About the LEAKED episode

[drug-holic.livejournal.com]

EDIT AGAIN Cx
So its official that the distribution of episode 3 on the internet was a MISTAKE, and not a crime done by a staff member (from Code Geass site -and many thanks for aoi_rein and akeno_yuki for mentioning it >w<)>

Episode 3 will be aired as planned, with no revision done.

For the Japanese: HERE
For the English: HERE



Edit:
-From Code Geass FIRST SITE-
It's in the "What's New"> box towards the left bottom corner... quite small

2008.4.16
『コードギアス 反逆のルルーシュR2』第3話の映像の誤操作による漏出について を掲載

-TRANS-
2008.4.16
The Announcement of "Code Geass -Lelouche of the Rebellion- R2" Episode 3's leakage from a mistake in the operation/management/processing.



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Mods, please delete if not permitted.
Also, I wasn't sure about the tag so I left it as information.

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Okay, from isxelle

829 名前：風の谷の名無しさん＠実況は実況板で[sage] 投稿日：2008/04/15(火) 20:37:49 ID:8mnOgjX6
つい先ほど、スタッフ一名逮捕されました。

明日の緊急会議で３話の放送中止が決まります。
今後の対応は４話を繰り上げて放送するか、２週間放送中止して流出した３
話を一部作り直して放送するかを決める。
監督を含め全キャスト・スタッフに通達されました

(source: 4ch)

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Trans:
Just a few minutes ago, one of the staff members was arrested.

At the emergency meeting tomorrow, the stopping of the airing of episode 3 will be determined and announced.
From here, we may air the story planned for episode 4 earlier (skip episode 3), or not air anything for 2 weeks and then air a revised version of the leaked episode 3; we will decide that tomorrow.
This has been informed to all cast and staff, including the director.

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HERE is my translation of the whole clip (excluding the ED of course, but preview included).
AGAIN, this may not become official show, so don't take whatever you see there and write about it as if thats the story for Code Geass.
If you want a brief summary, comment... but the translations I just posted at my dA journal (link up above) should be enough. C:

Ask questions, if any ^^
I'm willing to still do brief explanation translations (since it is my native language...) if you need any, but it wont be for actual subbing cuz I hate people who take my translations from my site and just use it for their fansub D:


ALSO
They're not really punishing us... its just that because it was leaked, they feel like (MAY BE) changing it ... not direct punishment for us. It's just that we take it as some punishment so don't talk too much crap about Sunrise please TwT;; it's not their fault. I mean, even if it was some other company, I'm sure they would consider such actions TwT
Sunrise has all rights to take its actions.

Comments

[powercorrupts.livejournal.com]

I don't know why fans are so upset about this. The ratings aren't even a significant fraction of what they should be! Leaking and streaming are at all-time highs, so far as I know, and I think Sunrise has every right to blame this sort of activity for the ratings drop (though, really, I think the time slot is the main issue).

No doubt they take this very seriously. They no doubt see two culprits here - the employee for leaking it, and the fans for distributing it and keeping it alive online instead of letting it disappear after the employee leaked it. They seek to punish both - the employee by firing, and the fans by editting or delaying the show. I think it's somewhat fitting - if people can't wait half a week for something, perhaps they'll learn the lesson about distributing leaked files by having to wait several.

I doubt fans will change, seeing as everyone seems to think Sunrise is completely unjustified in this, but it makes sense to me where they're coming from.

[sapphynashi.livejournal.com]

If we're going to be picky about leaks and piracy, then all the fansubbers should be shut down too while we wait for the official U.S. releases.

I kind of doubt they're intentionally punishing fans this way. That would be an unbelievably petty move, and it wouldn't work because, as you say, fans won't change.

[powercorrupts.livejournal.com]

I don't know how much japan cares about non-japanese piracy. I'm sure it's an issue to them, but they don't directly lose money from it. Sure, if it shuts down or disables the american liscencing companies, it will eventually hurt the japanese studios, but compared to japanese piracy, it's not as big of an issue.

The japanese piracy, on the other hand, is kind of a big deal right now. Studios wouldn't be looking at online streaming of episodes if they weren't trying as hard as they could to counter the piracy in their own country.

I'm sure, as other people have said, that there's more behind it. They probably were already considering this move. But in connecting it with this incident, I can't help but think that they must mean for fans to connect the two. There's no reason to make it look like it's a reaction to the leak if they aren't trying to get the attention of the fans.

[rkold.livejournal.com]

I think there is a ratings drop because the 1 year wait sort of hurt momentum for the series and because I don't think these last two episodes are as good as previous ones. 01+02 both had times where they really felt like a rehash of r01 episodes 1+2 to me, and I am sure I am not the only one.

While if the leak is real I could definitely see firing the employee, it's also an episode being aired in under 1 week. I think it's only a big deal with Sunrise was contemplating changing the episode already. ^^;

[powercorrupts.livejournal.com]

Well, the sunday 5 timeslot is a new one, and unfortunately, is a time that a lot of japanese teenagers are out of the house. They're trying it out to see if it works, and I've seen a lot of suspicion that it's the problem.

