On Fansubs and Recasts

Discuss anime, especially but not limited to 1950's~1990's series, and related sub-topics
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davemerrill
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On Fansubs and Recasts

Post by davemerrill »

BikeLover wrote:If you want to buy fansubs be my guest but not my game(remember my wife earned a living producing anime/manga and her stuff got pirated).
People buy fansubs? Not to get into a big debate, but that hasn't been the case, at least in American fandom, for at least a decade.

I would pay cash money for Giant Gorg with a smile on my face if Bandai would put it on DVD with English subtitles, just as I did for Gundam Unicorn and as I will be doing with Yamato 2199. Sadly, Bandai felt they didn't want my money with Gorg, that's their loss.

I was into Japanese animation before there was any such thing as a domestic American "anime industry", and I figure I will be into Japanese animation after they've turned off the lights and gone home. Yes, I was a fan back when the only way you could experience Japanese cartoons AT ALL was through means that some might find legally questionable. Doesn't keep me up nights. I figure the years I've spent as an unpaid promotional worker even things out.
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Re: Anime not released overseas. (Officially).

Post by davemerrill »

I'm 42. The first Japanese cartoon I ever saw was "Prince Planet" (Yusei Shonen Papii) on Chicago TV when I was very small. Grew up watching Ultraman and Speed Racer.

The debate over fansubtitling and video piracy has been going on as long as there have been VCRs.
I can't speak for the anime fans in other countries, but American anime fandom has always been opposed to bootlegs, to for-profit piracy. It's very true that fan groups would translate and subtitle new anime releases - on a non-profit basis, I might add - but when those titles became available in the American market, the fan subtitle groups would withdraw their versions. Before Bandai ever even thought about entering the US market, fans like Robert Woodhead and John Ledford were starting their own companies to legally license and release anime titles in America. When anime fans started their own conventions, the first thing they did was outlaw bootleg merchandise in the dealers rooms, and that's a policy that every reputable anime convention has upheld to this day.

In fact the consensus is that the fansubtitling of anime in the 80s and 90s was instrumental in building a market for anime in the US. Without nonprofit fan distribution there might never have been an American anime industry.

I'm not talking about the manga scanlation sites, I'm not talking about ripping and torrenting brand new domestic DVD releases, I'm not talking about the vast SE Asian gray-market industry that pillages intellectual properties from around the world or that guy down at the flea market with bootleg VHS tapes of Sailor Moon episodes.

I'm talking about the American fansub culture of the 80s and 90s; we did it out of love of the medium, we spent our own money and used our own equipment, and we never made a dime out of it, and the minute the anime became available in the States we bought it. That's just how it was.
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Re: Anime not released overseas. (Officially).

Post by davemerrill »

The pirated kit market and re-casting is absolutely fascinating. I can remember finding out about it and thinking "People actually DO that? So much trouble!" There's an element of DIY to it that is remarkable, but at the same time, it's bootlegging, it's illegal copies of commercially available product, and that's something I'm opposed to and have always spoken out against. I am not defending fansubs that duplicate or replace an already existing commercial product. The fansubs I'm talking about are fansubs of shows that have never and likely will never be released in the US market. There's no way they can impact sales of legal product since legal product in that form (with English subs) doesn't exist.

There's a fascinating legal article about fansubs here: it goes into how fandom and fan-subs helped create the market in America.

http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/ahrc/script-ed/ ... atcher.asp

And I quote: Anime outside of Japan is a growing industry; an industry whose roots extend back to the days where fansubs were the only option for non-Japanese speaking fans who wanted to fully enjoy anime.168 As a result, one can argue that the American industry and others like it at least benefited at one time—companies like industry leader ADV wouldn’t have been successful without a fansubbing-built customer base.169 Indeed, the founders of ADV wouldn’t even have known about anime without fansubs.170

