LOL @ comment no. 205 (last question). 127 also makes a lot of sense.
@ comment 185: No need to censor yourself.
@ 212: LOL wut.
And most comments were from the haters, directed at Odex, too.
BTW I found mine. No, 249. :P
Nicely done, Darky.
3
Flux
September 2nd, 2007 at 6:07 pm
I see that you have made good use of your PW skills.
4
Almost an anime otaku
September 2nd, 2007 at 6:25 pm
Just to stay netural and not to send “too much hated” towards Odex. Personally, I am a heavy anime watcher, and a worse one after coming back from the Tokyo AnimeFest 2006 in March, it just shows that there is a very good market for Anime. Day in and Day out, reading articles on their explanation, just seems to bring in more “lies/excuses” and now they are saying that they make an “honest mistake”. Oh Please, you are running an business organisation, do not tell me that you did not consider your decisions before taking action, even if your initial intention was good. So it is either you assumes too much like the “no warning letter” case, or you just ignore all consumer’s privacy. You have forgotten yourself as consumers too, do not do what to ours, if you do not want to do so on yourself. What more can I say? This issue has already gone so out-of-hand, the way I looked at it, practically now is about damage-control. And I am pretty sure most are still waiting on the appeal issue. I have not received any letter (StarHub) but I am “prepared” to do so. But am I a freeloader? I don’t know, can I bring my R2s and show them? So question now lies, after the new article, they don’t like freeloaders? So are they returning the cash to the non-freeloaders, those that might have paid up?
Lastly, these are just personally opinions of my own. So many grey areas/questions, where is the line drawn now?
5
AnimeFreak!!!
September 2nd, 2007 at 6:30 pm
lol never knew the impact is so great.
6
Stanley
September 2nd, 2007 at 7:19 pm
I think Odex’s competitors like Blue Max will support Odex’s persecution of anime downloaders wholeheartedly. (cos what Odex is doing is basically pushing more customers into Blue Max’s shops). If I’m Blue Max I’d will say ‘more power to you!!!’. hahahaha
Anyway, I think this has been mentioned before, anime downloaders only need to switch from bittorrent to something else to avoid being tracked. End of the day downloading is still happening. Then what? Result: Nothing is solved and Odex becomes the bad guy and is left with the boycott from the local anime community. Reminds me of a chinese saying ‘pei le fu ren eu zhe ping’. A very bad case of not thinking things through, imho.
Your comments made it more fun to go through though. ^.^
8
Irake
September 2nd, 2007 at 8:25 pm
Hmm, I chose net negative effect, but if we take into account that this saga has brought to the forth the prevalence of anime in Singapore among us youths, as well as generated so much more discussions on anime and piracy, both here and overseas, could these be counted as positive effects?
9
bendyspoon
September 2nd, 2007 at 8:47 pm
“What is interesting is that 10% of the respondents spent more than S$5000 on related products. No wonder Sunshine Plaza is doing so well.”
Yes and no. I’m one of those among the 10% who have spent in excess of S$5,000 on anime and related merchandise over the past 6-7 years. Actually, I think the figure is closer to S$10,000. The bulk of my purchases go to R1 DVDs (I have 200+ ) and manga (600+ and about 30% are manga and artbooks imported directly from Japan). I own several seiyuu DVDs imported directly from Japan. I do buy stuff regularly from the shops in Sunshine Plaza but the amount of money spent is probably only around S$800 each year.
I will never support Odex again. (I do own several Odex VCDs and DVDs.) In any case, most of their releases are anime series I am unlikely to collect. I prefer anime meant for the mature audience (and I don’t mean hentai at all but series like Gilgamesh and Gankutsuou) which Odex will not license or distribute because they are so afraid of running into censorship problems. (But, really, when you have channel 8 drama serials dealing with murder, adultery, rape, extortion, blackmail, gangsterism etc, how much worse is anime?)
