A Call to Responsible Fandom

"This sense of possession leads fans to believe that their input means anything. In reality, all any fan of a series can do is buy or not buy a thing. By withholding their money, Fans think they are making a *statement.* All they are really doing, of course, is killing the thing they profess to love."

"In the long run, you only hurt yourself by refusing to buy the book. If it doesn’t sell well, Yen will cancel it. And what a Pyrrhic victory that will be for you and the other fans whose principal objection was the cover art."

Check out The Manga Critic's Few Thoughts About Fantitlement for the rest of the story and more comments.

I stayed awake in economics, and I am a squeaky-clean sort of person.  This means no searching the internet  for fansubs (or scanlations of books I don't own in Japanese) for me.  I have limited time and money, and I prefer to spend them legally supporting my hobbies and the things I like, etc.  There is more than enough bounty available legally through the library, Netflix, and even the internet to keep me busy.

When publishers were experimenting with light novels, I bought some I didn't love because I figured that the only way to get the ones I did want was to support the idea of light novels until they sold well enough that the ones I wanted got licensed and published.

Not many people think like that, so I only got one volume of Kino's Journey, a stunningly, hypnotically, beautifully translated book.

I didn't get all of Scrapped Princess, Seikai: Crest of the Stars, Good Witch of the West, Boogiepop Phantom, or Missing. I have gotten three volumes of Twelve Kingdoms.  (Thank you to everyone who bought this series.  Request it from your library if you didn't.)  I got Brave Story and some Moribito, too.  I'm hoping for more.

If enough of us behave wisely and in a fiscally responsible way, I think all of us will benefit.  Maybe (probably) we won't all get everything we want, but we might get more than we would have otherwise.  In this new year, I encourage you to support the manga and anime industries by voting in the economy with whatever dollars you can squeeze out of your budget (plan ahead and be ready for the sales at Right Stuf), by using your public library (shamelessly requesting titles you want to read), and by responsibly using the resources completely legally available on the internet.

It's that delayed gratification thing.  If we all do it, it will work for our benefits.