[zeldamaster8472]

Once again, I must ask your help, my fellow anime and manga enthusiasts.

I recently discovered "Train Man" a.k.a "Densha Otoko," the supposedly true story of an otaku that falls in love with a girl he meets on a train. I started out by watching the live action film version, which I loved. It says volumes about how good the movie is that my MOM, who NEVER WATCHES ASIAN FILMS, actually watched it with me and enjoyed it. Wow!

So I heard there was a TV version of the story with 11 episodes and 2 specials that came out after the main series had ended. I WANT IT! The problem is, there doesn't seem to be an official US release of the TV drama. So I am looking for an overseas release with English subtitles that will work on a region 1 DVD player.

However, I suspect that many of the versions I'm finding may be pirated. I just don't know how to tell for sure. Does anyone know if there is an official release of this series that has English subtitles? If you know of where I can get one, that would be the easiest route. Otherwise, I will need some guidelines for sorting all the sites that offer supposedly legitimate DVDs with English subtitles.

Here's one on eBay. What do you think?

Here's one on Otaku Castle. Anyone ever buy from this site?

There are two different covers here, as you can see, so either there are two different official releases, or one of them is pirated (or both, perhaps). For obvious reasons, I don't want to wind up buying something that's less than legit, so if you can offer any tips or advice here, I'd forever appreciate it (your advice on finding hard-to-find manga helped me track down several volumes I needed from "Emma").

Arigatou!

[zeldamaster8472]

Thanks. That's exactly the kind of advice I was looking for.

I guess you'd have to be pretty desperate to buy from a site like Otaku Castle. Me, I'm not quite THAT desperate.

I'll avoid them like the plague and follow your other suggestions on research. Arigatou gozaimasu!

[fotaku07]

Best of luck avoiding the pirated copies! Sometimes is real easy to tell them apart in real life. I remember two years back a booth at Chicago Comicon (Wizard World) these guys had a table full of pirated DVDs. It was almost laughable cause the DVD covers they made were color copies of the real ones... little did they notice that the real covers had holographic stickers on them so you could definitely tell it was just copy and not the real deal.

[zeldamaster8472]

I had a similar experience on the streets of New York City several years back. It was just after the films "X2" and "Anger Management" had been released in theatres. There we were, walking down the sidewalk, and some guy has a blanket spread out on the ground with loads of DVD copies of said films. Now, even without the cheap covers, I would have known those were fakes, because no studio releases their films on DVD mere weeks after their debut in theatres!

Pathetic!!!

How he had the nerve to stand there selling them in broad daylight on a crowded sidewalk is a mystery to me.

[FlyingElf]

I don't get why anyone would knowingly buy from a bootleg site. I mean if you're not giving money to the original creators, why not just download it and burn it to a DVD yourself?

Sorry, I know this isn't exactly related to the topic, just something I was always confused about.

[The Fujoshi]

FlyingElf, on 06 April 2011 - 09:39 PM, said:

I don't get why anyone would knowingly buy from a bootleg site. I mean if you're not giving money to the original creators, why not just download it and burn it to a DVD yourself?

Sorry, I know this isn't exactly related to the topic, just something I was always confused about.

Being lazy and a lot of people don't know how to do this or can afford a computer to do this, but can buy a DVD player. Also ignorance depending on the bootlegs the person wants. They rather buy it from the store to avoid the complicated stuff in their opinion.

We have a ton of bootleg sellers around here. Like I can met one or three on the bus normally.

besides translated games and some roms I mostly buy legit DVDS and stuff.

Always buy from a local site such as Play-asia or play tech asian than a random site to avoid bootleg anime stuff.

[GinTheDark]

Ya, I used to buy pirated dvds, but in my defense, I had no idea what they were ~_~ It was when I was just getting into anime, so I didn't really know the difference between a bootleg and an official copy...I feel kinda bad now. But I now devote myself to official releases!