Even though I am the exception rather than the rule, most of today’s anime fans (who are mostly teenagers and young adults) will eventually mature and have more disposable income when they get a steady career going, and their taste in anime will evolve. Odex has to keep up with this group of fans unless they feel it is not necessary to do so. (Which then becomes a perception problem on their part? ;) ) Otherwise, this group of fans will be doing what I have already been doing, and import what they want to collect from overseas, bypassing the local market simply because it doesn’t have what we want. The internet is here to stay, which is a good thing: Thank goodness for online shopping opportunities!
Last but not least, thank you for conducting the survey. I enjoyed doing it, and I enjoyed looking at the results. :)
[...] And more DarkMirage survey is out. Check it out here. [...]
12
yallo
September 2nd, 2007 at 10:30 pm
Haha I’m actually one of the 29 who voted for “Net positive impact” and nope, I’m not an Odex employee.
:P
I just thought that the amount of discussion and self-reflection (I hope?) that is being generated is good…
Anyway it’s heartening to see that a large proportion of fans actually own DVDs. So we aren’t just a bunch of greedy free-loaders after all. ^^
3. What are the means through which you obtain anime? Check all that apply.
Someone responded: Johor Bahru
ROTFLMAO!!!!
14
useract75
September 2nd, 2007 at 11:17 pm
Re Q12 and Q14:
DM believes there’s a correlation between those who answer “positive” to Q12 and “no” to Q14. But upon analysing the data, out of the 33 who answered “no” to Q14, their answers for Q12 are:
Do you think they’ll bother? If Odex is already doing all this it would make sense to conclude that they don’t really give a damn about what we want or think.
Support real people in live action! Support dramas! (You can get them at TS or Poh Kim for 25 bucks per DVD set, tops.)
26
Xinru
September 3rd, 2007 at 12:20 pm
The survey made me do a lot of thinking…
A lot of the irate comments (concerning Odex) raised various points that most people have realised, including me…
But I also started thinking about what exactly I have purchased over the years. And the thing is…I usually purchase only when I know I’ll like the anime, and I look for specific titles.
Overall, boxed DVD sets from Hongkong/Taiwan/China are much more affordable than Odex, and I didn’t mind bad English subs on those sets because I could either read the Chinese, or understand Japanese. (I studied the language and I got better and better at it.)
When I couldn’t get specific titles in local stores, I started buying them online.
Although I have some Odex VCD sets, I only bought some of them because I had some shopping centre vouchers to clear, and the rest were bought by my husband, not me. Like I said, I find Odex expensive. And I hate dubs. Hubby bought dubbed Odex by mistake and was horribly disappointed too.
I also have an R1 set of Bubblegum Crisis that I splurged on, when I needed it for my project.
And I also started thinking…I really wouldn’t mind buying downloads. If someone were to start a licensed download service, I would go for it, provided it’s reasonably priced — and it would have to be cheaper than DVD sets, because it doesn’t come in a hard copy (no box, no extras, no disks). It would be a good way to pay per episode or per five episodes, so that you can decide whether to buy the series or not.
(I would not go for Odex’s video-viewing service though.)
Having said that, I would still buy DVD sets, if I like a specific title very much. DVD sets are a fan’s way of collecting a treasured series forever.
THat reminds me of something else — your average Singaporean would be more reluctant to buying DVDs of series that they know nothing about, because simply put, these series have never been aired on Singapore television. In Japan, all the series are aired first, and then fans wait for the DVDs to be sold in stores. That’s how it works. And here, people watch downloads — they only buy if they think they want to keep the series.
27
exalt dragon
September 3rd, 2007 at 1:08 pm
I notice the comments area is now split into separate pages instead of going on and on and on like previously in the loli-porn controversy one. Nice Feature.
Back to the survey: It’s Very Sad. Public opinion seems to be that Odex deserves to be double-6-ed
(o.o)y
Lol.
28
iLol
September 3rd, 2007 at 1:13 pm
odex is horrible and all but does anyone still downloads?
29
Hono DokiDoki
September 5th, 2007 at 2:16 pm
I refer your survey Q5. It’s very sad to see 31.5% of the respondents do not own any legitimate anime DVDs, maybe they owned VCDs or other anime related stuffs, I dunno…
I don’t like how Odex had dealed with the whole situation but I don’t like freeloaders as well.
