Ask John: How Do I Get Entire, Pure Japanese Anime Series?

Question:
One of the most upsetting things for me when it comes to anime is the fact that I am usually only able to obtain a small amount of various episodes for any given anime series. I’ve heard of DVDs for sale over in Japan that contain full series containing hundreds of episodes but only spanning a small set of 3 to 5 DVDs. Do you know if this is true and if so where I could purchases such anime series? Also, I was wondering how one should go about obtaining fully unedited, unsubtitled, Japanese animation series? I would like to start a true Japanese anime series and movies collection in the very near future. Any advice, comments, and/or suggestions you could give me would be highly appreciated.

Answer:
Allow me to address your questions in order. To begin, it’s true that there are hundreds, if not thousands of complete anime series available in Japan that are not available in America, many of which will likely never be available in America for one reason or another. Most anime series, though, only last up to about 26 episodes. There are exceptions, such as recent shows like Hunter X Hunter, One Piece, Kaikan Phrase and Zoids, which last 30-50 or more episodes, and there are the “perpetual” anime series such as Kochikame, Detective Conan, Crayon Shin-chan, Sazae-chan which run for hundreds of consecutive episodes, and series like Doremi and Digimon, which last for years by having multiple consecutive shorter series. Relative to the number of anime series that are released in the US, it’s rare for an American release to not release the entire series. Zenki was never finished in America, but currently incomplete American release series like Utena, Ping Pong Club, Dragonball and Dragonball Z, Pokemon, Ranma and Urusei Yatsura are still being released in the US, or will resume release in the not too distant future. In effect, while it may take a lot of time, in some cases, America generally does get the full run of series that are released over here.

When it comes to DVD releases, America definitely has it better than Japan, in certain respects. Japanese fans do have the benefit of occasionally buying long complete series in DVD boxed sets, but these sets are usually very limited production runs and are extremely expensive. For example, all 161 Ranma TV episodes were released in a single 40 disc DVD boxed set in Japan last year for a retail price of roughly $3,000. Off the top of my head, though, I don’t know of any Japanese DVD release that contains more episodes per disc or provides better value in running time to retail price ratio than its American version. It’s not uncommon for American anime TV series TV show DVDs to contain 4 episodes per disc. This many TV episodes per disc on a Japanese DVD release is almost unheard of. Most Japanese anime TV series DVDs contain only 2-3 episodes per disc. Complete 4 or 6 episode OAV series releases on a single DVD, such as the American releases of Shamanic Princess, Harlock Saga, Photon, Phantom Quest Corps, or Moldiver are simply non-existant in Japan. But I do know what you’re referring to. There is a large industry of unlicensed, bootleg anime DVDs in Hong Kong and Taiwan that utilize the complete space available on the DVD medium and commonly contain anywhere from 5 to 6 anywhere up to 12 or even 13 anime episodes on a single DVD disc, for half or less than the price of the official, licensed releases. These HK anime DVDs don’t contribute royalties or compensation to the original Japanese creators. That allows them to keep their cost down, but it also essentially steals original work and livelihood from the original Japanese artists. These DVDs may be a blessing to anime fans in the immediate sense, but in the long run they do nothing to support the creation and distribution of new anime. It’s not my intention to condone or support bootleg anime, so please forgive me for being brief on this subject.

At one time, Japanese television networks allowed distributors to license and distribute TV animation recorded directly off Japanese TV for rental at American oriental supermarkets and video rental shops. For many years, many die-hard American anime fans were therefore able to see very recent untranslated, unedited broadcast quality anime for the cost of a tape rental. This unfortunately, largely dried up a few years ago when Japanese networks decided to allow live action Japanese programming to be imported to the US, but not animation. Nowadays, there are really only two main ways to obtain true unedited, pure Japanese anime. (I use such terms because, for fanatic purists, even American subtitled releases still commonly remove the original Japanese language credits in the opening animation and edit out or alter the original Japanese title screens.) Your foremost option is to import Japanese anime yourself. Japanese VHS tapes and laserdiscs are NTSC format and have no country or territory lock-out, so they will work in any North American system. Almost all Japanese DVDs do contain Japanese territory encoding, but region free DVDs players are becoming increasingly less expensive and easy to find through a simple internet search. AnimeNation does carry a selection of import, untranslated anime, and can accept special-orders for virtually anything in print. The second way to obtain import anime is to make a pen pal in Japan who’s willing to either record or buy anime for you and mail it to you. You may find some help in this area through websites such as the Japan Pen Pal Association, the Tokyo Friends Club, Japan Pride, and maybe even our very own AnimeNation Forum. There are some fans and fansub distribution groups that distribute copies of “raw,” untranslated anime for the mere cost of a blank tape and postage, but these distributors may require some searching to find. Most fansub distributors already donate enough of their time to providing fans with subtitled anime tapes to want to increase their load with handful of fans that would like untranslated anime. Furthermore, the intention of fansubs is to promote lesser known anime to new fans, so subtitled tapes are a much more effective means to that ends than “raw” Japanese tapes are.