The Anime Nostalgia Podcast & Blog

[Drew_Sutton]

New podcast episode is up! I solve the ancient fansub mystery of who is Miami Mike (sidenote: that infamous screencap originated here, back when the site was named animepast.net!) http://animenostalgia.blogspot.com/2018 ... ep-61.html

Bonus ANN article to go along with it linked in the show notes!

I want to check out your article on ANN but I listened to the podcast and thought you did a great job. What a serendipitous find so you could get to the bottom of the case While I agree with Pat that "WHAT MIAMI MIKE DID AT DRAGONCON" can be so much more salacious when we let our imaginations wander, it totally is the most-1990s-fansub-circlejerk thing to happen. I believe every word of it. I guess what's even more funny (to me) about it was that Ctennosaur wasn't ever part of the NFSOR (Not For Sale Or Rent) crowd; if you wanted his fansubs, you could contact him directly for $40 a tape. At least, that's what I remember seeing on his website when I was looking for these Dragonball Z episodes. Other distros probably had Ctennosaur tapes and would gladly trade or accept modest donations but I wasn't really in touch with them.

I also liked the one bit about the call out on "the games store in NY or NJ I went to a couple of times": That was Games and James; they not only sold their own copies of Ctennosaur and Anime Labs (as I recall but I think Mike "VegettoEX" LaBrie corrected me once upon a time) but they put their own title cards at the front of the tapes, supposedly "taking credit" for the others' work.

Time has dulled my anger at these guys, but holy heck I feel like I spent a solid decade trying to stop the sale of bootleg anime tapes. Nobody listened to us at the comic book cons, but when we started our own anime cons we were able to slam that lid down. Of course, the only thing that really stopped bootleg anime VHS was legit product becoming available.

I feel like the 'paid for fansubs' was a right of passage, at least at some certain time in the 1990s. If you came along post-AKIRA or post-Sailor Moon, where there was anime in the Blockbuster but weren't connected to a fan circle or on the Internet, finding the bootleg vendor somewhere was the next stop. After buying a handful of them, I finally got clued in on the free-culture side of fansubbing, so any fansub I bought or rented after that got duped for my own collection (and copied for friends/penpals/clubmates that asked).

Legit tapes helped stem the flow but I think DVDs were the real turning point, because circumventing macrovision and copy protection was harder, at least until BitTorrent came around and broadband Internet was more widely available.

This is one thing that bugs me about the current fansub scene; a complete failure of imagination.

I've yakked ad nausiem about this else where on the forum but yes - the sheer amount of material that isn't commercially released (and/or viable) is still ripe for fansubbing. It's just that the heyday of being the first* group to subtitle One Piece, FMA or Gundam SEED are gone and you can't just look at what's coming out this next quarter for your next project.

*Often they were not 'the first'.

[usamimi]

I feel like the 'paid for fansubs' was a right of passage, at least at some certain time in the 1990s. If you came along post-AKIRA or post-Sailor Moon, where there was anime in the Blockbuster but weren't connected to a fan circle or on the Internet, finding the bootleg vendor somewhere was the next stop. After buying a handful of them, I finally got clued in on the free-culture side of fansubbing, so any fansub I bought or rented after that got duped for my own collection (and copied for friends/penpals/clubmates that asked).

Yeah, I mention this in the ANN article, but most people who stumbled upon paid-fansub tapes in shops and bought/rent them did so completely unaware, or that was just the only thing they had access to and didn't know a thing about getting fansubs from sources. It was a crazy time for sure.

I do agree it's pretty ridiculous that so many modern fansubbers waste their time on stuff that's easily available, like you said. There's literally decades worth of vintage anime that no one has tried translating and may never get brought over here in English, but people want to get accolades for popular stuff I guess?? I dunno. It's baffling to me, but then again most anime fans are little kids so I guess most of them aren't interested in watching Candycandy or Futureboy Conan, lol.

[davemerrill]

just a few comments:

It doesn't get a lot of buzz but there are some groups fansubbing older shows - I'm watching Attack No. 1 right now (1970), we recently watched all of Perrine Story, Aim For The Ace, Brygar, half of Baxinger (they need to finish that). I know all of Dougram got fansubbed. A group has re-started the stopped fansub of Stop! Hibari-kun. All of Giant Gorg got fansubbed prior to the Discotek release, ditto a lot of other older shows that have later seen Discotek releases. Future Boy Conan has been fansubbed at least twice and I know Candy Candy got clunky translations courtesy murky Asian gray-market DVDs.

