FUNimation Entertainment = NO FUN

Published in March 18th, 2009

We are forced to remove some of “FUNimation Entertainment” anime from our website including any download link to it (torrents, md5, xdcc list) or else the website will be shutdown.

We are sorry for that.

51 users responded in " FUNimation Entertainment = NO FUN "

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finalizer said, in March 18th, 2009 at 2:52 AM

So no more DBZ movies & Afro Samurai.

Fuck you, Funimation.

Shenks said, in March 18th, 2009 at 3:41 AM

is irc down?? it says unable to resolve server

sammypb said, in March 18th, 2009 at 4:10 AM

is it just dbz and afro samurai?? or are there others

finalizer said, in March 18th, 2009 at 4:21 AM

I forgot, the One Piece movie is also gone. Not sure about anything else.

digitalrurouni said, in March 18th, 2009 at 4:23 AM

@finalizer….chill out dude. There is nothing wrong with Funimation doing that. All I can say is that it is unfortunate and thanks ThorA for letting us know.

zxcvbnm6000 said, in March 18th, 2009 at 4:26 AM

If I had any talent with subbing, I would start a group just to rip Funimation licensed material. I even have a group name FUni (if you don’t get, think harder).

Was hoping for a THORA Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles Blu-ray release, but that will not likely happen. FUNimation go out of business already, you are not needed, wanted, or liked, and you release shitty copies of everything. Fuck YOU!

finalizer said, in March 18th, 2009 at 4:38 AM

@digitalrurouni – I’d say my reaction was fairly tame. Considering that Thora has thrown up a poll about the situation, and the options of said poll, I’d wager a guess that my feelings are a bit similar to their own.

EdZ said, in March 18th, 2009 at 5:07 AM

>>DBZ movies [...] Afro Samurai [...] One Piece
And nothing of value was lost.

RedSwirl said, in March 18th, 2009 at 5:16 AM

A sign that producers are finally cracking down on THORA? Say it ain’t so!

finalizer said, in March 18th, 2009 at 5:50 AM

Add Vexille to the list of anime lost. Had no idea this one was liscenced by Funi, sorry I missed it… Twice. Lawl.

Cr@zy Edward said, in March 18th, 2009 at 10:21 AM

This is a bad news

Moon Sinclair said, in March 18th, 2009 at 11:08 AM

Well sucks for the work you put into those encodes, but at least they warned you. They could have just taken legal action, so in a way your lucky. Of all the companies which release anime theirs seems quite mainstream and commercial (IE Easily available) Maybe its better to focus on stuff not so easily English localized. Who knows.

Kyoichori said, in March 18th, 2009 at 11:22 AM

xxxHolic movie also seems to be lost and maybe Sky crawlers? still see it in recent entries but not in the project list.

leoncloud said, in March 18th, 2009 at 11:23 AM

Vexille sucks anyway no big lost. But try as they may FUNimation is still fighting a loosing battle. After all we have the omninet! Not like other groups or other places wont have the same material.

AnOminousAnonymous said, in March 18th, 2009 at 3:13 PM

I thought Sky Crawlers was being released by Sony Home Entertainment? That’s what Blu-ray.com says, at least.

Lonewolf said, in March 18th, 2009 at 5:45 PM

lol what a bunch of retards….they think they gonna stop fansubbing doing like that…srsly i don’t have words to comment his

Cr@zy Edward said, in March 18th, 2009 at 6:09 PM

WTF
Funimation are shitty bastards

Lupin said, in March 18th, 2009 at 6:53 PM

is there a complete list of what were removed? from what i’ve seen from the comments, dbz movies, afro, xxxholic, one piece, vexille [i]links[/i] are gone.

Moon Sinclair said, in March 18th, 2009 at 7:26 PM

To list is to acknowledge they were here. To acknowledge is to potentially upset Funimation again. What’s gone is gone.

