Fansub viewers all over the world targetted, by mistake

[Ammish]

As you can see, I don't get a lot of money and I'm still looking for a part time job (which is really hard, considering I'm 16 and in year 11), so you got to understand the people who can't buy their anime DVDs every week because of their earnings.

This argument is used every time :roll:

Just because you can't afford anime on DVD, that doesn't mean you are entitled to it for free.

Don't really care about watching stuff for free (as long as I can buy the DVD if I enjoyed it a lot)

I may sound like some cheap twat who wants to watch free fansubs and ruining the anime buisness, but I'm still trying to buy the DVDs. Like I said...

If I don't like that anime series, I don't continue so through fansubs. If I like or love the anime series, I watch them through fansubs to the end, and buy all the DVDs.

So even though I may be on a budget, I still try and buy the DVDs. And anyway, I would never ask my dad to buy me a DVD because he'll buy me a pirate copy.

So therefore, I rather watch a free fansub than buying a pirate copy DVD so the greedy morons can get a few quid off.

 

[Paul]

Remember that anime is not a right, it is a priviledge. A consumer good. It is a product to be paid for, be that through DVD sales, TV advertising revenue, merchandising, or other means. Nothing in this world is truely free, and even taking what looks like a free 'fansub' has a cost, only this time the price may just be more than you bargained for....

Well said, Fudce!

The 'price' for illegal fansubs doesn't immediately affect anyone, so most people seem to think it's okay. In fact, most anime fans seem to be annoyed at the notion that their illegal downloading is having a negative effect on the anime industry. I don't understand this attitude - of course it's the fansubbers, and especially, the people that create that demand who are to blame. Sure, companies could do a better job of preventing fansubs, or of providing a good alternative, but (like Fudce said) anime is not a right, it's a privilege, and not having any easier means of acquiring it is not and never will be justification.

And to expand on what I said, I am not telling anybody not to download. I just ask that if you watch something on download, buy the DVDs. I download myself, but for every one episode I download, I commit to buying the DVD that contains that episode as soon as it's released.

It's unrealistic to expect anyone to go out and buy every anime they may pick up on fansubs. I know a fair amount of anime fans are rather well off in financial terms, and if that's what you want to do with your money then that's great, but it's naive to expect everyone to follow your moral code - especially when the vast majority of anime fans are college \ university students who have more important things to buy, like... bread (and pot noodles). Basically, I can't see anime being near the top of their list of priorities, but I'd rather these people remain anime fans than be forced elsewhere. All the conventions, blogs and communities would die out if we lost fansubs, after all, this whole explosion in fandom is directly correlated with the rise of the internet.

I hate that phrase "anime is not a right, it is a privilege" (which is Chris Beveridge's mantra and ironically, he doesn't pay for any of his anime; it's all review discs, so I question whether or not he's practicing what he teaches) because it smacks of an middle\upper class elitism, as if you're trying to push people out of your hobby because they love watching anime like Haruhi but don't have the money to invest in it.

Fellistowe's made a great point about how the publishers are struggling because all that crap they used to license isn't selling anymore. It's forcing the industry to evolve because we aren't going to blindly accept whatever they feed us. The internet and fansubs have granted us the privilege to make informed choices about our entertainment. And that's just scratching the surface of "what's wrong" with the Western anime industry right now; but basically, the problem is that the fans are on a completely different wave-length to the publishers.

 

[Fudce]

you're trying to push people out of your hobby because they love watching anime like Haruhi but don't have the money to invest in it.

Technically that's exactly what I am doing. If I force nine people away, but one person who was downloading but not buying decides that he's going to change the way he downloads and buys what he downloads, then that is good. The type of people who downloads and doesn't buy anything aren't the type of folks who we need. I wouldn't even call them fans.

Fellistowe's made a great point about how the publishers are struggling because all that crap they used to license isn't selling anymore. It's forcing the industry to evolve because we aren't going to blindly accept whatever they feed us. The internet and fansubs have granted us the privilege to make informed choices about our entertainment. And that's just scratching the surface of "what's wrong" with the Western anime industry right now; but basically, the problem is that the fans are on a completely different wave-length to the publishers.

That is a bad point, but it assumes that fansubs are used as a free preview. A lot of people are using them as a replacement for the DVDs, rather than a preview of the series to see if they want to buy the DVDs.

 

[Paul]

you're trying to push people out of your hobby because they love watching anime like Haruhi but don't have the money to invest in it.

Technically that's exactly what I am doing. If I force nine people away, but one person who was downloading but not buying decides that he's going to change the way he downloads and buys what he downloads, then that is good. The type of people who downloads and doesn't buy anything aren't the type of folks who we need. I wouldn't even call them fans.

