Dark Elves+Manga= What?!

[JonSetanta]

Thanks clef. I wonder, though, since these are some seriously popular sites, why the creators or at least the representatives/lawyers don't contact the scanlators and then petition to shut them down?

Some of these have been up for years. That's ample time to take action.

While I couldn't find anything in Mangahelpers about explicit allowance to scanlate, I suspect the creators of Bastard, for instance, turn a blind eye.

[Maj]

I have no references to show for it, so take what I'm telling you with a grain of salt...

There was a Japanese company that went after some fansubbers for translating anime, and it turned out to be the worst action the company could have taken. In addition to deliberately narrowing their audience, thus ensuring that fewer people would buy their products, they alienated formerly loyal customers who then stopped buying their products after that.

I imagine that manga wouldn't be much different.

[Crissa]

Generally the Japanese companies are really small, their print runs are really small, and there is literally no way they could afford to put out more stuff. More people than they can afford to sell to want to read their stuff.

Now big companies don't care. They can pay to port what they want and get sales from different people than the ones who scanlate or fansub... But the smart ones have found out that they can figure what which ones to invest in by watching the fan community in other languages.

Also, copyright is different in Japan - you can totally rip off other people's concepts and they don't have the concept of trademark as inviolate as we do. You can't use the same name, but fanfic in Japan is totally legal, even comics, within a certain limit.

So it really is the local extension of the publishing houses that crack down on stuff, and are usually told by their Japanese side to get a frickin' life and produce their stuff.

It's really hard for a Japanese comic or movie to break into the US market, and even if they do, there's a good chance it'll be ripped to shreds in translation (has anyone seen the translation of Cardcaptor Sakura or Tokyo MewMew or even the differences between Dragonball there and here? They took out entire story arcs.)

So there's a tacit agreement to cease fansub or scanlation production once real production has begun, and that works for the most part.

But there's a real problem here: If we're not allowed to buy it, why are we not allowed to copy it?

-Crissa

[clef]

I'm no expert, and I don't know anything about trademarks in Japan, but my understanding is that Japanese copyright law and US copyright law are pretty compatible these days. It may not have always been hat way, but the US has been pushing all the countries it trades with to be on equal footing with regards to copyright law. China might be willing to tell the US to piss off, but Japan has historically followed our lead in these matters.

So I'd be really surprised if there was an exception in Japanese copyright law that allowed for the creation of legal fan fiction. If there is, it probably has never been tested in court and I'd feel doubtful that such a challenge would be successful. Japanese copyright law protects authors rights to the 'integrity' and 'adaptation' of their works for the life the author plus 50 years much like in the US.

But if it would almost certainly be a bad business decision for a small Japanese anime studio to go after fansubbers, it would suicide for a manga publishing firm to go after dojinshi. Not only would your fans turn against you but your writers and artists would likely rebel. Many mangaka learned their trade through making dojin using the characters from their favorite series. Some of the most famous artists like CLAMP might not even have ever been discovered were it not for their participation in the fan fiction community. I think this is generally understood to be the case in Japan. For now.

I wouldn't be surprised if over time attitudes in Japan start to shift to be more in line with the US and we'll see even this thriving community start to wither. There are certainly plenty of people out there who will push for this. Deep down, companies would all prefer to have control over who can create these derivative works and who can't and have the option of charging people for creating them or getting a share of any profits made off of them.

[Crissa]

It's plus 100 years now in the US...

...But there is a cultural difference, too. They don't see it as competition. It's where they find their new talent and what will be popular next year.

Follow the US lead? Into what? The US content creation shrinks every year.

-Crissa

[clef]

Follow the US's lead into easy company profits with little or no effort of course.

Creating new content is the hardest and most risky investment a company can make. Why should they bother? It's so much safer to just take what you've got that you know is popular, remove it from the market for four or five years and then re-release it as if it were the latest and greatest thing.

But really both the US and Japan have a strong incentive to keep US consumers buying Japanese goods and to a lesser extent vice versa. Why would Japan rock the boat over something so trivial (to them) as copyright law?

I find it hard to believe that content producers in the US who have been opposed to fan created works really think this is about competition either. The kind of slash fiction and adult material they tend to go after with the most fervor isn't seriously competing with anything that they would ever willingly produce. Most of it is given away for free anyway.

It's always been about control. A lot of companies have been perfectly willing to allow fan fiction provided it is done on their web site under their explicit control so they can ban what they want and allow what they want and shut the whole site down if it is ever in their economic interests to do so. And of course they can pick up some advertisement revenue for the cheap in the process.

In Japan they seem more concerned with controlling the next generation of talent than controlling content produced by existing talent. I can only imagine that this is the direct result of a more vibrant competitive market in which the ability to obtain innovative new content determines whether a company survives or fails.

Maybe it will stay that way who knows? But I'd bet as any particular producers become bigger and more monopolistic the incentive to innovate will reduce drastically and the desire to 'protect' their copyrights (ie squeeze as much money out of them as possible) will increase proportionally.

[Lago_AM3P]

So anyway I acquired a copy of the 'hentai' version of this webcomic featured in this thread's title. And I think it's one of the worst things I've ever read in my life.

For crying out loud, mang, when you're doing your super hardcore Gorean S&M scene it totally kills the immersion for the characters to go SD and then make lame fourth-wall breaking jokes. It's one thing if the whole point of this was to make you laugh but it's totally inappropriate for what they were trying to pull. It's more like watching a documentary on My Lai and getting to the part where the director decided a few pies and pratfalls would lighten up the 'glum' mood.