Kyoichori said, in March 18th, 2009 at 8:37 PM

Just noticed Utawarerumono is also gone, I think thats all of them now.

ailailou said, in March 18th, 2009 at 8:51 PM

Olol, Utawarerumono is gone too? Pf. Well, that’s it, nothing we can do about it.

joe said, in March 18th, 2009 at 10:28 PM

relax people
just read the announcement: from our website including any download link to it (torrents, md5, xdcc list)

Seems E-D solution to me.

thief_ac said, in March 19th, 2009 at 1:42 AM

So that means we can find it on other trackers ?

vuzedome said, in March 19th, 2009 at 1:42 PM

Wait hold on….. Utawarerumono is gone?! WTF!!
Awh crap….. screw FUNI!!

Takeshi_K said, in March 20th, 2009 at 2:20 AM

Aw, the DBZ movies are gone? Oh, well, people will probably find another to distribute them among each other. I for one am sad that they’re gone, awesome encodes and I still have them. Well, I’m surprised and not at the same time, amazing that you guys have been able to do this for so long with this being the first notice if I’m not mistaken, I started to download your stuff in early 2008. Keep on rocking, THORA, and I feel kind of in the mood of encouraging you to do more stuff from FUNIMATION JUST to upset them again and again, they really rape the animes they release, one of the favourite animes is gonna get raped soon, SOUL EATER. And Black Star will get a Naruto-like voice. -_____-

Kit-Tsukasa said, in March 20th, 2009 at 9:44 AM

So even Thora is getting cracked down by Funi <_<

xanas said, in March 20th, 2009 at 10:03 PM

Honestly, I do like Funimation and I have bought several series from them. While I’m no supporter of copyright law in general, and I have no problems infringing it for some reasons I think it’s wrong for those who haven’t bought anything to whine like little babies when anyone dares to tell them to stop doing something they have a legal right to do. And it’s 100% wrong not to support anime if you are watching it a great deal.

I don’t agree with those rights, but what I do agree with is supporting what you value and I imagine 90% of those here (particularly the whiners) haven’t ever bought a single DVD from Funimation anyway, so what are they losing by pissing you off anyway?

The reason I like Blu-ray rips is that I hate the Blu-ray format due to the DRM and that I can’t use it in linux. But I imagine I’m one of the few who uses this kind of site that actually gives a damn about the Japanese or US anime industry. Most people are just looking for free stuff. Now, I understand that most of you are probably little kittens who aren’t out of home and don’t have a lot of money yet, but don’t get this attitude that you don’t have to pay. If no one who watches anime pays for it we are all screwed in the long run. If you don’t like Funimation, at the very least you should be buying some of the Japanese DVDs/Blu-rays by import (and they are damn expensive in comparison to what you would pay Funimation for the same thing.

If your problem is dub quality, 99% of the series out there have both subtitles on the dub on the dvds. So there is no excuse for most of the vitriol.

ailailou said, in March 20th, 2009 at 10:36 PM

C’mon, don’t take us with “little kittens who aren’t out of home and don’t have a lot of money yet”. T_T

moreno said, in March 20th, 2009 at 11:42 PM

so if Funimation ever releases Soul EAter on blu-ray, THORA wont do them? arghh, nooo.

AXT said, in March 21st, 2009 at 5:41 AM

@xanas

Well said. If anime distributors like Funimation are not supported then we can all kiss anime goodbye in the United States. Thora is lucky that they didn’t get shut down completely. I have a growing blu-ray anime collection and it would be a shame if these distributors go out of business. Try buying something, you will feel a lot better when you pirate.

digitalrurouni said, in March 21st, 2009 at 5:41 AM

Unfortunate guys, but come on we are getting all this stuff for free. Those Funimation guys gotta eat too!

zxcvbnm6000 said, in March 22nd, 2009 at 1:12 AM

Just want to add some new to this topic.
1. Anime Averages:

* Average cost per series: $93.87
* Average cost per episode: $5.66
* Average cost per minute: $0.23

At first I looked at this and said, “I guess they are not that bad.” But then I did some more looking.

