The Old School Otaku Lounge

mbanu wrote:This is also where fans without money can be helpful, I think. By spreading these types of shows outside of the traditional anime fandom, they increase the likelihood that there will eventually be a paying market for them, even if those particular fans can never be that market themselves. (Maybe this is being a little idealistic?)

Except that the majority of these fans without money want "Naruto", "One Piece" and whatever else is hot. They don't want "Angel's Egg", "Violinist of Hameln", "Tenshi ni Narumon" and the vast majority of old series that never found a long term fandom. Unless you can bribe them, like in the form of making them watch two episodes of obscure stuff and then give them access to one episode of what they want, this is not going to work. Obscure series are obscure usually because the concept has been re-used, often times with a much better execution and more recently, than the original work.

mbanu wrote:There are many rarer anime that are basically extinct -- they have no legal translated version available, whatever fansubs did exist for them are no longer being seeded, and unless the original fansubbing group is still active, there is no obvious way to re-trace your steps to find an active seed, assuming that the files still exist at all.

There's a lot more translated anime out there that you might think if you're willing to consider translations not in English. 1980s/1990s Anime was very popular in Italy, France and Spain, so dubbed titles in these languages may be available for more obscure titles. When I visited Spain in 2006, they were airing "Da! Da! Da!" in Catalan and "Juuni Kokuki" (12 Kingdoms) in Castillian Spanish. I recall that a fellow animation collector said he was able to find "Five Star Stories" in Arabic (apparently the series was popular in Iran). A lot of titles do exist if you're willing to watch in another language. What may have to occur is that anime will be translated to English from French, Italian, etc. A lot of scanlation groups already do this in regards to manga. The most common seems to be taking Chinese scanlations and translating that into English. The group that I work for has often used the French version of the manga and then translated that into English. There were some inconsistencies in the original French translation that was officially released that required us to compare it to the Japanese version, but overall, it wasn't bad.

mbanu wrote:The problem I think is that where these two groups meet in the middle you end up with a haven for bootleggers. (^_^;)

At least, in regards to manga, it's a chicken-egg situation, where people will ask a US localization company, like Viz, to release something. The company will usually say "We'd like to, but we don't think we'd have the market to release it". Scanlations obviously hurt companies because most people won't pay for what's freely available. But many US distributors are slow when it comes to licensing, so the standard scanlation justification of "This will never be picked up here" is used. For example, I had been reading "Yona of the Dawn" since it was first picked up by a scanlation group. Viz did not pick up the manga until 2016, after over 10 volumes had been released in Japan. I'm the type of person that usually only reads a book once, so why would I really want to buy volume 1+ when I've been following this title for years and want new material? To support the artist? I'd buy that excuse, but at the same time, I want to know how much money the actual artist(s) receive per purchase. Because if it's something like 5 cents of my $9 manga purchase will go to the artist, I can think of better ways I can support that artist....for example, some artists have joined some chocolate gifting program sponsored by Kit Kat and have been tweeting about giving them chocolate. Yeah, I'm sure they'll be eating chocolate for months, but at least it's something. And then there's the issue of the company ethos. I personally hate Viz & DMP, so why would I want to give them my money? I know a lot of people who feel the same way about Aniplex and PonyCan.

mbanu wrote:
There is a missing step here, I think. For certain styles of anime, an audience needs to be built in general before a paying audience can be grown from it. This was a big problem with anime in 90s Japan, especially pre-Evangelion. You had a certain group of dedicated fans who liked what they liked and would pay for a certain type of show, and even then, they only had the resources to support so many shows per season. You had a larger cultural aversion to otaku due to associations with Miyazaki the serial killer and Aum Shinrikyo discouraging Japanese people from joining anime fandom; there wasn't really much of an alternate market. So in practice, creators who wanted to make shows other than a certain type found that they really couldn't -- with a fixed number of otaku with fixed tastes, there was just no way to make it work practically. Distributing fansubs of these niche shows to areas where people had never heard of Miyazaki the serial killer or Aum Shinrikyo, who weren't familiar with the established tastes of Japanese fandom, was seen as one of the only ways to build an alternate market that might one day eventually pay. (Some directors even gave their informal support of fansubs for this very reason.)

