Ask John: How Do I Recognize Bootleg DVDs?

Question:
What are these all-region Chinese DVDs with that I see being sold around the internet? They’re said to come with original Japanese dialogue and English/Chinese subtitles. I see them covering stuff from anime to Godzilla films. My first thought would be bootlegs, but I see them sold through Yahoo! stores which seem pretty legit. Plus, many of the sites I find them on sell stuff by Tai Seng, who sells the Jackie Chan DVDs through Amazon and Suncoast video. It very confusing. I can’t tell if these things are real or not. They’re pretty tempting, but it sounds to good to be true. Please let me know what’s up with these things.

Answer:
As you suspect, the English & Chinese subtitled DVDs commonly found on Ebay and other sources on the internet are illegally produced bootlegs. While these DVDs are produced by major factories in Hong Kong and Taiwan with professional quality disc pressing and packaging, they are, fundamentally, no different than you or me making CD or DVD copies on a home computer. In some cases these “HK (Hong Kong) DVD” manufacturers buy one copy of the original, official Japanese DVDs then add subtitles and make thousands of duplicates. In other cases these HK manufacturers simply digitally record anime straight off Japanese television, add subtitles and transfer it to DVD. And there are also numerous examples of Asian based pirates simply copying American anime DVDs and adding Chinese subtitles to the discs.

The legitimacy of these DVDs should be beyond discussion. Anime is a copyright protected commodity, and making duplicate copies for sale is simply stealing material and profits that legitimately belong to the anime’s creators. These bootleg HK DVDs proliferate for a number of reasons. While the police force in Hong Kong has shut down unlicensed DVD manufacturers before, rampant piracy and severely lacking criminal enforcement fail to prevent these companies from simply re-opening the next day under a different name. This virtually non-existent regulation makes stopping or prosecuting Asian video piracy an immensely difficult, time consuming and expensive task for Japanese and American copyright owners: ultimately a task with almost no chance of permanent success and therefore not an endeavor worth the expense of pursuing. The amazingly cheap price and quick availability of these DVDs makes them very attractive to anime fans starving for the latest series, so where’s there’s a demand there will always be someone to fill that demand.

Technically, the only difference between HK DVDs and Western produced fansubs is the fact that fansubs are distributed for free while HK DVDs are distributed for profit. In practical effect, HK DVDs are no more or less a degree of copyright infringement than fansubs are. Partially for this reason, many Western anime fans support HK DVDs and (hopefully) replace them with officially licensed, legal versions when such become available. Another reason for the propagation of these DVDs is lack of awareness or apathy. Technically, since these DVDs are made in Asia, Ebay listings for them as “import DVDs” are accurate- making it difficult for uninformed consumers and website managements to distinguish between legitimate, licensed Japanese import DVDs and HK knock-offs. Internet retailers that specialize in import Chinese and Asian movies may often carry both these unlicensed bootlegs and legitimate Tai Seng, Mei Ah and other Chinese DVDs either because they don’t know that the discs are bootleg, or simply don’t care to distinguish between the legitimacy of particular discs that all come from the same Hong Kong based wholesalers and distributors.

Not to condone the support of these DVDs, I’d feel remiss if I didn’t at least mention the discs themselves. The quality of these HK DVDs varies wildly. The packaging and look of these bootleg DVDs is superb, often times surpassing even the beauty of original, legitimate domestic and Japanese DVDs. The content of these DVDs, though, is quite a gamble. Image quality on these HK DVDs ranges from superb direct copies of high quality Japanese DVDs to image quality with significant audio and visual flaws. The English subtitles on these DVDs range from exact copies of licensed American DVD translations to “ripped off” American fansub scripts to garbled, incoherent English translated from Japanese by native Chinese speakers or professional computer translating software.

Even knowing that what you get may be virtually unwatchable, the cheap price and amazing episode count of these bootleg DVDs is still temptation enough for many people to take the risk. Of course, I encourage you not to support these unlicensed DVDs; however, knowing that this may be an impossible request, I encourage you to at least consider these HK DVDs as similar to fansubs and support the legitimate anime industry by replacing the HK DVDs with legitimate copies. Anime creators rely on the profit generated by the sale of licensed anime DVDs to live and cover the costs of making more anime. While licensed anime DVDs may seem expensive, if consumers don’t buy them, animators and companies will stop making them.

Bootleg anime DVDs can be recognized by a number of factors. The major producers include companies by the name of “Animation Video,” “Anime Cartoon/Manga International” (not to be confused with either the American company Manga Entertainment or the Spanish Manga Film), and “Anime Studio.” Virtually all legitimate Japanese DVDs are encoded for compatibility only with DVD Region 2 DVD players and will not play on unmodified American DVD players. To the best of my knowledge, a little known “life-sim” anime OAV titled “Pendant” is the only existing region-free legitimate Japanese anime DVD. Simply based on percentages, any import anime DVD listed as “region free” is probably bootleg. (There are exceptions, though, such as the legitimate Korean region-free Galaxy Express 999 movie DVDs produced by DVD Ani.) I’ve never heard of any legitimate Japanese anime DVD that includes more than 4 episodes per disc. Legitimate Japanese OAV DVDs rarely contain more than one episode per disc, and TV series DVDs in Japan usually contain 2-3 episodes per disc. Legitimate Japanese DVDs also rarely contain any optional language translations. I don’t know of any existing legitimate Japanese DVDs that include optional Chinese subtitles. And finally, the price. Even bargain priced Japanese DVDs that contain only one episode normally retail in Japan for roughly $20 American. Legitimate Japanese anime DVDs are expensive, ranging anywhere from $35 per disc to over $100 per disc. Official Japanese DVD boxed sets range in price from roughly $150 up to over a thousand dollars for big DVD sets like the Ranma, Urusei Yatsura and Yu Yu Hakusho limited edition complete boxed sets. If you find an import anime DVD that seems to offer an excessive number of episodes per disc, or multi-disc sets at a price that’s almost too good to be true, odds are that what you’re looking at is an illegal bootleg. One of the best resources for identifying, and protecting yourself from bootleg anime DVDs, is Anime on DVD’s list of translated Region 2 anime DVDs. If you find an offering for an import anime DVD with optional English subtitles that’s not listed on Anime on DVD’s list of official, legitimate R2 DVDs, you’re more than likely looking at a bootleg.