2. Cost Comparison:

* Average cost/min. (anime): $0.24
* Average cost/min. (Hollywood): $0.10
* Average cost/min. (TV series): $0.04

I find it funny that Hollywood movies and TV shows, which on average have far higher production value, cost so much less to consumers.

NOTE: Based on over 300+ animes. Read more about it at BoxTorrents Forum, “Cost of Anime.”

lemurpants said, in March 22nd, 2009 at 4:08 AM

Regon 1 anime is expensive because it’s a niche that has to make up all its licensing and production costs with minuscule disc sales. If it were inherently profitable, Geneon USA would still be in business. And if nobody decides to support it, expect a lot less anime in the future since a lot of anime producers rely on foreign licensing to make their shows profitable.

xanas said, in March 22nd, 2009 at 5:41 AM

1) TV shows make most of their money from advertisements on initial broadcast. The values of retail sales are literally icing at this point. They got by for many years without releasing TV series in an purchasable format.

2) Many Anime that were originally on TV do not make up the money on advertising, because it’s so niche in many cases the Anime production company is using the TV as advertisement for other merchandise, including the dvds/blu-ray of the show.

3) Anime industry is well reported to have low bids placed in their industry, and the wages for animators are not high. Many make well under 20000$/year, http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2005-11-02/animator%27s-salaries (this is reported in many sources, please search). This is not hollywood, the industry isn’t making multiple millionaires.

4) Local distribution companies are all cutting back on staff and employees, pretty much every single company (Funimation, Bandai, Geneon, etc.) has seen major cuts in staffing in the last 2 years. Even the Japanese industry is having cutbacks. Gonzo recently had to cut some and offered voluntary retirement to reduce weight.

5) Easily the most important point. You are watching anime. If you thought it’s quality is less than Hollywood movies and TV why are you watching it? And if you don’t think so, it makes no sense to argue that you should pay nothing. I’ll buy that if you have a low income you can’t pay for every anime you watch, and I don’t think you should have to do that. But doing nothing when you are a fan of niche media is a disservice both to yourself and those who make what you like. When animators are making 100k salaries and VAs aren’t taking second jobs maybe you can act on the pretense that you owe them nothing, until then it’s just ridiculous to argue that you shouldn’t have to buy anything because it’s more expensive than something else.

xanas said, in March 22nd, 2009 at 5:46 AM

Intended to view boxtorrents to see what they were saying but I can’t search and registration is blocked on the forums. I have an ID there just not for the forum part.

zxcvbnm6000 said, in March 22nd, 2009 at 7:11 AM

Remember this a comment section not a forum (saving THORA staff a step). I listed the forum page for a reason. Go there to discuss, as points above have already been mentioned.

j6shooter said, in March 22nd, 2009 at 4:02 PM

One last comment..
I dont think Funanimation is the bad guy in this situation.

Most of the time, to go the the group hosting service and disconect the server with a legal action against the group.

I think that it’s a good thing that funanimation asked to remove the series and did not do worst.

Remember, WE are the bad guy here, we download freely what they sell, thus making them poor, unable to pay better voice actor.

One day or another, we will have to pay else the north america anime distribution will crash along with our anime.

Kit-Tsukasa said, in March 22nd, 2009 at 6:02 PM

@moreno: Funimation won’t release Blu-Ray unless Japan does….this is the same for Eva 1.0 and since Funi does not have the license for the Blu-Ray apparently as it was announced a few weeks after they licensed 1.01 and 1.0,….they don’t own 1.11 (or whatever the Blu-Ray version is called)

@xanas: lol I don’t recall boxtorrents blocking forum registration.

I’ll save my other comments for elsewhere

xanas said, in March 22nd, 2009 at 9:44 PM

It is blocked to register directly. You have to register for the main page and then enable forum in profile. If you use the registration links from the forum part it will tell you it’s blocked.

