Forum - View topicAnswerman - What Were VHS Fansubs Like?
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Alan45
 Village Elder Posts: 9840 Location: Virginia |
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Chiibi wrote:
Since a lot of the costs are fixed, the more units you sell the lower the cost per unit. Dubbed tapes sold (or were expected to sell) a lot more tapes than subtitled. Therefore, even allowing for the cost of dubbing could be priced lower. At least that is what they said back then. That is one reason why I like to see most new shows coming out dubbed, even though I don't usually listen to them myself. It means that the marked is good enough that the US company expects to sell enough to cover the cost of the dub and still make a profit. A good market means more variety. |
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Chiibi
 Posts: 4829 |
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Ohhhh, that certainly explains it! Thanks.
I'm lucky....the first ADV tape I ever bought (a little OVA called My Dear Marie) actually had a great dub. If it was bad, I might have been discouraged from getting more.
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Alan45
Village Elder Posts: 9840 Location: Virginia |
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@Chiibi
During the remainder of the VHS period I was very much a dub enthusiast. I only bought subtitled VHS when a dubbed version was not available to me. Later when hybrid DVDs became available I found my self constantly shifting from dub to sub and back again. (Among other things I got curious as to just how many different insults in English were simply baka in Japanese.) After awhile I got used to using subtitles and now I mostly don't bother with the dubbed version. |
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Redbeard 101
Oscar the Grouch
Forums Superstar  Posts: 16935 |
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I am much the same, except I do still prefer the dub track.  At the risk of sounding like an old codger (Hi Alan =p) the VHS days are part of why I just get tired of hearing from people how expensive anime is now. HA! Not only were the dvd single days expensive in comparison the vhs, or god forbid laser disc for those few, were as much or more so. Often for less material or at the least much lower quality visuals compared to dvd. Especially when you figure back in those dvd single days most series were 24 episodes. Not 12 as they are now.
Back before any of that was available you did have to go find those lone anime vhs tapes and share them over a campfire like cavemen sharing the first wheel. It didn't matter how shitty the show was. We all just sat around the vhs player and tv and marveled with ooooo'sssss and aaaahhhhh'sssss at whatever it was. Then you'd hook up a second vhs to the tv/first vhs and put in a blank tape to record while he first tape played. The good ole days. When vhs tapes become easier to buy it was glorious. Then dvd came out and the amount of shows available then...wow. If you took a 80's/early 90's anime fan and magically transplanted them into 2017 their heads would implode frm he amount of anime available. Sort of rambled on there. |
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mangamuscle
Posts: 2658 Location: Mexico |
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*Scene starts to fade as flashback starts* Yeah, it is coming back to me, you had to make a net of contacts to get a hold of anything (whatever genre, whatever date) to watch. Then you had to make a copy of anything good you could get your hand on, since you would need them as bargaining chips down the lane to get anything else. But vhs is analog, it degrades everytime you play it (sometimes you had to fix the damn tape after the player chewed on it like a hungry puppy), had sh*tty pause and non instantaneous forward or backward capabilities. You either got the subs or the dubs (I preferred subs even tough they were hardcoded) but dubs were cheaper and became more more common as time went by. You had to make a pool to buy anything that was too cool to not see. Finally all contacts dried up and I went without any recent anime for I do not know how many years, there was some old anime on local broadcast TV for some time, then that also dried up. The more I think of it it was a small miracle, a big heavenly joke or being in an exceptional time and place that allowed me to get into this hobby, nowadays I think most millennials would simply say "that is too much effort" and I would not be able to refute them. |
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Spawn29
Posts: 551 |
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Subs where aim to a more niche audience, so local places like Sam Goody, Target, Best Buy, Suncoast, Blockbuster and several others never had them. Comic book shops and some online shopping sites would carry them. Companies like Streamline Pictures was dubbed only expect for Akira and Space Adventure Cobra (Thanks to Urban Vision). It was worst when you had edited and uncut episodes of anime since DBZ and Sailor Moon never had uncut Japanese subbed versions on VHS expect for a few of the movies. So people had to watch fan subs since the dubs of those shows were so shitty. |
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XOtaku90
Posts: 9 |
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This topic brings back fun memories. Like some people have said, fan subs tapes did not die until the early 2000's. People still do tape trading in 2000-2002 since not everyone had a DVD player and people still had slow internet.
DVD outsold VHS in 2002 and we saw the end of dial up Internet in households after 2002. I still remember going a comic book shop in 1990, buying the newest issue of Spider-Man and seeing anime for sale. I was like "Anime? It looks like Robotech" and I was given a copy of Super Dimension Century Orguss. Being 10-16 was my favorite years of tape collecting and anime from 1997-now don't seem that interesting to me. So I did less tape collecting after that. I still enjoy watch Berserk, Cowboy Bebop, Infinite Ryvius, Read or Die OVA and Chobits in 1997-2002 on fan tapes though. |
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