It's a 2005 article, so it's already a bit dated, but I think it makes the same points I was making. As far as fansubs hurting the market, I suppose we'd have to ask someone actually involved in the industry. Most of the industry figures I've spoken to feel the same way I do, that it's a gray area. Certainly there have been much larger economic factors at work that have led to the decline of the anime industry in America. Geneon had deep pockets and a catalog full of titles that were never fansubbed, yet is gone. ADV had amazingly popular licenses (Evangelion, anyone?) but through a chain of bad investments and sour business deals, was forced into bankruptcy. Central Park Media, with popular licenses like Project A-Ko, Urotsukidoji, Dominion, etc. was in partnership with the Musicland group, and when it went bankrupt that caused a chain reaction that took CPM out of business. Musicland's bankruptcy also took down retailers like Sam Goody and Suncoast Video, which in turn left consumers with fewer places to purchase anime.

In all this bad financial news, I don't believe fansubs are mentioned once.

BTW Justin Sevakis at ANN has a 3-part article on the anime economy that is a must-read. http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/feature/2012-03-09 And I tend to agree with Justin's conclusions here: Last but not least, piracy is still a huge problem. These days the fansubs themselves aren't as big a deal as they used to be -- streaming has made them less relevant, and torrent traffic is down significantly. The far bigger problem is with illegal streaming sites, the ones that will take fansubs and DVD rips and stream them without permission. These sites are everywhere, and are often way more prominent than the legal options. Just google "streaming anime", and you'll get a huge list of websites offering instant access to the latest shows. Almost all of them are illegal. In recent months, Funimation has filed paperwork with Google to have them removed from search results, with some success.
Justin goes on to talk about the solutions companies like Funimation have come up with to engage their customers. We're in a fascinating time for all media, not just anime.
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Re: Anime not released overseas. (Officially).

Post by Heero »

BikeLover wrote:Dave.
I still got printed lists of mail-orders for fansubs and the associated costs to own them.
As someone who got fansubs that way, I'll note it was an "unfortunate" necessity of the time if American fandom was to grow because prior to that, the only way to get material was to "swear fealty" to the nerd "nobility" who already had the material and most of the time had no intention of sharing their "control" of material with anyone.
Agree to a degree that fansubs helped with the die-hard fans who later bought the released stuff.
But that is not the majority of the fan-base and most won't do that.

Example:
I haven't bought a cinema ticket in over 10yrs, I don't torrent, etc but will wait for the movie to be broadcast on TV or on rental.
So the movie Industry no longer benefits from me watching their stuff, as I either get it free or for the cost of rental DVD(which is way cheaper than a movie ticket here).
This is a personal pet-peeve borne out of American anime companies quoting US "anime" convention statistics as "proof" of market. Your personal experience on how you watch movies is exactly why people are misguided on the market for anime. Fansubs (and scanlations) helped build the market for US fans (I'm not speaking for any other region, especially Japan, since I have no experience or knowledge thereof). The hard-core fans here are like the hardcore SciFi fans of Japan (from what I'm told). They traded tapes the read online groups and they imported material when possible. I can name LDs that I bought due to fansubs, I can name manga I've bought thanks to scanlations.

Let's agree with your contention that I'm in the minority, let's even extrapolate that your numbers are totally accurate and 90% of people who get fansubs/scanlations NEVER buy ANY anime/manga. Out of 1000 people that "pirate", 10% (100) will buy stuff and the other 90% (900) will not. Here's the CORE and most important question tho, suppose YOU personally could eliminate all pirating options overnight, bam, snap your fingers and you either buy the DVDs/BDs/books/etc. or you don't get your stuff. Now, how many would buy? You're gonna lose a LARGE percentage right off the top because they've entirely lost interest. (like you with movies or me with lots of tv programming, we'll watch if it's "free" (or already paid for) but if it requires me to spend on it, no) Whatever you're left with, MIGHT buy, but now you need to know, would they buy without having seen the material? Will they even know about it? I don't know how many units of Madoka Magica AniPlex will have moved in the USA when it's all said and done, but I guarantee it'd be MUCH less if not for fansubs.