The artwork was pretty lame, too. Seriously, you can't just hand a bunch of brainless fanboys/girls some crayons, a felt pen, and a copy of FATAL and expect them to create something that I will jerk to, let alone read. I mean, my jerking standards are ridiculously low as it is; I stared at that picture of the MM1 nymph until I SWORE I saw nipples and this isn't doing anything for me.

I think I will never read hentai again. That's seriously how bad this was.

(Ed. Note: I take it back. Daddy Lago found the doujin on his HD for Breath of Fire II. YES)

[JonSetanta]

Nice, Lago. About as happy as I was when I found the actual official Bastard hentai then?

haha.. mang..
Are you in Bay Area? Just curious.

[Cielingcat]

Yeah, the fanservice comic there is pretty shitty. It was so shitty I couldn't even manage to get through it all. And I was reading it for the lulz.

Also, are those two other comics mentioned in the previous 2 posts any good?

[CalibronXXX]

Oh, hey, another Breath of Fire fan. Cool.

[JonSetanta]

1190640573[/unixtime]]Yeah, the fanservice comic there is pretty shitty. It was so shitty I couldn't even manage to get through it all. And I was reading it for the lulz.

Also, are those two other comics mentioned in the previous 2 posts any good?

Wait, which where?

[Captain_Bleach]

1190683969[/unixtime]]

1190640573[/unixtime]]Yeah, the fanservice comic there is pretty shitty. It was so shitty I couldn't even manage to get through it all. And I was reading it for the lulz.

Also, are those two other comics mentioned in the previous 2 posts any good?

Wait, which where?

Go to the main site in the Original Post, and look at the "Daydream" comic previews. If you want to see the rest, you've got to pay for it.

[JonSetanta]

*looks*

Ohoho so that's where those 4chon pics came from.

The group shots are my fav but the one with the tentacle demon-woman isn't so great.

Ceilingcat stated "previous 2 posts" so I thought maybe Bastard or Breath of Fire though.

[Cielingcat]

Yes, that is indeed exactly what I mean. I was asking whether the specific ones mentioned were worth getting.

[JonSetanta]

IMO the Bastard one is nice .. if you like pr0nz. It's not explicit per se, that is.. if you are a 'Channer (your eyes will have seen everything indecent anyways)

I find it but funny and maybe a little erotic, but that's your call to make.

By the way, I read a lot of Drowtales recently, and comparing the old emo '12 year old girl drew this' style I recognize from years ago to the more recent, very well done style... well... I'm fuckin glad you informed us, Bleach.
It's funny, maybe in some parts obscene but mostly fulla lesbo elf stuff, which you'd have to be a devout elf-hater to find revolting.

Another recommendation I'll mention is Zebra Girl, which I just finished last night.
It's nothing like what the title implies; more like a goofy yet very profane and thoughtful comic 7 years in the making.
It has furries, demons, werewolves, wizardry (and damned cool at that), Lovecraft puns, all that good shit.
I'll just tell you that it's not what it seems, and the more you read, the more you'll grow attached to the characters.
Sam the cartoon rabbit, and Sandra the "zebra girl" especially.
Although I see Jack very much like myself (for good or bad)

http://zebragirl.keenspot.com/d/20000506.html

[Lago_AM3P]

Order of the Stick hasn't updated recently.

Maybe GitP suddenly came down with a bad case of narrator integrity and hid in shame when he realized that he was creating a fictional fangirl for his author avatar.


(editted to remove unnecessary snark)

[Maj]

he was creating a fictional fangirl for his author avatar.

Would you please explain this?

[Lago_AM3P]

Well, if you're a mean old cuss, you could interpret the turn of events like this:

Elan is an author surrogate of Rich. A ninja chick drools on about his hawtness to the point of abandoning the mission for him.

Of course, only a mean ol' cuss would imply that.

[Koumei]

Putting yourself in your webcomic is apparently never good.

[CalibronXXX]

Rich is too arrogant to make his pseudo avatar a moron, even if said avatar does have an 18 charisma.

[Maj]

Wait a sec... Elan is supposed to be the author's avatar?

[CalibronXXX]

Probably not, no.

[JonSetanta]

Fuck. Hope not.

And here I've been writing a fiction series, in short bits (plan on making a novel some day), with one of the characters roughly derived from a Jungian dreamlike alter-ego of mine.
Emotional attachment is natural but I've found that after killing them off a few times in violent ways, a writer gets over it. (it's the afterlife, they are all "dead")
The key is to realize the boundaries between roleplaying and writing fiction (or comics), in that whatever happens to the character supposedly representing the writer does not need to follow the desires, personality, flaws, or goals of the writer exactly.

A struggle in dissociation of the self from a perceived image of the self, eh?

[Koumei]

Well, in my NaNo, the Inquisitor is sort of the ideal "I wish I could be like her." for me. That being said, I tried to avoid the Mary-Sue thing (hard when Inquisitors seriously are innately good enough to be chosen, trained well enough to survive and given any toy they ask for, but I made her fallible, able to be fooled and not as good at actual melee combat as her bodyguards).

So really, it's not so bad as long as you don't do too much of a "This is me, only exactly how I want to be. Perfect. Nothing bad can happen to me."

[Captain_Bleach]

So, since this thread was updated, let's get back to Drowtales.
In short, I like the web comic, A LOT, as it is better than others I have seen. Of course, the Internet is swamped with crappy web comics, so my standards may be low.