Cruxador]

So rather than giving your $7 a month to Crunchyroll to watch this stuff you can watch on myanimelist legally and support a Japanese company directly (via ad revenue) who are offering the same basic service, except integrated with a much better anime-tracking / database system than Crunchyroll offers.

It is definitely questionable how much of your money will go to content creators when paying for CrunchyRoll. They do have to pay licensing, but that's more of a bureaucratic thing for the most part, and in addition to what they pay their staff or just pocket, they apparently have enough money laying around to try their hand at making western CalArts cartoons. Which is technically content creation, but probably not the kind of content that you want your anime money going towards.

Some of the revenue from myanimelist is going to Crunchyroll, but not all of it (since they can select between Hulu, Crunchyroll, or Daisuki for each show), so by doing that you're also supporting more diversity in the streaming market, without needing to sign up to zillions of monthly subscriptions.

I mean, I don't think there's much diversity supported with Daisuki now. I don't know who is collecting the revenue from their properties but if Daisuki itself is closed they're not that likely to spend the money on doing new stuff.

[Reelya]

I mean, I don't think there's much diversity supported with Daisuki now. I don't know who is collecting the revenue from their properties but if Daisuki itself is closed they're not that likely to spend the money on doing new stuff.

Sure, however another angle might express why it's a good idea to avoid the subscription services and watch through a proxy who is paying for access for you. Consider this: If you pay for Crunchyroll you're supporting the production of a whole lot of shows, ones you love, but probably also a much larger bunch of shows you are neutral about, dislike, or despise and wish weren't funded. Your $7 a month you pay to get legal access to a few things such JoJo for example, is also being used to fund Crunchyroll to license shows such as Eromanga Sensei, a mediocre harem comedy about scantily-clad underage girls. There's something to offend everyone here, a little bit of your money goes towards CalArts SJW shows but also badly-written misogynistic pedo-bait.

However, if you watch the Crunchyroll-licensed shows via a proxy such as embedded videos on Myanimelist, Myanimelist doesn't pay $7 a month for your access, they pay a small fee per episode actually watched, which means the revenue generated is only supporting things you like, incentivizing Crunchyroll or Hulu to license or fund MORE shows that you like.

This changes the economic equation. Currently, if you are a $7 a month subscriber, they have literally zero economic incentive to improve the service for you, specifically. They just need to string you along with *just enough* relevant content so that you don't just quit the service. Crunchyroll makes the most money when everyone subscribes yet nobody watches many shows. Therefore, your $7 is best spent on buying or producing shows which appeal to anyone except you since then they can maximize the number of new subscribers they get. However, watching through a proxy who only pays Crunchyroll per episode viewed means that they have an economic interest to provide more shows that appeal to you directly, but also, since myanimelist can act as a broker between you and multiple streaming services, it helps to put some strain on the near-monopoly Crunchyroll have, which makes for a healthier market situation in the future.

[Cruxador]

That's a good point in theory, but CrunchyRoll licenses very nearly everything that comes out each season anyway. And it's still a streaming service so it's not like they're gonna make the quality of the videos that much better, it's gonna stay on, at maximum, the 720p used in the television broadcast rather than the 1080p of the BDs. The only thing they could really improve on is the encoding, which isn't as bad as it used to be, the subbing of the OP/ED (which would require additional licenses and therefore more money), and the quality of the translations done by their worst teams - but aside from those things, everything they do is about as good as you'd expect from a professional company. A bit soulless but consistently of acceptable quality.

[Reelya]

There seems to be some confusion about that. Japan broadcasts in 1080. The Japanese TV industry standard tape is HDCAM (a digital Betamax format tape), and that doesn't even support 720, the choices in the original HDCAM were 480 or 1080. The more recent standard however is HDCAM-SR - you'll find articles talking about how the 2011 tsunami destroyed the Sony factory that makes them, and the whole international TV industry was freaking out. There's a PDF of the technical specs of the full range of HDCAM-SR tapes here, and you can note there are only 1080 or 2K options listed for formats.

The reasons for not having any 720 option in the standard Japanese industry tape is because of the history of HD in Japan. The first ever HD system there offered 1035 scan lines. So their industry standard tape only supported 480 SD or 1080 HD, with nothing in the middle (the SR version tapes dropped 480). All anime for the last 20 years or so has been shipped to broadcasters on HDCAM or HDCAM-SR, encoded in 1080, so it's a good bet that they also send it to Crunchyroll in 1080, since that's less work on their end and bandwidth is so cheap.