Physical copies (DVDs and books) are going to be purchases for the hardcore collectors or people that want to REVISIT a title. That's why they're so expensive in Japan. It was unrealistic to think there would've been a sustainable market for selling tv shows to American audiences sight unseen. I can't think of ANY other model that tries to sell tv shows on DVD before running them "for free" on tv. And even if you note people who buy DVDs without having seen the show before, they do so ONLY because many people (who watched it on TV) tell them how good it was (or, more often, someone who loved it buys it and loans it to them).

I agree with dave that streaming is the new way that US fans are getting material, it now just becomes a question of how large the ACTUAL market is and how many people really want to buy physical copies in the period moving forward. (for the record, I'm in favor of figuring out a way to do "kickstarter" campaigns for new anime so fans can fund creators so we KNOW people are paid and future sold copies are just "gravy", but not sure how that can get started. I also want to note that various webcomic creators "give away" their content for free and then still do brisk business selling books, I JUST saw one who made over $1million on a kickstarter campaign for book-reprints, so while I know piracy is an issue, I think it's intellectually lazy to just automatically blame fansubs/scanlations for loss of income when it's obviously a more complex issue)

In closing, I also want to note that people ascribing a "lazy, selfish, never-buy" mentality to anime fans is one of my biggest issues with so-called "anime fans" that are the bulk of people at anime conventions now, and why I continually question the interests of current "anime" convention attendees.
davemerrill
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Re: Anime not released overseas. (Officially).

Post by davemerrill »

BikeLover wrote:
Dave.
I still got printed lists of mail-orders for fansubs and the associated costs to own them.

Agree to a degree that fansubs helped with the die-hard fans who later bought the released stuff.
But that is not the majority of the fan-base and most won't do that.
There was an outfit in Seattle back in the early 90s that was actually selling LISTS. Like, you send them five dollars, and they send you other people's anime lists with their addresses. My anime list was one of those they were selling. (this of course was without my permission). If there's a way to squeeze a few dollars out of something, people will find it.

I believe sales of anime titles - particularly titles that were heavily fan-subbed, like the Miyazaki films, etc. - would show that people who own fansubs are actually VERY likely to buy the licensed product. For example, Project A-Ko has been released on home video in the United States on three separate occasions, and fansubs of that film were widely distributed before the first official release.

I'm curious, did you spend any time with American anime fans in the 1990s? It really seems to me that you are conflating the American fan subtitling culture with illegal downloading. The two are not the same.
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Re: Anime not released overseas. (Officially).

Post by davemerrill »

Heero wrote:

Physical copies (DVDs and books) are going to be purchases for the hardcore collectors or people that want to REVISIT a title. That's why they're so expensive in Japan. It was unrealistic to think there would've been a sustainable market for selling tv shows to American audiences sight unseen. I can't think of ANY other model that tries to sell tv shows on DVD before running them "for free" on tv. .
Quoted for truth. One of the things about Sevakis' series at ANN that stood out for me was that it analyzed the revenue stream of a typical anime TV show - exactly where the money was coming from. Where the money comes from is licensing and merchandising and television ad sponsors. Sales of DVDs and physical media afterwards is pretty much gravy; the show has already been paid for by TV ads and sales of toys and ancillary merchandise.

When anime series are brought over to the United States, the kind of merchandising you need to make it profitable to the same degree - the merchandising seen with a Pokemon or a Sailor Moon or a Cardcaptor Sakura or a Robotech- that's only going to happen with a few series, and it's only going to happen once a season, if that. It depends on a wide variety of factors that in the 70s and 80s depended upon UHF syndication and in the 90s and 00s was dependent upon cable TV and in the new age nobody knows WHAT is going on.

Anyway, as Greg said, trying to sell an entire TV series sight unseen at $25 a disc to an audience that may or may not be interested in it - that's a tough job, and the discount stores and flea markets are full of brave attempts to sell anime to Americans who didn't want it. Everybody was expecting to have the next Dragonball or the next Naruto and there just aren't that many to be had. It's a niche market with rare exceptions. Not the pop culture phenomenon that's changing the world.