I'm not sure I agree with some of this: If we're looking at anime from between 1987/88 and 1995/96, anime produced in Japan ran a large stylistic, genre and demographic gamut. The OAV and limited run market was alive and well with products directed towards that sweet otaku market (GunBuster) and more experimental/art-house productions (Angel's Egg or Robot Carnival). Not to mention more pop culture directed shows broadcast on TV; everything was still on an upswing.

Aum Shinrikyo, while using animation as a recruiting tool, I think 'discouraging joining anime fandom' was a way distant second-place worry to "I hope they don't gas the subway again." Likewise, while there's a heavy stigma from the Miyazaki case on these weird, lone otaku folk, I don't think there was a significant change in anime production that reflected that for several years around that. It might have cooled Akihabara off a little bit and there might have been a hit to the hentai manga and OAV markets but that's different than say, the PM's Office (or I don't know, governor of Tokyo) says we have to step in and regulate the cartoons and comics or we'll "delete all the animes".

If there was any mass event in Japan that curtailed anime production in the 1990s towards only what sells - it was most likely the contractions after the economic bubble of the 1980s burst. When things are contracting domestically, it doesn't hurt to explore foreign markets for future sales, even if that means you have to give away a few proverbial pies. But even the bubble bursting, Aum, and Miyazaki cannot compare to what I think the real shrinking of anime to the otaku market was: the mid 2000s until probably the mid 2010s.

So, I'm not discounting what individual directors may have stated - they very well could have stated that. Maybe they did have projects lined up that were directly affected. But I think that's narrow, inside-baseball look at what can be attributed to other macro-forces when trying to broad brush an industry in a specific time.

mbanu wrote: The subtitlers themselves are a bit easier to explain, I think. Often these are a subset of fansubbers that I don't think have a formal name, but would more accurately be called "fansetters". They are the folks who really enjoy all the unexpected stuff you can do typeset-wise with modern subtitling software when you aren't restricted by legacy hardware requirements. In practice most commercial subtitling ignores all this stuff because they don't believe there is a market for "deluxe" subtitles beyond those that will play in a DVD player or TV streaming device, justifying the cost of having an extra set of subtitles. So the fansetters release these deluxe packages to try to get people excited for these types of subtitles and maybe generate enough demand for a commercial release that has them.

I like the term "fansetter". Generally, I do not like fansetter's or their fans. Back during arguments in the mid 2000s about whether fansubs had a place in fandom any longer, fansetters and their fans were routinely in the camp of never buying anything that didn't have these features. A good-looking, clean transfer, with accurate and well composed scripts was a lost sale because the girl with the purple hair didn't have purple subtitles. And, because of hardware requirements and limitations, no company was going to release those subtitle options because people who rightfully paid for them wouldn't be able to use them - which is probably a worse PR nightmare than the lost sale because there are only three colors of subtitle scripts used.

Now, I don't know necessarily if streaming an app from my FireTV has the same limitations as a DVD in a hardware player does but I still don't know that the additional work on alternate typesets is worth it when you have a subscription model similar to most apps/sites (Hulu, CrunchyRoll, etc.)

Akage wrote: There's a lot more translated anime out there that you might think if you're willing to consider translations not in English.

There's always a risk using a source in Language B translated from Language A to get something into Language C. The risks could be greater, depending on the culture of Language B, if it's a commercial release versus a fansub, etc. Admittedly, my interest with non-English translations only go so far as comparing those versions with their Japanese lineage or the occasional watching of something I am already familiar with in German (the only other language I have any competency with outside of English or Japanese).

Drew_Sutton wrote:There's always a risk using a source in Language B translated from Language A to get something into Language C. The risks could be greater, depending on the culture of Language B, if it's a commercial release versus a fansub, etc.