As far as that series, it kind of looks like the eBay listing is of the Malaysian release. (The same one that's listed here) So, if it is the Malaysian release, that would make it an official import, not a bootleg, and therefore legal. I'm pretty sure, anyway. A lot of people think that the Malaysian imports are legal, but others are unsure, such as myself ~_~'

[zeldamaster8472]

GinTheDark, on 09 April 2011 - 08:26 PM, said:

As far as that series, it kind of looks like the eBay listing is of the Malaysian release. (The same one that's listed here) So, if it is the Malaysian release, that would make it an official import, not a bootleg, and therefore legal. I'm pretty sure, anyway. A lot of people think that the Malaysian imports are legal, but others are unsure, such as myself ~_~'

This is something that would be worth following up on. If it turns out that the one listed on eBay is legit, I'll snap it up. This listing seems far more promising than some of the others (including the one on Otaku Castle). The seller has better English for starters, and the box in the picture has no obvious typos. Fotaku07 brought up the subject of holograms on DVD boxes, and the box pictured in the eBay listing appears to have an actual hologram on the front. The seller has good feedback, not that that proves they aren't moving pirated DVDs.

So does anyone have any knowledge of Malaysian imports, assuming that's what this is?

P.S. Actually, if it's true that "all-region" DVDs are generally bootlegs, perhaps the issue is moot. Are all-region DVDs always bootlegs, or is there ever a case where an all-region DVD is legit? I see reviews of Blu-ray discs on www.blu-ray.com all the time that are listed as all-region, even though they're foreign releases, and I don't think Blu-ray's official website would be reviewing them if they were illegit in some way.

This post has been edited by zeldamaster8472: 09 April 2011 - 09:21 PM

[GinTheDark]

zeldamaster8472, on 09 April 2011 - 09:17 PM, said:

P.S. Actually, if it's true that "all-region" DVDs are generally bootlegs, perhaps the issue is moot. Are all-region DVDs always bootlegs, or is there ever a case where an all-region DVD is legit? I see reviews of Blu-ray discs on www.blu-ray.com all the time that are listed as all-region, even though they're foreign releases, and I don't think Blu-ray's official website would be reviewing them if they were illegit in some way.

Actually, I'm pretty sure that blu-ray players aren't region-coded, so all blu-ray movies would play on all blu-ray players. At least, that was the impression I got when I was looking at some of the new release dvd/blu-rays on CDJapan. And the best part is that some dvd/blu-rays are starting to be released with English subs in Japan, so I might not have to wait for some things to be released here to buy them! (unfortunately, the blu-rays I looked at on cdJapan were INCREDIBLY EXPENSIVE T_T)

Oh, and I did some research on that Sensasian site(the one that's selling the Malay release of Densha Otoko that you found on eBay), and they claim that Malay releases are not bootlegs. The site I found this on was this forum here, but here's the thing that convinced me, in case you don't want to search through the whole conversation ^^ It's part of an email conversation that a customer had with one of the workers on the site.


----- Original Message -----
From: Trigger
To: service
Sent: Monday, October 22, 2001 11:24 AM
Subject: Re: Order No. ######-####


Hello - are these items going to ship when they come in stock again? Or should I look elsewhere? Also - I've heard that the versions of these Discs that you carry don't have subtitles. I need english subtitles to understand what's being said. I don't want Malasyian versions - I'm told they are bootlegs. Otherwise, I've been happy with your service. Please let me know what to expect with the Once Upon a Time in China discs I'm waiting for. Thanks

[Trigger]
[Email@email.com]

_____________________________________________________
Dear [Trigger]

Thanks for your message.

The titles that you are interested in are temporarily unavailable pending a rights changeover. We are insure as to when they will be available again. If you like, we can keep you informed when they become available again.

Most of our titles have English subtitles and we rely on the suppliers for this sort of information which can be erratic sometimes.