30
kitsura
September 20th, 2007 at 9:10 pm
Wow. I’m shocked at the amount of freeloaders that are present in the local anime scene. I didn’t get to take the survey since I didn’t know about it as I don’t lurk at HWZ, VRzone or any anime blogs or forums. But I’m a huge supporter of anime. I’ve a collection of DVD and merchandise that costs more than S$6k (worth more than that now since there are several that are already out of print) so I don’t think it’s that much of a stretch to imagine anime supporters having such a huge collection. Still we are the exception rather than the norm.
As much as I hate to say this but it probably will take time to change. Let’s just help it all to speed up. That way, companies like Odex will have nothing to going suing about and end up getting botcotted. (Is that not the case?)
Btw, I only download what we cannot get on DVD easily around. If not, I buy them cause it firstly, prevent events like Odex from happening to me. Secondly, makes me feel like a true blue anime fan.
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September 2nd, 2007 at 5:00 pm
An article from Andy Ho about the whole Odex thing which I think is now becoming ridiculous really.
Enjoy, he’s one of the better writers I know of.
http://www.straitstimes.com/Free/Story/STIStory_153986.html
September 2nd, 2007 at 5:00 pm
LOL @ comment no. 205 (last question). 127 also makes a lot of sense.
@ comment 185: No need to censor yourself.
@ 212: LOL wut.
And most comments were from the haters, directed at Odex, too.
BTW I found mine. No, 249. :P
Nicely done, Darky.
September 2nd, 2007 at 6:07 pm
I see that you have made good use of your PW skills.
September 2nd, 2007 at 6:25 pm
Just to stay netural and not to send “too much hated” towards Odex. Personally, I am a heavy anime watcher, and a worse one after coming back from the Tokyo AnimeFest 2006 in March, it just shows that there is a very good market for Anime. Day in and Day out, reading articles on their explanation, just seems to bring in more “lies/excuses” and now they are saying that they make an “honest mistake”. Oh Please, you are running an business organisation, do not tell me that you did not consider your decisions before taking action, even if your initial intention was good. So it is either you assumes too much like the “no warning letter” case, or you just ignore all consumer’s privacy. You have forgotten yourself as consumers too, do not do what to ours, if you do not want to do so on yourself. What more can I say? This issue has already gone so out-of-hand, the way I looked at it, practically now is about damage-control. And I am pretty sure most are still waiting on the appeal issue. I have not received any letter (StarHub) but I am “prepared” to do so. But am I a freeloader? I don’t know, can I bring my R2s and show them? So question now lies, after the new article, they don’t like freeloaders? So are they returning the cash to the non-freeloaders, those that might have paid up?
Lastly, these are just personally opinions of my own. So many grey areas/questions, where is the line drawn now?
September 2nd, 2007 at 6:30 pm
lol never knew the impact is so great.
September 2nd, 2007 at 7:19 pm
I think Odex’s competitors like Blue Max will support Odex’s persecution of anime downloaders wholeheartedly. (cos what Odex is doing is basically pushing more customers into Blue Max’s shops). If I’m Blue Max I’d will say ‘more power to you!!!’. hahahaha
Anyway, I think this has been mentioned before, anime downloaders only need to switch from bittorrent to something else to avoid being tracked. End of the day downloading is still happening. Then what? Result: Nothing is solved and Odex becomes the bad guy and is left with the boycott from the local anime community. Reminds me of a chinese saying ‘pei le fu ren eu zhe ping’. A very bad case of not thinking things through, imho.
Just my two cents.
September 2nd, 2007 at 7:43 pm
I was expecting the results to be that.
Your comments made it more fun to go through though. ^.^
September 2nd, 2007 at 8:25 pm
Hmm, I chose net negative effect, but if we take into account that this saga has brought to the forth the prevalence of anime in Singapore among us youths, as well as generated so much more discussions on anime and piracy, both here and overseas, could these be counted as positive effects?