So, there were rumors that Crunchyroll receive shows in 720p then "upscale" them to 1080p. But these are clearly preposterous since the Japanese industry uses HDCAM-SR for recording and distribution purposes, and that format doesn't even support 720-anything, so they'd have to be doing a very special downscale via software, just for Crunchyroll, which Crunchyroll is then taking and re-scaling back to 1080 to be sneaky, which is all clearly a ludicrous concept.

[Frumple]

So I'm being consulted to expand a public library's manga section, focusing on older teen/young adult content. Haven't been told the exact spending goal, yet, but it's probably decently hefty and they get a good discount on top of it. Selection for the ordering service being used seems surprisingly solid, too. But, uh. I could stand some extra opinions, especially outside my exposure zones (good shojo or sports manga, ferex, where I wouldn't even know where to begin).

Content wise, I'm trying to avoid going too heavy on violence and trying to be pretty conservative vis a vis sexy stuff; rural conservative area, intended to be foisted on the youngins, so stuff that makes parents flip too hard is questionable. I'll spoiler my initial selection below; mostly I'm intending to get the first seven or eight volumes (if available) and seeing what circulates or if the rest gets explicitly requested -- our current manga section is both fairly anemic and monofocused, so it's hard to tell what'll get a bite.

Spoiler: Current tentative order list (click to show/hide)

Yotsuba&
My Hero Academia
Slam Dunk
Delicious in Dungeon/Dungeon Meshi
Jitsu wa Watashi wa
One-punch Man (need to refresh myself on how graphic this one gets, though)
Toriko (ditto)
Natsume's Book of Friends (completely unfamiliar with this one, but it was fairly popular and looked okay)
WataMote
Little Witch Academia

Considering but not yet in the tentative order list:
Youth Romantic Comedy is Wrong, As Expected
Baccano!
Nichijou
Kuma Miko
Kumo nani ga, desu ka?

... anyway, recommendations would be great.

[heydude6]

I’m noticing a distinct lack of full metal alchemist. Do they already have it or is banned for the same reason Harry Potter was?

[Cruxador]

Goodnight Punpun is one of those artsy classics that should be on any list like that. I'd say it's almost on the same level as Yotsub&, since you're not focusing on stuff for children. Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer is another high level classic, and a good entry to seinen. Also on the babby's first seinen note, Vinland Saga is pretty popular, though that's quite violent. And if you want to have a wider range of things, then K-on! Is also a classic. Spice and Wolf also comes to mind. As for worthy inclusions from among more contemporary manga, Ancient Magus Bride and A Bride's Story are both good options that help deviate from the general trend towards a male target audience in the list so far. On the same note, there should be some romance stuff available, Horimiya might be a good pick there (it's a solid contemporary SoL without any focus on sexuality) but I don't know the genre well so I'm sure there are classic examples that I'm not familiar with simply because my tastes don't run that feminine.

[Sirus]

One-Punch Man gets a bit graphic at points (bodies exploding, mangled eyeballs, everything to do with PuriPuri Prisoner, etc). It's a great manga/anime but that might be one to take a pass on if you've got some strict guidelines to deal with.

[Gentlefish]

Fruits Basket is a good romance chioce. A classic indeed, and not ~terribly~ long.

[Reelya]

There are some short series that should get a look in if there available. I haven't read a huge amount but I can recommend a few from what I have. These can deal with some heavy stuff, but nothing a late teen/young adult can't handle:

https://myanimelist.net/manga/3731/Solanin
https://myanimelist.net/manga/11734/Watashitachi_no_Shiawase_na_Jikan
https://myanimelist.net/manga/17465/Omoide_Emanon

Koe no Katachi (A silent voice, the one they made the movie from) is also pretty good, it has 7 volumes.

Whatever you do, don't get the Usagi Drop manga.

If you want something for female readers, some manga that have topped the nytimes bestsellers list for manga include Yona Of The Dawn (adventure, romance, historical), Orange (school, supernatural, romance), and The Ancient Magus' Bride. Other really big sellers (in Japan) and well-known series include Kimi ni Todoke, Skip Beat, and Chihayafuru.

[Gentlefish]

Angel beats would be a good choice as well. V emotional story with plenty of humor to cut through it all.