I don’t know what your “lol” is about, it’s not like this is obvious. No other page I have seen has had registration only work on front page because of a strangely implemented bridge between the portal/forum.

Kit-Tsukasa said, in March 23rd, 2009 at 3:33 AM

I probably just didn’t know it was blocked since I had the actual site account for god knows how long now but only registered for the forums less than a year ago, which at the time wasn’t blocked. I don’t think my forum account is linked.

horus451 said, in March 24th, 2009 at 10:00 PM

I can undertand the reasons behind their actions but that can be justifies them for america and europe.there are animefans in other countries that cant buy anime because there arent any stores that sell them.so we have to use internet to watch anime.if they can distrubite to world.i can support them(i bought many mangas from europe)but if they cant they should let us watch.they have to remember the real reason for fansub.it didnt start for free anime. it started because there arent transleted anime in us and europe.(btw sorry for my bad english)

hotaru said, in March 25th, 2009 at 3:44 PM

Can someone tell me where can I find XDCC list. Have all the files been removed from the irc?

BTW, Damn that FUNi!.

Lonewolf said, in March 26th, 2009 at 12:35 AM

@hotaru nope irc workin fine….
@xanas u know i don’t know why u defend funi (r u employed by them??)….u see in my country funi didn’t relased ANY anime (and nothin tells they do) and dl from net is the ONLY way to obtain it…..but for guy like it doesn’t matter.yOU CAN go to nearest market and buy.I don’t have such luxury so STFU

Takeshi_K said, in March 26th, 2009 at 9:08 PM

I agree with that fact that we are the bad guys here. We download anime that’s illegal, and FUNImation have every right to make Thoranime stop distributing their products. I have watched some anime, 20 series, and not bought one single series. My reason? Well, I’ve not liked much of the anime I’ve seen, and I will not buy some anime just because I’ve seen it, and I feel obligated to buy because I watched it. Additionally, without looking into the boxsets of the anime I do liked, I fear that violence has been removed + blood, and omfg, the prices are huge!

I have Love Hina Spring and Christmas Special and that’s only because one of my frieds bought it for me for christmas. Also, I have *checks my stuff* Dragonball Z movie 2-3 and Final Fantasy VII – Advent Children 2Discs.

I bought AC because I liked the movie way too much for it only to be on my harddrive, and one DVD isn’t expensive.

If I had to buy anime on DVD, I’d buy shorter series, like FMA, FMP and Hajime No Ippo (not short but i’d still buy it).

The problem with fansubs is that it started being hard to watch anime other countries than Japan, and now it has gotten easier thanks to fansubs. Not because you can now watch anime by downloading anime on the internet, but because anime has gotten popular in the US, and also in Europe, especially Germany and The Netherlands. Now people are having a hard time adjusting to the “buy your anime” because why? buy when you can get it for free and spend your money on buying better food for yourself, better clothes and a new bicykle.

For my own defense, I’d buy anime if there was no other choice, but I’d probably be disappointed because I can’t get to watch it before I buy it and then I might be disappointed. If there was no other option, then I’d probably buy anime, I buy all of my movies, have about 50-60 DVDs, and a few TV season boxsets, though, I’m a bit short on cash at the monent so it’s not so many movies I get bought.

It’s a different story for manga, I’ve bought many, many volumes of different manga titles, One Piece, Dragonball, DN Angel, Love Hina, Naruto and Yu-Gi-Oh! and the main distributor (may spelled wrong) in Denmark has done an awesome job at translating especially the Dragonball manga, and not removing anything. And wow, do I dislike reading manga on the computer, anime is for the TV and omputer, and manga is for the hand.

I wonder if I made any sense from that ranting…

@xanas: I don’t know how old you are, so maybe you don’t have a credit card yet, but it’s possible to order anime from the US. And please, there is no need to “STFU” somebody. That’ll just initiate a flame war, and this will be closed.