September 2nd, 2007 at 8:47 pm
“What is interesting is that 10% of the respondents spent more than S$5000 on related products. No wonder Sunshine Plaza is doing so well.”
Yes and no. I’m one of those among the 10% who have spent in excess of S$5,000 on anime and related merchandise over the past 6-7 years. Actually, I think the figure is closer to S$10,000. The bulk of my purchases go to R1 DVDs (I have 200+ ) and manga (600+ and about 30% are manga and artbooks imported directly from Japan). I own several seiyuu DVDs imported directly from Japan. I do buy stuff regularly from the shops in Sunshine Plaza but the amount of money spent is probably only around S$800 each year.
I will never support Odex again. (I do own several Odex VCDs and DVDs.) In any case, most of their releases are anime series I am unlikely to collect. I prefer anime meant for the mature audience (and I don’t mean hentai at all but series like Gilgamesh and Gankutsuou) which Odex will not license or distribute because they are so afraid of running into censorship problems. (But, really, when you have channel 8 drama serials dealing with murder, adultery, rape, extortion, blackmail, gangsterism etc, how much worse is anime?)
Even though I am the exception rather than the rule, most of today’s anime fans (who are mostly teenagers and young adults) will eventually mature and have more disposable income when they get a steady career going, and their taste in anime will evolve. Odex has to keep up with this group of fans unless they feel it is not necessary to do so. (Which then becomes a perception problem on their part? ;) ) Otherwise, this group of fans will be doing what I have already been doing, and import what they want to collect from overseas, bypassing the local market simply because it doesn’t have what we want. The internet is here to stay, which is a good thing: Thank goodness for online shopping opportunities!
Last but not least, thank you for conducting the survey. I enjoyed doing it, and I enjoyed looking at the results. :)
September 2nd, 2007 at 9:06 pm
I loled at the Pac-Man chart xD
Trackback from
News News!! ST Update by Andy Ho « 蒼天の光September 2nd, 2007 at 10:19 pm
[...] And more DarkMirage survey is out. Check it out here. [...]
September 2nd, 2007 at 10:30 pm
Haha I’m actually one of the 29 who voted for “Net positive impact” and nope, I’m not an Odex employee.
:P
I just thought that the amount of discussion and self-reflection (I hope?) that is being generated is good…
Anyway it’s heartening to see that a large proportion of fans actually own DVDs. So we aren’t just a bunch of greedy free-loaders after all. ^^
September 2nd, 2007 at 10:42 pm
3. What are the means through which you obtain anime? Check all that apply.
Someone responded: Johor Bahru
ROTFLMAO!!!!
September 2nd, 2007 at 11:17 pm
Re Q12 and Q14:
DM believes there’s a correlation between those who answer “positive” to Q12 and “no” to Q14. But upon analysing the data, out of the 33 who answered “no” to Q14, their answers for Q12 are:
29 “negative effect” (88%)
3 “no effect” (9%)
1 “positive effect” (3%)
I’ve not done any chi-square analysis on it, but it appears the two distributions are independent.
September 2nd, 2007 at 11:21 pm
…It was a joke. >_>
Trackback from
Acquirements And Damage Assessment « ObliviousitySeptember 2nd, 2007 at 11:46 pm
[...] the way, the results of DarkMirage’s survey are out. Hop over to see [...]
Trackback from
Odex Survey 2 « ObliviousitySeptember 2nd, 2007 at 11:59 pm
[...] Survey 2 August 31, 2007 at 11:43 pm | In Odex | Update: The survey results are [...]
September 3rd, 2007 at 12:01 am
Thanks for compiling the results. :)
September 3rd, 2007 at 12:12 am
Resemble Pac man does not resemble Pac man rox! :)
good luck with fighting Odex I’m not from singapure but nah they are nasty :D
September 3rd, 2007 at 12:45 am
My bad – for trying to act smart. XD
September 3rd, 2007 at 1:48 am
lol odex strikes again. this time in the survey. but the masses pwns odex
September 3rd, 2007 at 2:17 am
Thank you for posting the results. It certainly shoots down the belief that Odex has on the anime community. They don’t know shit about us.