Having watched the subbed version of "12 Kingdoms" before visiting Spain, I recall being really impressed by the accuracy of the Castillian Spanish dub and thought that US dubs could learn a lesson from their Spanish counterparts. They not only preserved the accuracy, but their VAs were close to the Japanese ones used Spanish Spanish fans are very particular with their dubs and have been incensed by Crunchyroll only giving them a Latin America Spanish dub when they were originally promised a local version. Assuming that CR used Mexican Spanish speakers, not only would certain subject conjugations be omitted (the informal plural 'you', vosotros), but entire conjugation tenses would also be skipped as well. Mexican Spanish speakers typically do not use the pluperfect tenses (the verb 'haber' + other verb) whereas an educated Spaniard will routinely use this as it's considered to be proper Spanish. It's not simply an issue of different accent or slang. It's almost an entirely different language.

Yes, there will always be some inaccuracy in the translation due to the translators themselves and those in charge of approving the scripts. But usually these are really minor. For example, in regards to the manga my scanlation group localizes, there is a character who has very large breasts who is sometimes referred to as "Holstein" (spelled in katakana). The official French version simply called her a cow. Even if we had not picked up this difference and corrected it, would it have been significant enough to ruin the meaning? No. I think that translations, as a whole, have vastly improved since the 1980s and 1990s in all forms of media. There is so much demand for books, movies, television programs to be available in other languages that there are people who have learned the linguistic nuances of their respective languages and can compensate for those concepts that can not be as easily expressed and still retain the original flavor. In terms of vocabulary used, Spanish Spanish "Harry Potter" is as difficult a read as the original English version.

Basically, I was arguing that, in cases where the original anime masters have been lost, irrevocably damaged or can't be licensed for a US release, using a different language dub is always an option. I would much rather watch an anime that is a translation of a translation than be unable to watch it at all.

Akage wrote:

Drew_Sutton wrote:There's always a risk using a source in Language B translated from Language A to get something into Language C. The risks could be greater, depending on the culture of Language B, if it's a commercial release versus a fansub, etc.

Yes, there will always be some inaccuracy in the translation due to the translators themselves and those in charge of approving the scripts. But usually these are really minor. For example, in regards to the manga my scanlation group localizes, there is a character who has very large breasts who is sometimes referred to as "Holstein" (spelled in katakana). The official French version simply called her a cow. Even if we had not picked up this difference and corrected it, would it have been significant enough to ruin the meaning? No. I think that translations, as a whole, have vastly improved since the 1980s and 1990s in all forms of media. There is so much demand for books, movies, television programs to be available in other languages that there are people who have learned the linguistic nuances of their respective languages and can compensate for those concepts that can not be as easily expressed and still retain the original flavor. In terms of vocabulary used, Spanish Spanish "Harry Potter" is as difficult a read as the original English version.

Basically, I was arguing that, in cases where the original anime masters have been lost, irrevocably damaged or can't be licensed for a US release, using a different language dub is always an option. I would much rather watch an anime that is a translation of a translation than be unable to watch it at all.

I agree with a lot of this - using leverage of another foreign translation to aid in your/your group's translation, while referencing the original language is certainly beneficial. I guess I was thinking more along the lines of "We can't find a Japanese translator but so-and-so knows French, we can use that release..." where French could be substituted for some language that might be problematic, say, US dubs from 2000 and back In some seriousness, imagine trying to use the original DiC dub scripts of Sailormoon to dub it in a Third Language, without referencing the original. There was a fansub group called AnimeJunkies back in 2002-2003, fansubbed a lots of things but Gundam SEED was their flagship title. 2/3 of the way through, there was an Internet Shit Storm about their translations because while using JP raws, it came out that none of them spoke/read Japanese and they were using a Korean translation; for some reason, some story element was changed in the Korean version (broadcast, maybe?) and some riled up robot fans caught it. Or how back in the tape-trading days, Rurouni Kenshin was often titled 'Samurai X', from a Philippenes dub, cause it was easier to say and type. There were a lot of changes to Samurai X, but fortunately, I think only the title made it's way into the fansubs. Stuff like those worst case scenarios; which doesn't sound like what your group is doing.

