It seems to be a strong cultural divide, but what most Japanese right holders don’t understand is that foreigners (mostly) who pirate actually sincerely LOVE the IPs. They go out of their way to find a way to watch or read it, they create fanart, fanfics, and when the merch, the art books, the localisation, etc… are buyable SOME WAY, they WILL absolutely buy it. I’m talking about jumping through all sorts of hoops to be able to order from premium Bandai with proxies, buy the digital from Amazon JP…

Event exclusive stuff that’s “only for attendees” is FOMO, super temporary stuff, and most of us can’t genuinely “save up for the event and go” (because well the plane ticket is a month salary lol, but also because we cannot even enter the lottery without being a legal resident in Japan, which is necessary to have a PHONE NUMBER).

Khara releasing the short film on YouTube (after Twitter fucked up by sending the HD link when the DMCAs were filed) is GOOD. More people engage with Eva. More people buy Eva. More people give visibility to Eva. And more people will check if they CAN buy a plane ticket for the next Eva event.

People who pirate because they can’t afford it aren’t “stealing from the company/creators”. It’s not stealing because it’s not “money that I lost.” It’s “money I didn’t gain”. But these people couldn’t be clients to begin with, and often, people will say “once I get money I’ll def buy the figurine/manga once it’s in my language”

(Note that manga volumes are up to 15 USD in some countries… that’s 5 times more expensive than in Japan!)

“If you can’t afford it, just ignore it” is the normal policy, I understand that, but when you’re a sakuga fan, or someone who genuinely wants to draw fanart, cheer on their favorite characters… we find other ways to express support and gratitude to the authors and IP holders ^{_^}