September 3rd, 2007 at 2:20 am
Hm… Interesting results.. But will Odex listen to this feedback of their actions?
September 3rd, 2007 at 10:12 am
u could send a sample of this to ODEX and see wad happens. sending it to TNP works quite some bit too
it could help create awareness of the anime communities’s stand on the situation
September 3rd, 2007 at 10:15 am
Do you think they’ll bother? If Odex is already doing all this it would make sense to conclude that they don’t really give a damn about what we want or think.
Support real people in live action! Support dramas! (You can get them at TS or Poh Kim for 25 bucks per DVD set, tops.)
September 3rd, 2007 at 12:20 pm
The survey made me do a lot of thinking…
A lot of the irate comments (concerning Odex) raised various points that most people have realised, including me…
But I also started thinking about what exactly I have purchased over the years. And the thing is…I usually purchase only when I know I’ll like the anime, and I look for specific titles.
Overall, boxed DVD sets from Hongkong/Taiwan/China are much more affordable than Odex, and I didn’t mind bad English subs on those sets because I could either read the Chinese, or understand Japanese. (I studied the language and I got better and better at it.)
When I couldn’t get specific titles in local stores, I started buying them online.
Although I have some Odex VCD sets, I only bought some of them because I had some shopping centre vouchers to clear, and the rest were bought by my husband, not me. Like I said, I find Odex expensive. And I hate dubs. Hubby bought dubbed Odex by mistake and was horribly disappointed too.
I also have an R1 set of Bubblegum Crisis that I splurged on, when I needed it for my project.
And I also started thinking…I really wouldn’t mind buying downloads. If someone were to start a licensed download service, I would go for it, provided it’s reasonably priced — and it would have to be cheaper than DVD sets, because it doesn’t come in a hard copy (no box, no extras, no disks). It would be a good way to pay per episode or per five episodes, so that you can decide whether to buy the series or not.
(I would not go for Odex’s video-viewing service though.)
Having said that, I would still buy DVD sets, if I like a specific title very much. DVD sets are a fan’s way of collecting a treasured series forever.
THat reminds me of something else — your average Singaporean would be more reluctant to buying DVDs of series that they know nothing about, because simply put, these series have never been aired on Singapore television. In Japan, all the series are aired first, and then fans wait for the DVDs to be sold in stores. That’s how it works. And here, people watch downloads — they only buy if they think they want to keep the series.
September 3rd, 2007 at 1:08 pm
I notice the comments area is now split into separate pages instead of going on and on and on like previously in the loli-porn controversy one. Nice Feature.
Back to the survey: It’s Very Sad. Public opinion seems to be that Odex deserves to be double-6-ed
(o.o)y
Lol.
September 3rd, 2007 at 1:13 pm
odex is horrible and all but does anyone still downloads?
September 5th, 2007 at 2:16 pm
I refer your survey Q5. It’s very sad to see 31.5% of the respondents do not own any legitimate anime DVDs, maybe they owned VCDs or other anime related stuffs, I dunno…
I don’t like how Odex had dealed with the whole situation but I don’t like freeloaders as well.
September 20th, 2007 at 9:10 pm
Wow. I’m shocked at the amount of freeloaders that are present in the local anime scene. I didn’t get to take the survey since I didn’t know about it as I don’t lurk at HWZ, VRzone or any anime blogs or forums. But I’m a huge supporter of anime. I’ve a collection of DVD and merchandise that costs more than S$6k (worth more than that now since there are several that are already out of print) so I don’t think it’s that much of a stretch to imagine anime supporters having such a huge collection. Still we are the exception rather than the norm.
December 26th, 2007 at 12:14 am
As much as I hate to say this but it probably will take time to change. Let’s just help it all to speed up. That way, companies like Odex will have nothing to going suing about and end up getting botcotted. (Is that not the case?)
December 26th, 2007 at 12:24 am
Btw, I only download what we cannot get on DVD easily around. If not, I buy them cause it firstly, prevent events like Odex from happening to me. Secondly, makes me feel like a true blue anime fan.