Very annoyed am I :(

I have long been an advocate of buying legitimate, properly licensed anime/manga goods.

I have seen the effect of bootlegs/piracy, seen my favourite artists shut shop because they can no longer afford to produce art, then to have it ripped off by people who are out to make a quick buck out of their work.

Piracy is wrong people.
There is no excuse for it. It destroys the industry.

I’ve always been very diligent in ensuring nothing I buy was pirated, but this one case was me being too excited over something that just ended up being too good to be true.

I have long wanted this figure, but it has been out of print for ages. So when I saw it sitting on the shelves at a local store here in Auckland called Vagabonds, I snapped it up.

At NZ$109 I thought it was a pretty good price, but boy was I wrong.

Turns out it’s a bootleg.
A pirated rip off of the original figure.
How do I know?
The painting was shocking, the joins were so unbelievably visible and the packaging did not have the requisite Good Smile/Max Factory laser stickers on it.

If I hadn’t paid full price for it I wouldn’t be as upset.
Most stupid people who buy bootlegs “because they are cheaper” really are stupid because most of the time, bootlegs aren’t. I didn’t know this was a bootleg, and it just pisses me off even more.

I am going to try and return it tomorrow, and if they won’t take it back I’ll find a way to report them to the authorities (there has got to be someone out there who protects our rights to buy LEGIT stuff right?! – help me out here.)

And lesson learned. From now on, if I want figures, it’s either through the Graphic Novel Cafe or online at a reputable store.

As for everyone else, if you have any sense, don’t buy anime/manga items from Vagabonds. They may seem cheaper, they may seem to have rare and amazing stuff you can’t find anywhere else; but infact they aren’t cheaper, and many of those “rare” items are complete fabricated pirated goods… like those pillows they are selling ~_~