let's hope tsuburaya allows us to watch the youtube uploads this time instead of region locking them like they did geed
I am really hoping they do as well! The situation with Geed I can kind of understand. There was a legitimate source for the series simulcasting in the United States (and possibly elsewhere) that they didn’t want to take viewers away from.
However, the next year when Ultraman R/B came on the air there was no legitimate way to watch it in the United States as none of the major streaming platforms decided to pick it up. The first episode was available unlocked on Youtube for a brief window but was then slapped behind a region lock less than a week after premiering. There was a tweet from Tsuburaya stating that an official means of watching the series would be announced soon but nothing ever came of that.
Region locking of TV series and media in general has rarely made sense to me. I understand in the days of DVD that Japan wanted region locks to prevent reverse importation of media that was cheaper in the West than in Japan and the Western markets wanted it to limit the loss of revenue from DVDs of movies that had not yet been released in overseas markets being imported from markets where they were available. This just encourages piracy on a grand scale.
This may have made some corporate sense in the bygone era of everything being limited to physical media but in our increasingly digital, online-only age of modern media consumption, it becomes increasingly ridiculous. When you forbid people from watching something they want to watch, they are going to find means of watching it. That’s how human nature works. If you want your media to be consumed in a legitimate fashion that brings ratings/money back to the original producers, make it more widely available!
This shouldn’t be so hard to fathom.
I know I am just one voice out there crying in the wilderness of the internet but please, don’t trap Ultraman Taiga the way R/B was. We want this show. If it isn’t going to be streamed somewhere, at least make it available on Youtube!