Akage wrote:Having watched the subbed version of "12 Kingdoms" before visiting Spain, I recall being really impressed by the accuracy of the Castillian Spanish dub and thought that US dubs could learn a lesson from their Spanish counterparts. They not only preserved the accuracy, but their VAs were close to the Japanese ones used Spanish Spanish fans are very particular with their dubs and have been incensed by Crunchyroll only giving them a Latin America Spanish dub when they were originally promised a local version. Assuming that CR used Mexican Spanish speakers, not only would certain subject conjugations be omitted (the informal plural 'you', vosotros), but entire conjugation tenses would also be skipped as well. Mexican Spanish speakers typically do not use the pluperfect tenses (the verb 'haber' + other verb) whereas an educated Spaniard will routinely use this as it's considered to be proper Spanish. It's not simply an issue of different accent or slang. It's almost an entirely different language.

Stuff like this I find very interesting! I only learned a tiny bit of Spanish and all of it was in a restaurant kitchen with a LatAm crew (most of them were from Mexico, one of my managers was from Venezuela, etc.) and from an ex-girlfriend's family (Spain/Valencian Spanish), so I'm aware that there are differences but not enough to articulate them. My only language familiarity beyond English or Japanese is German; when it comes to publishing media (books/magazines, TV, film, etc.) dubbing/translations are done in Hochdeutsch/Standard German which is understood in all of Germany (even the east!) and opposed to other regional variants from Austrian German to my beloved dogs-barking Swiss German. I'd like to have some familiarity with another language like Spanish or French that has a lot of anime/manga translated in it, even if there are some wild variances, almost-another-language feel (French, too, when comparing Standard French to Quebecois French.

Drew_Sutton wrote:Stuff like this I find very interesting! I only learned a tiny bit of Spanish and all of it was in a restaurant kitchen with a LatAm crew (most of them were from Mexico, one of my managers was from Venezuela, etc.) and from an ex-girlfriend's family (Spain/Valencian Spanish), so I'm aware that there are differences but not enough to articulate them. My only language familiarity beyond English or Japanese is German; when it comes to publishing media (books/magazines, TV, film, etc.) dubbing/translations are done in Hochdeutsch/Standard German which is understood in all of Germany (even the east!) and opposed to other regional variants from Austrian German to my beloved dogs-barking Swiss German. I'd like to have some familiarity with another language like Spanish or French that has a lot of anime/manga translated in it, even if there are some wild variances, almost-another-language feel (French, too, when comparing Standard French to Quebecois French.

I'm not ashamed to admit that I am a language nerd. I enjoy seeing how other cultures view the world through linguistic association, such as looking at a kanji character and seeing which radicals were used, or when a language has a word to express a very lengthy or different concept.

I didn't notice any difference in Valencia with the Spanish spoken there, but I've read that that's because they pronounce the 's', 'c' and 'z' sound similarly, and that's how Central and South American speakers pronounce the same sounds. In Madrid, the 's' sound is pronounced as 'th', which according to legend was attributed to some long gone king. But elsewhere in Spain, you don't hear that, or at least, not with the frequency that you do in Madrid. Another oddity is the verb 'to eat', comer (pronounced comb-air). In Spain, it's often pronounced as comb-airge.

I had to take classes where we read Brazilian Portuguese many eons ago when I was in college. The text was paired with the English translation, so on one page you'd have Brazilian Portuguese and right next to it, the English translation. I thought it was interesting how it varied from Spanish, such as the 'ñ' (pronounced en-yay) was written as 'nh' in Portuguese. I zoned off a lot in this particular class just analyzing the differences between Spanish and Portuguese.

In Germany, are you able to make a complete sentence using nothing more than the equivalent of the F word (and just that word without variation) ? You can't in Spanish since it's not used as an adjective. I did find out that you can in Cantonese, but not in Mandarin Chinese.

Like I said, I'm a language nerd