Yeah, but you have to look at what else these people are contributing to the anime community. For example, not everyone cosplaying at the London Expo will have bought the Naruto DVDs. My point is that DVD sales aren't the be all and end all of the anime industry, and actually, I think far more money is being spent on merchandise for an anime series rather than on buying the anime itself. And as far as I'm concerned, every anime fan that interacts with the community in some way is contributing something to the growth of anime. It's not really an issue of black/white, there are many shades of gray in between.

Also, I don't really see the logic in having to buy everything you see on fansubs, there is no point in buying something you only ever intended to watch once - especially given how expensive and prolonged said series can be. You'll never convince someone to part with upwards of £60 for something they only had a passing interest in two years ago.

I guess it all points to the fact that if Japan wants to turn around this situation, they'll have to pull their fingers out and offer professionally subtitled anime just hours after it airs on their domestic TV stations. The direct to DVD market is out-dated and on its last legs.

 

[melonpan]

That is a bad point, but it assumes that fansubs are used as a free preview. A lot of people are using them as a replacement for the DVDs, rather than a preview of the series to see if they want to buy the DVDs.

Not on the topic of this, but I just wanted to add (even though it's totally irrelevant), that I get the fansubs because I consider them highly quality than the DVDs (translation-wise, note-wise, everything except the video quality-wise (and even that can be on par sometimes...), because I pick only the best versions). Of course, I buy and own nearly everything I have downloaded (or the equivalent of). What do you think of that?

 

[ConanThe3rd]

Tell me where I can buy ligitimately subed versions of Astro Boy 2k3 and I'll shut up.

 

[Fudce]

That is a bad point, but it assumes that fansubs are used as a free preview. A lot of people are using them as a replacement for the DVDs, rather than a preview of the series to see if they want to buy the DVDs.

Not on the topic of this, but I just wanted to add (even though it's totally irrelevant), that I get the fansubs because I consider them highly quality than the DVDs (translation-wise, note-wise, everything except the video quality-wise (and even that can be on par sometimes...), because I pick only the best versions). Of course, I buy and own nearly everything I have downloaded (or the equivalent of). What do you think of that?

It's a myth. A translation done by people in their spare time, using only what the subbers hear the character say (or what they think they say) is never going to be more accurate than profesional translators, who have the exact script in front of them. I'll agree that there are more translation notes in fansubs.
I appreciate you buying what you download, but throwing around the "better quality" myth isn't going to help anyone.

Yeah, but you have to look at what else these people are contributing to the anime community. For example, not everyone cosplaying at the London Expo will have bought the Naruto DVDs. My point is that DVD sales aren't the be all and end all of the anime industry, and actually, I think far more money is being spent on merchandise for an anime series rather than on buying the anime itself. And as far as I'm concerned, every anime fan that interacts with the community in some way is contributing something to the growth of anime. It's not really an issue of black/white, there are many shades of gray in between.

You're misunderstanding my use of 'contributing'. People who cosplay as characters are good, but what are they physically contributing? The only contribution that I am refering too are the monetary ones. Companies aren't going to pay their staff in pictures of people cosplaying as a character from the series, are they?

The fact is, companies are losing money, companies like Geneon have already shut down, and with more people using fansubs as an alternative to buying the product is costing them. If nobody buys the DVDs, they wont be able to make the anime due to lack of funds.

Anime isn't free, so anime shouldn't be able to be obtained for free.

 

[Paul]

What am I physically contributing to the UK anime industry? I watch fansubs and run this website, buying the occasional DVD? You can't place any physical value on individual fans because everything we're doing is effecting someone else down the line. Just because you're spending a lot of money on DVDs doesn't make you any more valuable to the UK industry than, say, me.

Also, ask TokyoToys if their business has gone up or down recently. I'd be interested to see whether or not this whole revolution has impacted on their profitability? I definitely think there is still money in the anime industry, but I can't see it sustaining the DVD market for much longer, not unless the industry can somehow equal or better what's being delivered by fansubs.

Right now I'm borrowing season two of The Mighty Boosh on DVD. I probably won't buy it for myself, I'll just give it back to my brother when I'm finished with it. In the past, I've also recorded movies on TV and kept them, these are like British cultural things that everyone does. I don't view anime any differently to that, but many fans seem to have this hard-line view that we should absolutely buy everything we see just because... well, we've seen it. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely and totally respect you, Fudce, for being so loyal and supportive to the UK industry. I just think it's a little naive to expect everyone to live up to your high standards. "Nice guys finish last" springs to mind; the Western anime industry is that "nice guy".

