[wccrawford]

At least you get them eventually! Imagine never getting them.

I've been studying Japanese for about 15 years. Japanese media almost never comes to the US, and if it does, it's usually dubbed. Anything that isn't dubbed is forced subtitled. The one exception is anime, but even that has no JP subs. The best you can do is JP audio and no subs.

But if I buy media from Japan (at a huge markup over their already-insane media prices) I can get JP audio and subs.

And this is pretty much true for all foreign video, except certain British shows like Doctor Who. Even a lot of Canada-specific shows don't make it here (Canada's Worst Driver), though there are a lot of shows/movies produced in Canada with the US in mind from the start.

It's ridiculous. Sell digital goods to anyone willing to buy them. Period.

[CiceroCiceronis]

Japan and Japanese media is actually a very interesting example, because even pre-internet there were people xeroxing translated manga scripts and trading fansub tapes samizdat-style to spread Japanese popular culture to the US. Of course, manga/anime/JPTV have vastly greater presences in the Western world today (both legal and illegal, like scanlations). The internet was just a new and particularly effective conduit for pre-existing curiosity in a culture beyond the borders of the West.

[haunter]

At least there is now a dedicated japanese media torrent tracker and a lot of anime and tokusatsu have JP subtitles

[salamandersauce]

Netflix is pretty great for this. Most of the Japanese stuff they have has both Japanese audio and subtitles even outside Japan. It's pretty anime heavy though. Rakuten Viki has some too but it's done by fans and not always complete!

[fomine3]

I watch anime in Netflix Japan. I can confirm that there are many new anime without any sub/dub except Japanese, maybe because those anime won't get enough enjoyable foreign watchers (except weebs).

[nvarsj]

As someone that follows seasonal anime, I'm surprised how little isn't subbed. I haven't found a single thing yet which didn't have subs. Every popular show is subbed by crunchyroll/funimation, and less popular things (like Godzilla S.P. in the last season, stuck in Netflix jail) had fansubs.

[jbay808]

I wanted to watch Downtown Rocket with my family, but it's just not available anywhere outside Japan. So I actually ordered the DVDs from Japan, but they don't have English subtitles so my family can't understand them. There are plenty of pirate sites that have the show subtitled, but I don't want to use them. So my family just never watched it.

[kaba0]

Why not use them? There is nothing immoral about them.

[fomine3]

If you want to avoid pirated videos but subbed video exists, maybe just subtitle file is downloadable in somewhere.

[nvarsj]

Buying raw JP Blu-rays is just ludicrously expensive. A recent show, Vivy, is 13 episodes on 6 Blu-rays. Each Blu-ray costs ¥8800. Including shipping and duties, that is around £500 for me to order.

No wonder people pirate.