Contrary to what you may have been told, Malaysian versions are NOT bootlegs, at least not the ones we sell. They are original Malaysian versions issued by the rights holders. If they were bootlegs, there would be no issue with them being out of stock at all. They sometimes differ from the HK versions only in the packaging and may have scenes with ovetly explicit violence and sexual content edited from them due to censorship regulations. In any case, we also carry HK versions, which you would have noticed if you have been browsing through our store lately, as we currently also operate a shipping centre in HK. Unfortunately however, HK versions of these titles are also temporarily unavailable.

We hope that you will continue to enjoy the shopping experience at Sensasian.com, your online store that offers Pure Asian Entertainment.

Sincerely

Kelly
Customer Service
sensasian.com

E-mail : service@sensasian.com
ICQ: 93228914

Tel: +(603)2070-5557
Fax:+(603)2072-1919

http://www.sensasian.com - Pure Asian Entertainment

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Was that helpful? I really think the Malay version is your best bet ^^

[Voxx]

If you are buying a DVD from another country, it will be a bootleg if it is region free. If you are buying a japanese drama or anime and it has any chinese on it it is a bootleg. Beware of Chinese sellers on ebay that sell DVD's. I've never encountered one that sold legit anime merch. The second one is absolutely a bootleg. The one on ebay is also a bootleg (I'm pretty sure). You can tell because it is Region free and includes Chinese subtitles.

If I were you I would not buy either of them. Check out amazon or do a google search because sometimes on Amazon they will have people comment on what the bootlegs look like.

This one looks legit to me..at least more legit compared to those two. Good luck! It is always a pain when buying foreign DVD's. You just need to do a lot of research and know what to look for.

[GITS SAC Motoko]

schläfrig Kätzchen, on 10 April 2011 - 03:32 PM, said:

If you are buying a DVD from another country, it will be a bootleg if it is region free. If you are buying a japanese drama or anime and it has any chinese on it it is a bootleg. Beware of Chinese sellers on ebay that sell DVD's. I've never encountered one that sold legit anime merch. The second one is absolutely a bootleg. The one on ebay is also a bootleg (I'm pretty sure). You can tell because it is Region free and includes Chinese subtitles.

If I were you I would not buy either of them. Check out amazon or do a google search because sometimes on Amazon they will have people comment on what the bootlegs look like.

This one looks legit to me..at least more legit compared to those two. Good luck! It is always a pain when buying foreign DVD's. You just need to do a lot of research and know what to look for.

Agreed! I have also found that anything from China for DVDs and most anime merchandise are all fakes. I had that happen to me once, and I bought a boot leg because I was just getting into anime at the time and I did not know the difference. Yeah the box set of the DVDs were cheappp buuut they were fake and the region coding was all messed up in my DVD player. O_O then I did a little bit of digging and found I bought a bootleg. NEVER made that mistake again. But it DID give me the skill of being quite good at spotting them--

I have found very frequently that most anime box sets that are bootlegs come in a paper like case that "looks" legitimate, usually in a three disc set and most of all the menus are CRUD on them, and look extremely well, fishy to a sense of "I could have made a better menu than that and I don't make these for a living." And if a anime boxset that is not from rightstuf.com or another bargin anime store that is offical is only like 15-20 bucks, I'd say it's a fake.

[zeldamaster8472]

As much as I hate to admit it, it looks like I'm not going to be able to find a legitimate copy of the Densha Otoko television drama on DVD. All of the ones I've seen have Chinese subs, and the one that schläfrig Kätzchen linked to on Amazon is actually the movie, not the TV drama. The movie is easy enough to find in the US (as I'm a member at Barnes & Noble, I ordered it from them and got free express shipping).

At this point, one can only hope the TV drama is officially released in the US sometime in the future.

"Hope" being the keyword there...ha!

[Professor_Hojo @_@]

I remember the one time I bought a bootleg anime DVD, it was like 5 years ago when all these super budget packs were unheard of. I could get the entire series for like 20 dollars for the bootleg, or pay 160-200 for the legit DVD. I found it funny they had a Copyright Warning on the back of the box though, when it was clearly a fake. I was disappointed that i couldn't boardcast it or show it on an oil rig.