A great site for buying anime is
thisisanime.com. They sell region-free imports from Japan with English subtitles (sometimes even English dubs), so they're legal, but also MUCH cheaper than American releases. They even sell some anime that hasn't been released in the United states! (Hello, Tales of Earthsea!) The only problem is that the subtitles are sometimes poorly translated.
Now, on to the spiritual implications. I must warn you, this is a subject about which I have done much thought and research, so I may take a while. ^-^
First of all, the area of Copyright law. As an aspiring author I have done enough research to give me at least a semi-thorough understanding of copyright's function and purpose. Copyright laws were instated to stimulate creative literature by encouraging artists to create works with the understanding that their work is protected. That's why downloading illegal video, etc. is ethically wrong. You're denying an artist the fruits of their labor. However, it's easy to go to the other extreme where copyright law becomes counter-productive and actually stifles creativity. You see, some people get greedy with their work to the point where they don't care about their art nearly as much as their paycheck and they'll sue anyone who uses even the tiniest bit of their copyrighted material without permission. In this way, new talent get in fixes where they just want a character to mention a book or movie in dialogue or such and the original author or company wants them to pay a ridiculous amount of money to clear the rights. This sort of thing has happened before, and thankfully such abuse has led to the 'fair use' law, but my point is that if you have the mindset that everything not super-strictly adhering to the rules is morally wrong, you're missing the point that the law was created to enforce in the first place. I'm not saying you should ignore your convictions, in fact I applaud you for not doing so, but being that usually the only way to 'legally' see anime is to buy it or go to Japan, I think this law is one that begs to be bent. I definitely don't think you should keep illegal copies of copyrighted video. It's completely disrespectul to an artist who's work you claim to admire. However, if you bought every anime you took a small interest in, you'd end up broke and buried in cruddy anime. I say rent it if possible. That way you've seen it, and if you can't afford to buy it, oh well.
Another minor point is that anime, as awesome as some of it is, has a tendency to be very tainted by the secular Japanese mindset. Some anime is very objectionable by Christian standards and such work is not something you want to financially support. Once again, I'm not advocating illegal downloading here, only pointing something out. My little sister has made it her policy not to buy anime she has not seen thoroughly to make sure it is acceptable, but she buys them ecstatically once she has approved them.
What my sisters and I do is watch anime streamed on a site like youtube or veoh. If we like it enough to want to own it, we buy a legal copy (and it should be noted that we do this a lot of the time). If we don't like it, or like it but not enough to own, we cut our losses and move on. It's a tad hypocritical, I know, but it's the only way the industry's gonna get any money out of us anyway, so I think they'd understand. We never download. Not permanently, at least. And we love buying legal anime DVDs and showing them to our parents and friends who can't all crowd around a computer monitor.
I hope at least something in this rigamarole has helped you or at least made you feel better. God will provide!
:)
. But I realize its a big problem for others and recommend A) Getting rid of it if you have it and B) never supporting companies that use legal options to ruin the youth of our country for their private profits.