Japanese animation has a much larger market in Europe mostly due to TV deregulation in Italy in the 1970s - suddenly there were dozens of new TV stations that all needed new product, which was conveniently supplied via Japanese TV cartoons. Same deal in France, where Grandizer was #1 in its time slot. Of course it didn't hurt that Europe already had a thriving comic book industry of wide variety and scope, and merchandisers ready to capitalize on these crazy Japanese imports.
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Re: What puzzles me.

Post by Heero »

BikeLover wrote:If fan-subs(not digi-subs) were such a great boon to the spread of Anime, why did most of the Japanese companies(including the worlds biggest Toy and Anime producer) pull out of many markets due to losses.
Before the 90s (when fansubs got big), there were maybe 10 anime (from all time) available in licensed form in the US (again, not speaking for ANY other region). You had Astro Boy, Speed Racer, Gatchaman, Star Blazers, Robotech and a handful of Leiji Matsumoto stuff, but prior to DBZ, Sailor Moon and Evangelion hitting big numbers in the US, no one (on either side of the Pacific) really saw the US as a big anime market. Unless EVERY American anime journalist, researcher AND industry exec who has spoken on the matter is lying, for many years the Japanese saw the US the same way as American content producers see Japan. ie. if it makes money there then that's awesome, but our content is not produced for that region.

Why are they pulling out of the region? Here's a hint:
-Japanese anime DVD cost = $80
-American anime DVD cost = $30
Amazon.com ships worldwide. BluRay region for US and Japan is the same. American anime DVDs/BluRays can run Japanese audio with subs turned off. Japanese fans can import American copies at over 50% discount (considering American versions usually package entire SEASONS rather than 2 eps per disc, probably more like 90% discount).

Americans buy Hollywood movies for $15/disc and mainstream TV shows for maybe $50/set. What American in their right mind would happily pay $80/disc for 2 eps = $500/set for a 13 episode show? Japanese company can make $500/person on a couple thousand people in Japan, or make $50/person on maybe double that if add in US. Unless you honestly believe that without fansubs each anime sells hundreds of thousands of copies in the US (which is ridiculous) then it's simple economics on why Japanese companies are shifting out of US releases.
Sorry, but unlicensed for me is as illegal as pirated if we talk morally. You won't find either in my household or any of my old Otaku friends and anime/manga producers.
So, none of your friends buy/make doujinshi? I know several mangaka and anime pros who do. It is also unlicensed. I'm not trying to equate doujinshi with pirated DVDs, but there is nuance to the discussion. Can you also tell me that none of your friends have ever "pirated" software? or music/MP3s? I'm sure you've reported all the music videos on YouTube that you linked, right? Since most of those are unlicensed by the poster and instead just put up by fans to share with other fans. (there are "official" versions of most modern music videos and these unlicensed ones are usually pulled when found)
"I would buy it if it was offered but japan don't do so I buy unlicensed/pirated"
Same song for the last 30yrs.
In the 90s, you had (normally) maybe 5 anime VHS tapes in the local blockbuster. Many American anime fans rented those and watched the hell out of them. Many people bought all manner of CRAP (and yes, I mean that literally) purely because there was anime to buy. Then in the late 90s, the boom hit. Sailor Moon brought all the ladies into the fandom and DBZ became this generation's Robotech.

