I found a wonderful post over at Lunar anime today, regarding the "ethics" of fansubs. For the longest time, fansubbing has been a "grey area" in the anime world. Some people agree some people don't, but it all boils down to the fact that in the end, it is illegal. Of course, our Otaku friends don't agree...they feel that anime is "owed" to them and therefore, stealing anime is okay. They even take it a bit further, making demands of these groups that work hard to share the newest(and occasionally oldest) cartoons released in Japan. They bitch about wording, simple mistakes, translations that they can only compare to other fan subbers because they only know a handful of Japanese words, and the length of time it takes a group to release a series. Once again, our relentless otaku never shut the hell up.
What makes them even worse that all the above complaints is that many of them have no plans to buy legit releases once they hit the states. Nope, they want their cartoons for free! Screw paying for them! They have all sorts of excuses ranging from "The professionals don't know what they're doing and mess up the translations," to "They don't put enough episodes per disk on the DVD's so I won't pay for it." Of course, none of them seem to realize that a professional company is professional for a reason, not the mention the fact that they are a BUSINESS...it's their job to make money. All Otaku should take courses in economics and business....IN JAPANESE!!! (heh) Anyway, this justifies their "stealing" in some way or another, because in otaku world they make the rules up as they go.
Do I watch fansubs? Yup. I am guilty and hypocritical here...but at least I buy the US releases when they come out. I'm all for supporting the businesses that work hard to bring import movies, cartoons, books, etc to the US. And while fansubbing is illegal in a sense, I have to thank the subbers for letting me veiw a few shows that I would never have looked at twice....Shows like Full Metal Alchemist, Samurai Champloo, Aishiteruze Baby, Shura no Toki, Tenjou Tenge, etc. I am eagerly awaiting their US releases so I can buy the DVD's!
Anyway, our fansubber in question brings to light many of these points and tells up how the otaku poison has spread into the fansubbing circles. Otaku are now building their own groups, releasing awful subs (I've seen a few myself), releasing licensed material, and creating great discord among the anime community (just visit one of their forums to see what I mean). Fansubbing is no longer a way to promote a show getting licensed, it's become a popularity contest throughout the web and the leechers have become insensitive, unappriciative, and occasionally downright hostile. How sad that is, because despite the legalities of fansubbing, I have no doubt in my mind that companies watch fansubbers for popular shows. It's a great way to gauge how well a show will do among the niche market (FMA and Getbackers pop into my mind here).
This problem will never be fixed...an unfortunate truth. As more and more Japanese cartoons and comics are brought over, more and more otaku are born. The more whining, sniviling, bickering, irrationality we'll have to put up with...and I imagine we'll see the quality of fansubs fall even further as more licensed material remains availble, as translations go out the window since all otaku think they know perfect japanese, as they fight amongst each other to gain the psuedo title of "Grand Fansubber"....*sigh*
I can only place my hope in the companies who release legit. Many of them are decent, hard working companies that do a good job. Of course, there are dubs that suck (Inu Yasha, Generator Gawl, Saiyuki), but there are also bad movies too (Spiderman 2). It's the nature of the beast. Not everything will be perfect. At least with legit anime, I can watch the sub version if I find the dub below par (usually, for me, this means the english scripting sucks, not the voices). Episode count can be annoying, but that too, is part of business...if you don't like the episode count (such as Inu Yasha), just wait for the box sets (which is what I'm doing). There are always options...too bad otaku are all a bunch of greedy, spoiled brats...
Posted by Zoso at August 10, 2004 07:07 AM