My experience tallies with the majority of sales of bootleg anime going to people getting into the hobby for the first time, or people living in areas or situations that prevent them from getting involved in tape-trading fandom. Usually fans would buy one or two bootleg tapes, then show up in the anime room at Dragoncon or AFF marvelling at what we were showing and at the fact that we were distributing it freely, and then they'd join our club.

We had to shut down an 'anime club' at AWA 5 (?) 6(?) operating out of their room - the deal was, you'd "join" their "club" for $20, and as a "members benefit" you'd get to take home a couple of anime VHS tapes they'd conveniently made hundreds of copies of, printed customized labels for, and spread all over their hotel room. My experience with bootleg anime retailers is that they would say and do whatever they could to circumvent, dodge, or otherwise get around the rules - we were constantly having to patrol the vendors room for bootleg tapes, having to shut down people vending out of their hotel rooms like this 'club', and it really left a bad taste in my mouth. If you want to sell bootleg tapes at your own store, fine, but when the convention has specific rules in place to prevent it, make everyone happy and stay home.

So that's why I'm kinda salty at these people, above and beyond the ethical considerations; just having to listen to their tiresome debate tactics. Get a real job, you thieves.

[DKop]

The only time I ever bought "fansub" material was on data discs with stuff like Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within and Gundam X from people in high school who knew how to find these files and then sell them at school for a cheaper costs than what it was to buy it physically. In 9th Grade for me, paying someone a few bucks to see something was a cheaper alternative than to pay for the DVD, so if I got disappointed by what I bought, it wasn't a big loss to me since I didn't fork over more money that was spent on Gunpla or blank VHS tapes I was using to tape stuff off Toonami. Once I figured out where to find these files (Kazaa, WinMX, eMule, etc) I didn't need to rely on anyone and waste money on that. I didn't spend that much from friends, and even on ebay when people were selling bootleg Freakzoid DVD's years before it got commercially released.

By now everyone knows where to find these sites through a quick google search, so there's really no point in buying fansubs to things if everything is being digitally archived in some manner. I kinda wanna see these DBZ fansubs based on the comments on the credits left by CTenosaur and the like. I do have that DBZ Movie 13 by Anime Labs where Vegeta uses the F bomb, and I found it amusing if what he said was really translated right or just by fun from the fansubbers. Come to find out it was the later.

[SteveH]

I'm surprised by some of the surprise here. Why do fansub groups do stuff that's already done by another group and other actions? Ego. It's always ego. They did this wrong, we've got a better translation, we've got a new codec that's 'better', We're doing dancing karaoke with 15 colors!

Ego. The only driving force for most of the fansubbers then and now.

Of course the circles that are doing god's work- untouched robot shows, live action stuff like Janperson and Sukeban Deka, have more pure intent but there's still a bit of ego involved. Had I the necessary tools (like money) I would be in charge of fansubbing the living daylights out of StarzanS. And yes it would partially be for ego.

(now where is that Galatt DVD box? I should see if there was one...)

(Aside, I still cannot wrap my head around how Discotek is making things work. They picked up Baldios?! )

I was going to bring up the partial garbage fire of the way ANN promoted the non-article about the podcast but all I can say is they handled the complaints in typical West Coast Anime Fandom style . "We know more than you so shut up" .

I think Dave keeps hitting the important point that others ignore or dismiss. In the pre-fansub days, yes we were making copies of copyrighted material. We were breaking the law ("breaking the law! Breaking the law!") and we were completely unrepentant about it. But sharing is NOT selling. Taking money to make copies is selling. Taking money to buy tapes is still selling. Taking 'contributions' for VCR upkeep is selling.

If there is a 'purity test' I think "send blank tape and return postage' is the razor sharp edge.

And yes I know, I was there. One would get PURE S**T blanks sometimes. Utter crap shed-o-matic tapes. K-Mart 'Gemini' for one. *shudder*

And the endless excuses on why they could not send one of the 'preferred' brands of blank VHS tape all revolving around not wanting to spend the money for quality. It seems just logical to provide the blanks in exchange for a fee of some manner. I get it. It's safety and sanity. But that was still selling the copies. So it seems to me.