@hotaru: Find the XDCC list on their channel, and I think there’s still some of the files there. But they may have been removed since the last time I skimmed the XDCC list through.

Lonewolf said, in March 26th, 2009 at 11:47 PM

I think u write wrong nick….;) Well I do have credit card but once I ordered something from US, they put so high tax on it that it was bigger than price of package >.> and yes I got carried away, but I won’t say “sorry”…..I can’t stand ppl who can’t understand others and their reasons

Takeshi_K said, in March 27th, 2009 at 11:47 PM

Haha, yeah, the wrong nick, I blame my sickness at the moment. Oh, didn’t know that. In Denmark, for example with CDs it’s pretty expensive with taxes, but there’s this CDWOW in the UK that sells CDs without taxes, but for some reason they come with airmail from Hong Kong :S I guess hq is in UK but storage China…

It’s just annoying to see people say “STFU” to each other all the time when they argue…that’s all…

xanas said, in March 28th, 2009 at 6:35 AM

Funimation is just a US R1 distribution company. I don’t know where ThorAnime is based, but it’s likely in the US if they are getting DMCA takedowns from Funimation. So I understand your qualms with not being able to get what you want due to Funimations notices, but it makes sense since this is where THorAnime is based. If you wanted to make this in your own country and there is indeed no way to purchase at all, I can understand that.

And as far as taxes go, I don’t want to give you a pass on that entirely but if they are any higher than 20% of the cost, I can see a reason for not wanting to buy since most of your money doesn’t go to it anyway. If it’s more than 20%, I think you seriously need to look into working to change the bad government. You should also stress to the anime companies (through writing, feedback channels, etc.) the importance of allowing streams and download to own channels in your own country since these will be easier to proliferate than DVDs.

If you are like me, I’m sure it’s also important to you that these things be DRM free and of high quality for what is paid. This is IMO the least they can do, since they pay very minimal distribution costs that way.

Anyway, my comments were primarily for the US folk for whom Funimation is a readily available distribution channel. There really is no excuse for us not to buy at least some DVDs. And I’m not expecting everyone to buy every series, but I do expect some honesty. If you’ve watched 20 series one of those was almost certainly good enough or you wouldn’t be looking for Blu-Ray/HD quality anime online to replace your DVD-rip/HD-TV rip fansubs. And censorship is really a non-issue now. Funimation doesn’t make censored dvds anymore. I had a good taste of the words “Fuck you” a few times from Ophelia in volume 3 of Claymore last night rewatching it in English for the first time.

(And if you don’t like dubs, almost all of their dvds have the subtitled version too).

MarkoSrbNish said, in April 4th, 2009 at 6:42 PM

The only good animes that are broadcasted on TV are those in Japan aka Nihon.

joe said, in April 29th, 2009 at 11:19 PM

I simple cannot spare money to buy some dvds. I just barely get by each month with the money i have. I could not even spare some 50 dollar or euro to buy me some series. Not everyone has that luxury.
And i am not in the USA anyway. No one cares for Anime around where i live. Nor does CR or Funi stream anime on their website for my country.

sam1456 said, in May 6th, 2009 at 10:17 AM

funimation is gay I was wondering is anyone gonna release blech in hd

Batousai19 said, in December 13th, 2009 at 1:56 AM

I want to buy the blu-ray’s, but some faggot invented the region code and makes it impossible to play it. The only way I can watch it is through downloading it. I bought some DVD boxes, and to play them, I had to buy some kind of DVD-burner that can read and play that region code, but for Blu-ray it’s not possible.

I bought a lot of manga’s. I have over 160 volumes and every month I buy new ones. This is my way to support anime/manga companies

I also visit Animecon every year. For the ones who don’t know what Animecon is: Animecon is a is a big festival for anime/manga. cosplay, events, cinema, etc. They also have a dealer room, where I spend every year 250 – 350 euro on posters, dolls, goodies, etc.

So I spend enough money on anime, but cuz I can’t play the series, I have to download it to watch them

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