generally Japan companies' main motivation for fandom is to create niche one-off experiences in inconvenient locations at inconvenient times in a way that only Japan residents with lots of free time and disposable income can participate. because that makes those participants feel special and elite in an exclusive secret "ultra rich aristocratic" feeling club.

Japan society rarely gives residents the feeling of being special and valued in social groups or even family, so they feel strongly enough to spend and charge exorbitantly for the experience.

[–] SomethingBurger@jlai.lu 10 points 5 days ago

Shout out to Nintendo requiring to go to a store at certain dates to get special Pokémon which cannot be obtained any other way legitimately. Do they still do this shit?

[–] Kissaki@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Earlier this year Japanese lawmakers were shocked to realize that illegal consumption of manga cost the industry around 1 trillion yen.

Why do articles quoting shit like this never contextualize it?

I assume these numbers are, like they always are, a consumption = loss of buy equation, which is not a realistic calculation at all.

The article talks at length about accessibility, yet fails to point to that issue when quoting these "cost" numbers.

It's not like they're hosting any of those. It's not costing them anything. At most it should be labeled loss, but an equation makes no sense then either.

[–] muhyb@programming.dev 25 points 6 days ago

It can't cost 1 trillion yen if you don't sell it though.

[–] amp@sh.itjust.works 8 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I wonder where the scanlation groups of affected manga are going to migrate to

[–] harrys_balzac@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 6 days ago

There are plenty of other sites available. Unfortunately, none with the same volume of titles so you might have to use multiple sites.