On bootleggers of all stripes, Dave has the handle on it. See also the 'SonMay/Evergreen' wars.

[usamimi]

Of the ANN article, I'll say this: I was approached to write it after I'd already finished recording the podcast episode. They wanted something to accompany it because they thought it was interesting. I answer the question of who he was in it (the owner of Anime Hurricane), and figured if they wanted all the nitty gritty details they'd listen to podcast (or just wait til others listened to it & ask them, since I figured people who cared would probably tweet about it.) The title I had for the article when I submitted it was "Miami Mike & The VHS Fansub Days". Whoever edited the article changed that, so it was out of my hands.

I'm honestly mentally exhausted after all of this because I spent a ton of time on both the podcast & the article, only to have people complain that the audio quality was garbage (my recording program reset to its defaults somehow & I didn't notice til after the fact), or that there's no transcript they can just read through (I'm a 1-person show and have never been asked to have transcripts ever, and as far as I know most fan run podcasts don't). My twitter got bombarded hundreds of new followers and now I feel like I need a vacation from podcasting, to be honest.

[davemerrill]

Usamimi, the ANN article was fine, delivered a lot of context to people who wouldn't normally get it, and the people complaining are the kinds of complainers the ANN forums are known for. Audio quality on the podcast was fine, I listened to it on my tiny computer speakers and had no problem at all. Transcripts? Dream on, fellas. Congrats, BTW, on the wide reach and attention this piece has gotten, I've seen it pop up all over the place!

when I was doing the Prince Planet club thing, I would occasionally get people who just wanted to send me a check and would offer to kick in a few extra bucks to "make it worth my while". And that's tempting, but it's a slippery slope... and anyways, so now not only do I have to copy Prince Planet for people, but I have to go to the Target or wherever and buy the blank VHS for them too? I'm not doing that. Send me some blanks and a SASE, I don't even have to go to the post office (of course now you do, for packages).

When Corn Pone Flicks was doing its heaviest volume of fansubbing distribution - back in the mid to late 1990s, I believe - I fielded a few emails from people that were livid because their tapes hadn't arrived in a timely fashion, or that what they'd asked Matt to tape something and it wasn't what they thought they were getting, or something. And I'm realizing now that part of why these people were so annoyed is that they thought they were dealing with a BUSINESS, that they thought they were dealing with Ctenosaur or somebody else that was charging $40 a tape, and so they had expectations that we were going to behave like a business, or at least a profit-making operation. And we were not going to behave anywhere close to remotely like that.

I will say that imposing the "you send me 2 blanks at a time and a SASE" rule, that was a great way to winnow things down. You've got to be pretty committed to Japanese anime to go through all that hassle.

I'm fairly sure I did some tape swaps with people that turned out to be bootleggers, but that's an operational hazard, I guess. I know that there was one group in Seattle that was compiling lists of tape traders and selling the lists, which is about as low as you can scrape the bottom of that barrel.

[DKop]

I mean the audio was a bit low, but I can still hear what was said so that's the important part (I had the volume cranked up high on my bluetooth earbud and it sounded fine for me). Screw the haters, or send them my way, i'll give them something to hate on.

I don't think it's all that wrong to use the article as a promotion piece to get people to listen to your podcast, you gotta bait them to get more listeners, it worked for me . If they want a transcript, tell them to make their own. You owe them nothing, because why should you. I'm just skimming through this and its sore asses to be a king soreassasauras. Someone complained because ANN crashes their POS computer, how is that anyone's fault? They can read the site if they view it in HTML, not that hard. It's funny how they treat podcast like its from the devil's hand himself, even though ANN has their own podcast which im sure some of these complainers listen too.

[DKop]

You know, reading into these comments, this seems to be more absurd and controversial than the actual Miami Mike story, it kinda adds more ambiance to the situation at hand. Soon, there will be signatures on the forums by members saying "Dawn, I know what you did to me on that ANN article!" Your actually quite brilliant in doing it in this format, I commend you!

[Kyrant]

For some reason, I didn't realize that the podcast was available on Google Play (for some reason it's the only thing that will work on my cheap garbage phone). As someone with a deep fascination about This Sort of Thing, thanks for helping to keep stories like these alive. The interview struck a great combination of history lesson and friendly conversation, both down-to-earth and almost mythical at the same time. I really hope you keep covering material like this, 'cause I can't get enough of it.