But you know what happened (in the US)? I'll tell you, when I was 20, I was thrilled about anime because as a fan of animation I wanted to see more animated stories that appealed to someone over the age of 10. I wanted 30 year olds to appreciate stories that were told through animation rather than live action. But here's what happened:
-Hollywood took various properties and made "live action" versions (DBZ, Speed Racer, The Matrix) because American viewers want live action
-Anime companies wanted to "maximize their properties" (and so ADV went on a multi-year live action Evangelion snipe hunt)
-Pokemon took off and a whole new generation of 5 year olds got into anime
-12-14 yr olds wanted to be "cool" and started getting into "edgy" anime and going to cons

All of this (of course) had the effect of PROVING what American audiences already knew. Animation is for children. You watch the pretty colors and flashing characters, but once you're into girls, you grow out of it and watch "real" entertainment. (I guess debatably we moved the bar SLIGHTLY by getting lots of "fart gag" animation (Seth McFarland animated shows, Futurama, etc))

Heck, you say Japan is pulling out of these markets? We're not even keeping our own! Cartoon Network is like half "live action" shows now. A combination of preTeen gameshows/comedies and late night internet meme adult shows on top of their crumbs of animated fare.
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Re: What puzzles me.

Post by Heero »

One last thing...
BikeLover wrote:"I would buy it if it was offered but japan don't do so I buy unlicensed/pirated"
Same song for the last 30yrs.
For the record, when I was more into fansubs, LDs were the thing. I have at least 3 LD box sets and numerous other loose LDs, FROM AJAPAN. Yes, when I was a fan "back in the day", I watched fansubs AND I bought Japanese LDs of shows that I loved. Heck, in one case (The "X" movie) I bought an expensive LD box set sight unseen because I loved the manga. That movie is HORRIBLE, it is absolutely gawd-awful, but I own a beautiful laserdisc box set commemorating my excitement about it.

So just because some fansubbers released "lists" that you could buy from, don't tell me no one bought any licensed materials "for the last 30 years", because frankly, that's just insulting.
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Re: Anime not released overseas. (Officially).

Post by davemerrill »

BikeLover wrote:Dave not confusing anything and I spoke and speak to fans INTERNATIONALLY for decades on online forums.
Used to run my own anime related one for a few years in the 90's.

And like I said I have friends on the retail side too and we do talk about selling international, etc.
Not sure if you ever heard about a Company called Fewture and how they fared in the US Market.
Their stuff is still in high demand but they are back to doing business as before they went to the US Market.

But agree the anime scene has changed over the years, even see at the convention in Japan over the last 15yrs and the merchandise in shops.

Other problem are goods from the chinese, thai and korean market.

Cheers.

P.S.: Older read: http://www.otakunews.com/piratefaq.php
P.P.S.: Dave never got your list as few shipped from the states.
Well, I'm pretty much in the dark about what the fans were like in other countries; I can only speak about fansubbing in the United States, particularly in the 80s and 1990s. I was active in the fandom, I ran an anime club and helped start an anime convention and staff many other anime conventions all over the country.

When you say things like:
BikeLover wrote:Heck, some of the biggest re-casters, subbers, etc operated and still do right out of the USA and distribute globally. And most made a killing as they still do today.
...that implies fansubbing was a lucrative operation, conducted for profit by criminals, and condoned by anime fandom. Now this may very well be the case somewhere. However in my experience and in my involvement in anime fandom in the United States in the 80s and 90s, fansubbing was, and I quote from countless fansub VHS tapes, "not for profit, by fans, for fans".

There were indeed people trying to profit from fansubs. I've thrown them out of conventions myself. But they were not members of the largest anime clubs, they were prohibited from selling their fansubs at any of the anime conventions, and anime fandom -as a whole- rejected the notion of selling unlicensed products, up to and including ejecting dealers who were attempting to sell bootleg merchandise at conventions, up to and including being sued for libel after calling someone a "video pirate" in print.

Anime conventions and anime fandom could have easily looked the other way, allowed the bootleggers to sell tapes in the dealers rooms, allowed the bootleg garage kits and the bootleg CDs and the other unlicensed merchandise. But we did not, even though it cost us both time and money. The Otaku News Pirate FAQ that you linked to is there because anime fandom supports licensed product when ever possible and wants to keep fans educated on why they shouldn't purchase bootlegs.

There are many, many "anime fans" who will cheerfully pirate material and will never pay a cent for anime if they aren't absolutely forced to. But please do not paint all anime fans - and indeed, all fan subtitlers - with that same brush.
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