Correlation between purchasing/owning & increased knowledge

[z_cherub]

It's better than the 90s when people would fight over the intricate details of the story based on "facts" from the Anime Labs subs

[saiyanvegetable]

There's a million iterations of the series, excuse me for not buying them all.

[Ringworm128]

Well technically by that logic Kanzenshuu's database shouldn't be used or taken seriously since it's "second hand knowledge".

While I don't agree with piracy except for stuff like Super which nobody can get yet anyway, I don't see how not owning the guide books would make my knowledge any better? Do I really need to own the Daizenshuu books to know that Daiz was a prince? I trust Kanzenshuu as my source for Dragonball knowledge because they have an incredible amount of credibility, if I need to learn Japanese and actually buy everything and read it myself (I plan to do that anyway) for my knowledge to be worth something, then what's the point of this site?

[Kamiccolo9]

Well technically by that logic Kanzenshuu's database shouldn't be used or taken seriously since it's "second hand knowledge".

While I don't agree with piracy except for stuff like Super which nobody can get yet anyway, I don't see how not owning the guide books would make my knowledge any better? Do I really need to own the Daizenshuu books to know that Daiz was a prince? I trust Kanzenshuu as my source for Dragonball knowledge because they have an incredible amount of credibility, if I need to learn Japanese and actually buy everything and read it myself (I plan to do that anyway) for my knowledge to be worth something, then what's the point of this site?

You are completely missing the point. Everybody who is getting offended here is.

If you put money, time, and effort into something, you are almost guaranteed to be more knowledgeable about something than a guy who torrents the same thing. That's what Mike is saying. If you are invested in something, there is greater incentive to learn more about it.

As for the rest of your post, refer to my own on the last page. The Kanzenshuu translations are not "worthless." They suffer from the difficulties inherent in the system, but there is a big middle ground between "worthless" and "flawless."

[Neo-Makaiōshin]

You are completely missing the point. Everybody who is getting offended here is.

If you put money, time, and effort into something, you are almost guaranteed to be more knowledgeable about something than a guy who torrents the same thing. That's what Mike is saying. If you are invested in something, there is greater incentive to learn more about it.

Why can't the opposite be also true? I could be as invested and interested in DB in same level as Mike but, due the reallity of my circustances I just can't afford to own all the products as much as Mike can and thus torrent some of the materials.

I just can't see how my level of interest, investment and knowledge is defined by how much I own/Torrent the material.

[Kamiccolo9]

You are completely missing the point. Everybody who is getting offended here is.

If you put money, time, and effort into something, you are almost guaranteed to be more knowledgeable about something than a guy who torrents the same thing. That's what Mike is saying. If you are invested in something, there is greater incentive to learn more about it.

Why can't the opposite be also true? I could be as invested and interested in DB in same level as Mike but, due the reallity of my circustances I just can't afford to own all the products as much as Mike can and thus torrent some of the materials.

I just can't see how my level of interest, investment and knowledge is defined by how much I own/Torrent the material.

It's a correlation, not a causation. And the opposite can be true, it's just less likely.

[B]

What Mike's talking about is, as I see it, arrogance. Don't record a podcast about a subject that you're clearly not knowledgeable about; the buying is but one possibility for why such thing occurs. It's been outlined earlier in the thread, but yeah, casuals.

[Darkton]

I don't even read YouTube comments. I just YT the scenes when I need a quick fix of Dragon Ball.

I do, however, notice some trends. A disturbing number of clips I find are of the FUNimation Dub with replacement music score. More specifically, and I think this may be the root of the problem, the "Remastered" version. The kind of Dragon Ball footage you find released to YT and other streaming sites is usually widescreen with heavy DNR and Faulconer audio-ed English Dub. Sometimes when there's something from the Saiyan and early Namek Arcs you get the Ocean Dub. That kind tells me exactly who is watching and who the common fan of DBZ is.

DBZ gained its peak popularity in the US in the early 2000's. The kind most people remember about the show is the First In-House Dub, with High-Pitched Vegeta and Faulconer music. They saw this by watching it on Toonami. These are the kind of fans who complained when Kai went to NickToons instead of Cartoon Network "like it should have been" (or rather, how they remembered it) and pitched a fit when the dialogue wasn't the exact same they remember from their childhood.

This group composes the largest portion of fans. On top of being in English, it was the one they grew up on. FUNimation knows it, has known it for a while, and the Orange Bricks and Blu-Rays are designed to appeal to them. They're also dirt cheap, so anyone who wants to acquire it can take the disc, rip the scenes they like, and post them on YouTube. That is how YouTube gets flooded with Orange Brick footage: the middlemen are using the cheapest resource available to them, and fans high on nostalgia are watching those instead of the series.

