Personal: Okay, I'm Hopeful About Non-Anime Troubles. . .

First, let me inform everyone that I have a much more positive opinion of the situation my family is in. The situation hasn't actually changed. I wish it would but right now, the potential for total screwage is high.

I'm feeling hopeful because A) I'm a masochist when it comes to hope and B) I just can't accept that my family could be screwed for literally doing nothing illegal, immoral or even unusual. I won't go into details but this situation is quite literally due to abject and wanton mistake-making. My family could lose a lot over a misunderstanding. (I mean, crap, even the con-artist liar who put us in the situation says we're not a party to his dirty deeds. Trust me, that's like a biblical miracle.)

So, basically, I choose to think happy thoughts.

I just wish Funimation were providing me more of them.

That segue, poor as it was, brings me to point numero two: While I plan to continue to buy from Funimation, their recent choice to license Baka and Test as well as Dance in the Vampire Bund has been severely tainted by their further choice to censor the later.

Now, I'm not going to go through some long rant about censorship and why it's wrong or how I blame the abuse of the police powers of government by all sides for this paranoia-induced madness or that I think naked loli Mina is fine. Frankly, I'm sure anyone here who has read anything I've ever posted on the subject of lolicon knows where I come down on censorship issues. (For those that missed the epically long posts that probably made me sound "creepy," I am a strong supporter of freedom of speech.)

Instead, let me bring up a financial point, since people love to hit me with them when I talk about English dubs (ignoring that I rarely if ever question the financial wisdom of not doing them as a short-term issue.) A poll on Mania.com's Anime on DVD section seems to shows that a LOT of people are saying "no thanks" to censored DVDs.

That includes me. I might actually buy sub-only Hell Girl because I LOVED in Japanese before I got to love it even more in English. Very rare for me.

My question to all is this: how many censored anime, especially ones that are CLEARLY aimed at audiences that will not appreciate the censoring, actually do well in terms of sales? Isn't this rather like shooting yourself in the foot before starting a race? While I can appreciate that we live in an atmosphere of paranoia, I fail to see why this particular series' content is suddenly too much. I mean, the manga comes out unedited and no one's freaked out yet.

Frankly, I feel rather like the judge in a recent case involving religious banners in school. A hypothetical student isn't enough to make a case for taking down things that have been hanging for over a decade and are quotes from founding documents. No one has actually objected here. Funimation is preemptively acting.

You know, proving the fansubbers RIGHT isn't a good way to beat them. The claim that official releases censor anime is classic and ubiquitous. Now it will receive a true example. Since Funimation always does an English dub, (though can sub-only be far behind now that they're breaking the biggest rule of all?) they're vastly increasing the chances of losing money on this series.

Will some buy it despite the censorship? Sure, some people will always buy. The question isn't will they buy, the question is, how many will think twice before buying again? How many will hesitate to buy other releases because they don't want to support a company that censors?

I can tell you right now, in light of what happened with Hell Girl, I've decided not to buy any future releases until I know that any additional seasons are licensed and dubbed as well. I was already upset to lose out on more Big Windup. I'll finish what I've already started and I'll give whole series releases a chance but no more of this buying in hopes of getting more licensed stuff. I've been burned a lot on that.

Plus, from here on out, I effectively have no budget for buying anime anyway. Yup, I'm officially in Penny-Hoarding Mode Mark II! My family may lose all income so my anime budget has officially been re-classified as my food budget pending future events. That is the one benefit of being potentially totally screwed: you can protest an anime company's decision by not buying their products without any remorse because you can't afford them anymore anyway!

You know, I think I want to cry about that but I'm too frustrated and tired. The amazing thing about having so many bad things happen over the years to my family is this just feels NORMAL to me. It literally felt strange to me earlier in the year when I felt happy about how my life was going.

It's possible my family's situation could be resolved happily around the end of the month so perhaps I'll be able to feel that odd sensation of being content again. If any of you are religious folks like me (yes, it is possible to be religious AND an anime fan who thinks lolicon is protected by the 1st Amendment, I just apply my principles uniformly rather than being a hypocrite like some false prophet types out there) and you feel okay with praying for a stranger, please pray for my family, especially my father. If justice isn't dead and buried, this mess should be resolved in our favor.

If not, we can largely kiss our normal lives goodbye.

Bye-ni. I'm not giving in yet!