Scapegoating the Audience: The Roots of Piracy

Welcome to another “Siliconera Speaks Up,” our newsletter for the site! This’ll be a summary of the past month’s anime or gaming news, a little reminder of things to come, and our insight on what games you should pick up next. Without further ado, let’s get into it!

Speak Up Sesh

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After literal years of waiting, Umamusume: Pretty Derby and Persona 5: The Phantom X are finally readily available in countries outside of their home regions, with localization to boot. This is a big deal for, say, Umamusume fans who could only watch the anime and couldn’t get the game to work on an emulator, or couldn’t understand Japanese to play a game that relies heavily on reading.

Compared to the past, official translations of niche or indie content are relatively easy to find. Globalizing content to reach the vast audience beyond just your native language’s is important not only for accessibility reasons, but for financial reasons. Those who have been into Japanese media and content for a long time are probably aware of how much piracy, whether you agree with it or not, has contributed to its worldwide popularity, but those who don’t understand that history don’t seem to realize how important it remains.

At the very beginning of June, the official Twitter account for Kasane Teto posted a Tweet, in English, condemning fans uploading and showing a paid video “for free.” This Tweet was referencing videos of Teto’s guest appearance during the Hatsune Miku Japan Live Tour 2025 ~Blooming~ concert, which had been shared on the Internet. This Tweet rubbed fans the wrong way. For one thing, the account had posted this and only this in English, with every other post in Japanese. Others took offense to the accusatory tone in the Tweet, as they didn’t even know the videos they’d watched or shared had been illegal uploads, or they disagreed with the Tweet’s last line of “It is a serious betrayal of the invitation.” International Teto fans hadn’t been invited to the concert, which was why people had to rely on illegal uploads in the first place.

The majority of Japanese Tweets from people who are actually in Japan defended the Teto account’s position. Call it a stereotype, but I find that a lot of Japanese users tend to side with or believe the corporation’s account, so this isn’t surprising. It also wasn’t surprising that the illegality of piracy rubbed these users wrong. To them, it seems that international fans are just complaining that they couldn’t watch the concert for free, or that they should just obey the rules, even though overseas fans literally couldn’t pay for the concert even if they wanted to. It’s not a matter of wanting or not wanting to shell out money for the concert. The problem is: they straight up couldn’t.

We can debate the ethics of piracy all day, but those who know their history know that without piracy, Japan’s soft power wouldn’t have the reach it has today. Whether you like localization or not, you can’t really deny that companies like Nelvana and 4Kids popularized anime with their dubs of Shaman King, Cardcaptor Sakura, Dragon Ball Z, Inuyasha, and such. I didn’t even enjoy the dubs as a kid, but that only taught me to seek out the Japanese versions myself, as I’m sure many others did. If it wasn’t Torrenting, it was streaming. The early days of YouTube were rife with those “Shakugan no Shana Episode 13 Part 1/3” videos and, though they don’t broadcast it, Crunchyroll was an anime piracy site before they went legal.

I’m not trying to say anything crazy like “We should all just go pirate stuff!” I’m trying to say that whenever these sorts of arguments arise between Japanese and non-Japanese users about the morality and legality of piracy, it’s almost impossible to reach a common ground. The established norms are so different that any debate has to start from explaining the foundation in which Japanese media achieved its global popularity. That might not be so bad if you’re talking to the person face-to-face or on, say, Discord, where the message limit is a lot longer than 250 characters.

Money does make the world go round, at the end of the day. If you support an artist’s or a company’s product, and you want to see them make more of it, the best way to sort of guarantee that is to shell money to them (even if that’s a lot harder nowadays compared to before thanks to the crazy prices of…well, everything). Maybe international fans making more noise and showing their interest in Kasane Teto with their wallets are what companies like Crypton need to see to realize that yelling about the criminality of piracy to a fandom that was born in a yo-ho-ho culture isn’t going to curb this behavior. It’s easy access to the content they want to support that’ll have an actual impact on fighting the piracy they hate so much.

Top 10 Stories From the Past Month

1. New Sanrio Merchandise Focuses on Characters’ Butts - The obsession with, like, corgi butts and cat balls is so funny.

2. Kaiju No 8 Manga Ends - 129 chapters was a good run.

3. There’s Nothing Wrong With the Switch 2 Launch Library - The Switch had such a long life that even if the launch library is underwhelming (for exclusives), it’s probably still worth buying a Switch 2 now.

4. Yes, Atlus Will Make Persona 4 Revival Remake - The joke theory about how Yuri Lowenthal forced Atlus to announce it before they were ready with his post is really funny, especially after seeing the trailer.

5. New Junji Ito Nendoroid is a Tomie Figure - Display her with your other Nendoroids and figures at your own risk…!

6. Zidane and Vivi are New Final Fantasy Adorable Arts Figures - A classically lovable duo.

7. Where is Davi in Date Everything - Looks like this is the part that people had a lot of trouble with! The Blue Prince and The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy guides were still going strong in June, too.

8. Joker Will Be Playable in Persona 5 The Phantom X at Launch - It takes what feels like a billion years (since the first Palace is more or less a retread of Persona 5) to get enough of the premium currency to even pull on that banner…

9. Review: Gundam Seed: Battle Destiny Remastered Is For Fans - A lot of Gundam games can sometimes end up feeling that way.

10. Cerydra is Another Honkai: Star Rail 3.5 Character - The Honkai: Star Rail character announcements were still popular. Hysilens’s article also made it onto the Top 10 of that week.

Upcoming Releases

• Patapon 1+2 Replay - July 10 (Windows PC)

• Edens Zero - July 15 (PS5, Xbox Series X, Windows PC)

• Hunter x Hunter: Nen x Impact - July 16 (PS5, Switch, Windows PC)

• Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot Daima - Adventure Through the Demon Realm Part 1 - July 17 (PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox One, Windows PC)

• Ratatan - July 25 (Windows PC - Early Access)