Over 10,000 devoted Dragon Ball fans in Ecuador gathered to watch episode 130 of Dragon Ball Super, truly demonstrating the passion held for the long-running series but unfortunately ruffling the feathers of Toei Animation in the process…
The episode was watched outside on a giant screen and was supposedly even hosted by the local government; however, Toei Animation claimed this screening to be illegal and that it promotes piracy:
Videos of the colossal gathering:
TOEI is run by old farts that don’t understand that public stunts like these are best advertisement FOR FREE they could have got. You want to have biggest audience you can for a show you can get, even if 30 or even 50% are pirates its not that important since you have an huge army of evangelists online that spreading the good word about product like a multimillion add campaign but for free making new fans and new paying fans too.
Thing is, the old farts like free advertisement (public viewing, illegal YouTube upload, whatever) when no one is watching their shit show. However, once they see a large number of people gathering to that (or viewing the illegal copy), they start thinking “I should have charged for this!” That’s when they go postal on “pirates.”
The problem is, they realize they missed the opportunity to host these events themselves (with sponsors or paid tickets). The response is just them throwing a tantrum for that.
If rules are meant to be broken, then why people make rules in the first place? That’s the only question I have for you.
Yeah, the only problem is that companies don’t make the rules, it’s the governments that do and the judges who decide when and how to enforce them. So if they’re so sure this is illegal just sue them and the judges will decide who’s right.
“Rules” or laws, by definition are supposed to enforce and protect the rights of the people and exert punishment when said rights are threatened. Nowdays laws are easily bended by companies or the government to put them in their service in detriment of the people, so get down of your high horse, my friend. It isn’t even like Toei is missing profits from such events- people aren’t going to pay for crunchyroll or similar services just to watch the last episode. I understand they can’t endorse such things to avoid promoting them in the future, but perhaps they could just turn a blind eye, or throw some funny tweets akin to “next time watch the official broadcast, fellows!” or something like that.
> If rules are meant to be broken, then why people make rules in the first place?
so that they can be broken. are you even trying to keep up?
Rules..without them we live with the animals.
I live with cats. It is nice, you should try someday.
and they have a right to believe that. This is a public performance of their work and they do not have a right to ask for payment for it. Also pirates or people who want things for free keep making this argument but I have never seen any hard evidence of its reality. It also doesn’t change the fact you have no right to watch or use something you haven’t paid for.
If “public stunts” are good for business, why not just let Youtube air it? Instant million views. One episode I watched on Youtube got 400,000 views in the few hours it was up.
The dumbest part is that the episodes were free on Crunchyroll. No one has to break any rules or laws to watch it.
more proof that japan is literally out of touch with the rest of the world.
hundreds of thousands of fans watching your shows overseas? bitch and accuse them of being pirates. logic worse than republicans.
Most of them doesn’t care and ( at least for the manga part ) see piracy as a good advertisement which is true , that’s just Toei being stupid nothing new it’s been decades
except they are making no money from those hundreds of thousands of fans watching show. They don’t and shouldn’t care about fans watching the show only fans they make money from watching the show. It is a business like any other. You want to watch the show pay for it.
Toei like most studios don’t care about countries outside of Japan streaming their shows. It’s the companies that license the material making such a fuss(Like Funimation). They pay studios for the home video & streaming rights and want to control who views their shows because after all they paid for it. Of course Funimation would get a studio to be all anti piracy and shit but the truth is, the financials behind 99.9 percent of shows are worked to produce a profit from the Japanese market alone. The licensing money is just the bonus for them.
Yeah because anime piracy is so f*cking difficult right now… actually the way they reacted to this promotes piracy itself.
Does Toei not know spanish speaking people eat anything Dragon Ball up no matter how bad it is…it’s either that or their love for Saint Seiya and Mazinger Z.
If I were a fan I would die of shame after hearing this.
FUCK YOU TOEI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I’m just surprised that this is a thing
Me: No way, Jose.
Fuck toie me eat CEOs heart for ruthal black magic
Dragon Ball, King of animes
really these new gen kids are wasting their miserable lives with this awful piece of shit anime they should watch DBZ or the movies but not this abomination
Wow that many people lined up to watch such a shitty anime?!!
That’s mexico not ecuador…
It seems other Latin American countries screened the episode. The first video is indeed from a screening in a city in Ecuador.
How dare these people have fun. We all know the media companies own the rights to having fun. Same for sadness and other emotions. Next time you want to have feelings ask (and pay) first.
Since the local government supports the event, then the anti-privacy law would not apply here. Just like how prostitution is okay in some areas of Las Vegas, but illegal elsewhere. So Toei, your cries will go on deaf ears.
Anti-privacy laws don’t apply to public screenings?
Wait… you have ANTI-privacy laws over there!?
I agree. You shouldn’t be showing crappy series when your economy itself is going down the crapper.
Actually, that is exactly the sort of thing you should do… if you don’t want the people to throw you out of power and lynch you.
Aaaaand movies aaaarent?
They must hate One Piece then.
piracy wins period. Bout time these idiots realize that and give up already. You just cannot stop piracy because it’s human nature.
LOL What are they gonna do next, put Two Girls One Cup on a big screen?
I am not even watching dbs but just christ,they got so many fans in there and they bash them……
Toei care more about profit than giving Dragon Ball Super decent animation. They could easily afford to give it top tier animation, or at least animation in the same ballpark as the movies but they don’t.
The money from licensing the show to most countries worldwide would cover a top tier effort from the studio.
Last I heard Toei was nearly broke, so not sure about your statement. No matter how much you make, if you spend more you are in trouble.
if toei is nearly broke it’s because they make shit quality anime
oh, yeah. their anime is so bad that huge crowds of people gather to watch them in public. their anime must be AWFUL.
For arguments sake, if they’re “broke”(humor me here), what did they do with all of the license money from the Dragon Ball franchise? They have one of the largest anime franchises of all time that had streaming, television and home video rights & gaming & merch money flowing their way. Companies have to pay Toei for the rights to put Dragon Ball anything on the air. Poor management?
Like I said, no matter how much money you make, if you spend more you are in trouble. They are not broke yet, but they came dangerously close around 2013 or so. Thus they needed to make Sailor Moon Crystal and Dragon Ball Super in an incredibly half-assed way to keep the lights on.
oh look 150 different youtube stream doing that for free and it’s illegal too LULz
The country that publicly supports the production of counterfeit aids medication doesn’t give a fuck what japan thinks.
Toei is no different from a lot of companies, and Trump is going to side with these companies when it comes down to consumers vs rich people.
ITT: commenters don’t understand that if you as a company want to hold onto a copyright you literally need to show that you’re not willing to let people break your copyright by doing public showings without written permission. If you let people break your copyright and then eventually start suing people, they can just point to all the other cases where you haven’t taken a stand and you might just lose your copyright.
That’s only how trademarks work. Copyright doesn’t work that way. Not sure how people come to that misunderstanding so often.