If fans are feeling hardcore, they turn to the Wiki to learn all they can. The Wiki is the kind of place that says Doctor Uiro is similar to Doctor Gero despite the reverse being closer to the truth. The Wiki spouts off numerous factoids and half-truths, stuff that cites the handbooks, but ultimately probably got its info more from this very website. These guys obsess over useless details like Power Levels, think that RIT Armor is different from Full Armor, and don't know what a Litto actually is and why DBZ for PS2 called it that.

Speaking of games, a majority of fans also get info on the series through the video games. I never claim to be an expert on the Buu Arc, mostly because I have not seen all of it. The translations of the video games varies deeply. They've gotten better over the years, but they only cover the fights.

And don't get me started on fans who say to "read the manga." Chances are if they do, they're just getting their manga scans from Viz, who seems chronically incapable of giving us a proper translation. That, or they substitute a manga read for MistareFusion's videos instead.

And all throughout this I see a common trait: an emphasis on things that are in English.

The vast majority of YT videos are in English. You have to specifically look for the Japanese versions. Freeza with an I is the default spelling accepted by Google, who will compile results separately from Freeza with an E. Over a third of the Z anime has not been released in English with Kai's dub. If FUNimation wanted to change the image of DBZ, truly banish the old dub, they'd just redub all of the older Dragon Ball like Viz did to Sailor Moon. But then, without those opportunist middlemen that FUNi gets their DVD and Blu-Ray sales from to post gleefully to YouTube, FUNimation could not go on.

The real question, however, is how DBZKai airing on Toonami will affect things. Kai has been running uncut for around a year now on Toonami, and already the notions of it having no blood are gone. It also airs comparatively early for Toonami's shows, and Toonami itself is practically the only thing keeping [adult swim] alive right now. With time, the image of Kai might become the default, and it'd be the nostalgic series to come back to, just as FUNi's earlier efforts had been in the 2000's. So maybe, just maybe, things are looking up.

You just keep doing Gamikai's work, Vegetto. People go to your site for the best info. You know what you're talking about, and fans of the show do, too.

[Cipher]

I'm in the following camp: If you absolutely need to pirate out of financial need (and right, no one should go without food because they want to re-experience a children's cartoon), just do so and do it quietly. I don't think I can get behind hosting a podcast on a subject you're that ill-informed on (and likely if you have time to post a podcast on a cartoon, you have the disposable time and income to purchase one of its cheap DVD releases), nor a general culture that's that flagrant about piracy, which fucking sucks and is way too glibly accepted.

There's some gray area here, but examples like the one discussed in the opening post absolutely deserve to be called out.

On the topic of knowledge/expertise specifically: Being an in-universe expert on Dragon Ball is a pretty dubious claim on any level, so I don't know how strongly I feel about attributing anything to guide-book owners except that they enjoy collecting in a particular way -- being able to look that information up from reliable sources like Kanzenshuu isn't so sufficiently different from owning them that I'd say there's a wide gap. As with any subject, though, sure--if you want to split hairs the most ethos you could possibly give yourself as an expert would be to own these guidebooks so that you have easy access to them and be able to read them in Japanese.

As far as actually owning the series itself though? I feel like -- yeah. It's pretty dubious to claim expertise on something when you've only watched or read it through once, and don't have ready access to a reliable version (if you're just surfing around for various English-language clips, you don't have this). This goes for, like, anything though. If you told me you were an authority on Jean-Luc Godard's French New Wave films and you didn't own one, I'd be like, "Okay, what the fuck, dude?"*

*In this post my media interests collide. If you want to talk about how god damn good Week-End is, send me a PM!

[TheGreatness25]

Wasn't the opening statement talking about knowledge of the releases as opposed to actual DB knowledge? VegettoEX points out that the people on the podcast didn't know what was up with the FUNimation voices with Japanese music and I was under the impression that the point was that had they bought the release, they'd know that it exists. much like if someone bought the Dragon Boxes,they'd know where 4:3 dubbed footage of a bloody Vegeta vs ReaCoom battle came from.

As I said previously, story-wise, someone who watches/downloads illegally would know the story just as well, but might not know where the footage/audio is coming from. For example, anyone who has the Ultimate Uncut DVD release knows that there's a nice Goku vs Vegeta mini documentary on them, but someone who downloaded the whole thing wouldn't know that.

I might be way off base.

[Kamiccolo9]

Totally stole this from Mike's Twitter, but it goes amazingly well with my big post on page 2, and is a great read all on it's own. I highly recommend.

http://www.tcj.com/confessions-of-a-manga-translator/