 

[Arbalest]

That is a bad point, but it assumes that fansubs are used as a free preview. A lot of people are using them as a replacement for the DVDs, rather than a preview of the series to see if they want to buy the DVDs.

Not on the topic of this, but I just wanted to add (even though it's totally irrelevant), that I get the fansubs because I consider them highly quality than the DVDs (translation-wise, note-wise, everything except the video quality-wise (and even that can be on par sometimes...), because I pick only the best versions). Of course, I buy and own nearly everything I have downloaded (or the equivalent of). What do you think of that?

It's a myth. A translation done by people in their spare time, using only what the subbers hear the character say (or what they think they say) is never going to be more accurate than profesional translators, who have the exact script in front of them. I'll agree that there are more translation notes in fansubs.
I appreciate you buying what you download, but throwing around the "better quality" myth isn't going to help anyone.

Sure i agree in a sense that having the script in front of you can make things easier and translations will come out better, but thats only one way of translating things, and even then, 'professionals' can get it wrong. Some people are far better at translating speech than text, and that can be of equal, if not more quality than what you get from someone translating from text. It comes down to who actually does it in the end. Just because someone in a large company translates it does not mean in the end they are better than someone doing it in their spare time, it just means they are doing it as a job.

 

[Negacion]

IMO Anime dubbing/subbing industries shouldn't target fansubbers as hostile, they should give them jobs. They're obviously way more better at doing it than professionals are.

 

[Jaymii]

IMO Anime dubbing/subbing industries shouldn't target fansubbers as hostile, they should give them jobs. They're obviously way more better at doing it than professionals are.

Tracking them down would be a hard thing, Obviously the 'fansubbers' could do it as a separate entity entirely and just be linking via the subbing with the company and not giving any personal information out. But to track down one person would be quite difficult, Especially if the people tracking them down aren't exactly trustworthy. Surely they can just say that they are going to give them a job and then just arrest them for distribution of copyrighted materials or something.

Something needs to change, Thats for sure.

 

[melonpan]

It's a myth. A translation done by people in their spare time, using only what the subbers hear the character say (or what they think they say) is never going to be more accurate than profesional translators, who have the exact script in front of them. I'll agree that there are more translation notes in fansubs.

In respect to the translation, you're right - translators (for fansubs) can only go by what they think the character has said, and they have no script in front of them. All a script is going to do is help with names (of people or places), possibly more but not a great deal - you have to also think there there are plenty of people who translate for fansubbers but who also work for companies, and they have been doing what they do for years (and many are actually Japanese themselves, or totally fluent in the language)... The amount of research some translators (for fansubs) put into their translations is phenomenal, providing a massive amount of notes in the show itself, or in their forums/as attachments etc. The only on-par with a fansub translation I've seen would be Media Blasters' release of Twelve Kingdoms - which came with booklets explaining all the terms in the series.

Then you have typesetting - fansubbers more often than not personalise their fansubs and make a font that fits the series a lot better than big glaring yellow words an inch from the bottom of the screen.
Then you have karaoke, never on a DVD release has there been such a thing. (Although that's getting a bit trivial).

You'd expect sound and video quality to be better than fansubs... but very much more often than not - it isn't. Funimation have consistently poor quality video, compression artifacts galore and a low bitrate which makes all their shows seem slightly fuzzy... Many fansubs are aired in HD, which from all the ones I've seen are absolutely flawless, and I'd have to say right now - much better than any DVD I've ever watched (and that's only a 230MB file...).

Before I go further with the video/sound quality, I'd just like to say that I'm using fansubs as a general term here, which covers DVD-rips (either R1 or 2) for the sake of the argument. Gunslinger Girl has some terrible sound problems in the opening sequence (again, Funimation), and a certain highly respected fansub/ripping group fiddled with it to make it clean (creating algorithms I seem to remember, not that I know much about the process).

So, on the video/sound aspect of things, I know licensing/producing/distributing companies have to work with what masters they're given, but in all fairness they are most of the time pretty incompetent with what they're doing. Another example actually, the R1 release of FLCL suffered (as all NTSC discs do) from terrible aliasing problems (line noise) around the characters, and as I downloaded the DVD-rip version, I noticed that even these problems had been removed from certain places, which shows that it can be done. I've compared the DVD-rips to the real DVDs I also own, and the difference is ridiculous.

For all I know, you could know all this already (and probably do), but you're just making broad statements without backing them up with anything...

I appreciate you buying what you download

Yeah... I'm sure the industry does as well...

but throwing around the "better quality" myth isn't going to help anyone.

