Thanks for the comments lpcs1.
Per pricing:
1. We *may* sometime in the future offer ala carte options (buying/streaming movies individually in lieu of being a subscriber) but this is just something in the early planning stage right now and even if we go through with it, I wouldn't see it being a reality until next year sometime. On top of the slight technical hurdles, we may need to renegotiate with each studio as our original licensing deals were just as a subscription site, not a individual sales site and some could then be iffy if we offer titles cheaper than DMM.
2. We also offer Streaming-Only for $30. I know $40 for downloading is a lot, but yes, as you noted, it takes a lot of time to subtitle and we're actually legally-licensing all of our content. We pay over $100,000USD a year in licensing costs so we can't drop subscription costs any lower or we'd end up losing money with too many subscribers (we already lose money in royalties with a small % of subscribers each month).
3. The site you mentioned in your second sentence has been hit big-time with DMCA's in the past and almost certainly will again soon--and I don't say this as hearsay as I've actual copies of the DMCA takedown email chains sent from the studio to that site's billing processor. To my knowledge, aside from our site, there's only one other non-Japanese-owned paysite legally showing new(er) release censored content. And that other site doesn't have subtitles and is streaming-only unless you pay a certain extra amount not even disclosed on their join page (the option only shows after you join from what I hear).
Anyway, Gokkun rocks.