I got the impression that they were purposefully putting parallels in? I rather liked the effect - it gave a good impression of how things had changed since the first season. It was corny and a little forced, perhaps, but compared to, say, the Euphinator, I didn't think it compared in terms of corny or forced. xD

It just seems like even if they planned on doing it in the first place, the fact that they're tying it to this incident has to be on purpose. If they weren't concerned about the fans distributing the leak, why mention it in connection with it, as though it's an effect of the leak?

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

I liked the parallels between the first and second series in these last few episodes too.

Without getting into which side is right or wrong, I have to say that from living in Japan it's become quite clear to me that the anime industry in Japan really hates and fears fan(subber)s quite a lot. Companies here profit off anime in very traditional ways, which have recently started to not work so well, and their response so far has been to try to suppress alternative methods of anime propagation. So I guess I'm saying, Sunrise is being typical here, sadly.

[powercorrupts.livejournal.com]

Piracy has become a pretty big deal lately. =/ I suppose it's wrong for me to say things about it, since I'm a pirate myself, but I can see why the studios would be so afraid of it. It lowers ratings and sales, but with the internet's culture of availability, people come to expect the ability to watch something as many times as they like, whenever they want, so it's hard for tv as it's always been to be to work like it used to.

I'm really hoping that online streaming begins to work for japanese shows, and continues to work for american ones. I have to admit, if you make something officially available online, most of the lazy people or those who feel guilty will stop pirating.

[glenngunnerzero.livejournal.com]

Somewhat one of the problems is we havn't even gotten anything from it yet so they can't even acurately judge how well it does here since there's no DVD yet. Fansubbers can help promote a lot of their stuff better than they think (Haruhi comes to mind) however many of them are completely over priced. Compared to a Movie or TV we can buy that's anywhere from 10-90 dollars cheaper than a boxset or sometimes even a normal disc of 1 or 2 episodes, of an anime and we often get a shitton of extras with them too.

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

I'm not aware of any Japanese studios that are making shows available for online streaming. From what I've seen they still seem to be desperately trying to clutch their product...to death, even.

And while I agree that piracy does have some negative effect on ratings and sales, it's important to remember that there are broader demographic patterns at work in Japan, at least, which are contributing just as much or more: the shrinking birthrate in particular and the aging population in general. Children watch anime. There are much less of them than there used to be. And, though I don't understand the price economies of Japanese media very well, it's important to remember that an anime DVD that costs $20 in the States costs the equivalent of $45 here. I've long thought that the industries in both countries would find a way to more profits if they dropped their price points. Anyway, I think they're going to have to do something, and I don't think that persecuting fan(subber)s is necessarily the most effective thing to be doing.

[powercorrupts.livejournal.com]

Gonzo is this season with at least one of theirs, if I recall correctly. I didn't bother looking further into it, because I had little interest in what I heard of the series, but apparently they're even trying to make it available to non-japanese people to stream as well.

It's a little early in the morning for me to want to discuss piracy, since it inevitably turns into wank I think, but I agree on the prices. There's just no way that the average viewer can afford to be buying multiple boxed sets of serieses that cost more than a videogame console each.

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

Oh Gonzo. So hit and miss, that studio.

My agreement about prices leads us right back to saying, Bring on digital distribution!

[rkold.livejournal.com]

And I preferred the Euphinator since it was such a break from what I expected Sunrise to do. I expected Euphie to die tragically, but I never expected her to commit genocide as well.

That's fine if Code Geass is going for the parallels on purpose, but it's still not working for me personally and just reminds me too much of how I felt when I read Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. I find I personally am not enjoying Geass as much as I did the last time around.

Gundam Seed and FMA both found relatively strong audiences in Japan on Saturday at 6:00 p.m. or was it Sunday, now I can't remember.

Personally, I think it's more the break than anything else.

Again, how sure are we that any of this, from the leak to the possible postponement is actually true? I'd really like to see something published on the official site.

[powercorrupts.livejournal.com]

Chamber of Secrets was my favourite, actually. But uh, I digress. xD

Saturday 6 and Sunday 5 are pretty different when your primary market are students in japan. Seed was... also kind of obscenely popular. It doesn't help Geass that people were expecting Geass R2 to get the same ratings Seed did with a better timeslot, and the Gundam name.

I'm not sure. 4chan's /a/ probably isn't even a secondary source at this point, I'd think, since god only knows where 2ch got it from before they did. If it's not half hearsay after being copypasta'd over nine thousand times and being translated by an anonymous, it'd probably be remarkable.

[rkold.livejournal.com]

Seed was (and I would argue still is) obscenely popular in Japan, much more so than Gundam 00 by any stretch. So why is Saturday at 6 that much of a better time slot? And what makes the 2 in the morning or so slot that Geass use to have a good one? While I have been to Japan quite a few times, I've never been a student and I would love it if you could explain this to me. ^^;

I remember being pretty surprised when the first Geass ran because I had expected it to get Destiny's old spot and it didn't.

Expecting Geass to get the same ratings as Seed is silly, again Gundam 00 didn't. But FMA was quite popular in Japan (though not on Seed level) and it didn't have the Gundam name.

I think for Sunrise (assuming everything is true) it's much easier to point the blame at outside sources (fansubbers) than inside sources (time slot/the 1 year break/ etc.) I think you can't play down the break, depending on the person they will start looking at/for something else.


For all we know the leak is an elaborate hoax and I definitely agree it would be pretty remarkable if even 60% of this turns out to be true.