According to you it's a myth, and I'm not saying fansubs are better in all circumstances, probably more often than not a fansub is worse quality, but there are plenty out there that are better. The way you're talking comes across to me like you're just brushing off all other opinions/views like yours is fact and no one else knows how to be a moral anime-fan.. I've created no myth here... I know these American companies have a hard time selling their products and making good returns from them (apparently), and at the end of it all, only a small minority of fans actually give a damn about what I've been going on about above as long as they get their fix, but to me it's important. With all the talk about what Japanese companies need to do to change the industry, I think American companies can do a lot more as well.

 

[Fudce]

You make quite a lot of very valid points melonpan, and I do agree with a lot of them.

For people who are looking for colourful subtitles, karaoke songsubs, and all of that jazz, fansubs definitly supply it much better than DVDs can. The companies have to deal with whatever type of subtitles a DVD player can support, and most DVD players can only support a few colours and fonts per DVD.
Companies use that easy to read but otherwise ugly font because it's easy to read, and neutral. They could very easily use hard subtitled karaoke subs, but the fanbase has proven that thay hate hardsubs with a passion, so they don't do it.

I'm not saying that a DVD will always be better than the fansubs. I too have seen HD quality fansubs, that make DVDs look like teletext, but as you said yourself, probably more often than not a fansub is worse quality.


You also bring up the issue of DVD-rips in your post, which is a whole other kettle of fish. It's one thing to record something off TV, translate it, typeset it, quality check it, then give it away to an unlimited number of people online for free. It's another thing to buy a DVD and then give it away with very minimal work. You say they are doing it to "fix problems"? Is everybody who is downloading them doing so because they have had video problems on their copy?
If fansubs are a gray issue, DVD-rips are pure black. They are never excusable, even if diguised as an effort to fix problems.

I feel like I'm going around in circles here, so I'll stop this post before I go dizzy. I have been tempted to give up trying to put forward my point of view, but if I did that it would only give further validation to those people who download everything and buy nothing.
Those of you who do buy DVDs, the industry does appreciate your purchases. Every little helps.

Without people buying DVDs, the UK/US companies wont be able to survive. Without the UK/US companies paying them for licences, the Japanese companies would lose a large source of their revenue, and would have to reduce the amount they spend on creating the anime. The number of series would drop, and the quality of those series would also drop.

 

[melonpan]

You also bring up some valid points, Fudce.

Your point about the limited variety of fonts/colours is quite valid, big yellow ones are the standard, which is fine, to add to what I was trying to put across, was that fansub groups put a lot more time into what they're doing basically.

I too am quite dizzy with it all so I'm not going to write masses, I agree with the points you've also brought up here, there are always for and against arguments though...

On the DVD-rip side of things, there's only one group that I would even consider downloading from, I can't really agree with what they're doing - ripping many series (mainly Geneon - who in the history of fansubbing
have never sent a C&D letter...) straight from the DVD, using the translation but edited and adding all the standard fansub-esque extra bits and bobs... but I can't disagree either, as they're trying to cater for all the people who live in areas around the world where it is extremely hard to get anime officially released... along with the whole sorting out errors in R1 discs and all that - they're in a different league to the DVD-rip groups who just copy every R1 there is.. which is totally unacceptable (although I guess it's not really any different from the group I was talking about, but you get what I'm trying to say). I'm on the sideline with the issue, really.
They do a lot of Japanese DVDs though - which are just used as a source for their projects... so they're on a large part a fansub group as well.

If I carry on it'll sound like I'm promoting them, and everything to do with it, which I'm not trying to do, and if I carry on I'll just start repeating everything that's been discussed thousands of times before in all different ways, so I'll just end here.

I think it basically comes down to whether or not a company somewhere is going to sort everything out and revolutionise the way we get anime... Nothing's going to change even if we debate it backwards and forwards and look at every angle. We don't have any power. And it's certainly not going to stop the what... 800,000+ people who download Naruto every week.

I'll keep pumping all the money I can get into anime, and anyone who cares about anime should do the same, not that they all will. As long as there is access to free anime, people will take it, and I personally don't think that's a problem if the people who do so have valid reasons why they can't pump all their money into anime, or another reason such as what I've been going on about. Blah Blah, something really needs to change, people are getting tired of the constant attacks on all parties involved in anime...

On a random note, I think it'd be interesting to see the great unnamed face of Naruto and Bleach fansubs do a survey of the age of the people who download.

I think that's it, and even if it isn't I'm all out of ethical debate power now.

EDIT: Oh look... I did write masses

 

[Firewarrior]

It's not like I can watch Gundam 00 here anyways. Seriously if there was a way for me to download them subbed and HQ of course for a reasonable price count me in.

But right now they're only out in Asia, and Fansubbers are the only source of the getting the anime.