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Answerman - What Were VHS Fansubs Like?

A friend of mine made some PAL video screen-recordings (pointing a PAL video camera at an NTSC television, since PAL/NTSC video conversions were EXPENSIVE at that time)

DeTroyes wrote:

A friend of mine made some PAL video screen-recordings (pointing a PAL video camera at an NTSC television, since PAL/NTSC video conversions were EXPENSIVE at that time)

Now that's dedication! Only the most ardent of fans would want to endure the cinematic equivalent of viewing a gallery from outside the building.

Dop.L wrote:

First time I encountered anime was a small science fiction con in the 80s where someone had an n'th generation VHS, and duplicated copies of a transcript we were expected to read along to find out what people were saying. Wonder I wasn't put off for life, really!

Was there a pre-internet fansub scene in the UK as well? One would have thought that the additional degree of separation from Japan—in comparison to America's west coast—would have rendered any amateur efforts all but impossible.

And curiously, it seems that people were surprisingly okay with yellow subtitles back then, even though many call them "eyecancer" when they encounter them today. Either there's been a really rapid evolutionary shift in the human eye over the last 20 years, or the worst subtitle colors are whatever official subs happen to use.

revolutionotaku wrote:

Did anime fandom in America begin with the underground bootleg fansubs?

I would say no. There were anime being broadcast on US TV as early as the 60s and 70s, like Astro Boy, Kimba the White Lion, Speed Racer, Space Battleship Yamato, and Gatchaman -- before VHS was even a thing. Even during the 80s and 90s, shows like Robotech, Voltron, Dragonball Z, Sailor Moon, and Pokemon reached a lot more people on TV than underground tape-trading ever did

I used to love VKLL Sailor Moon fansubs. They were really well done. I remember one later distributor used their fansubs and then would send it to you with a color copied version of the Japanese packing.

And for however much we may have laid the seeds for the crazy era of bittorrented fansubs that was to follow, I'd like to think that the 18 years of service I've given this business since has been my penance.

An outsider that stumbled on that last paragraph would wonder if nowadays commercial anime in the USA is some kind of radioactive wasteland where only the crazy or diseased venture to make a profit.

but asking for forgiveness for being the forefathers of the 21th century fansubing scene? You should be asking for a medal and a diploma!

...in some areas subtitled versions of some shows were run on a few US stations that specialized in ethnic programming; Galaxy Express 999 and Lupin III both ran on a Honolulu station in the early 1980s with subtitles, and copies of those runs made their way into the trading network.

Recording while passing the signal through. VCRs have (had) inputs and outputs. You play back the fansub from your master VCR, output it using a cable to the inputs on another VCR, which both records that input and sends the signal out its own output to yet another VCR.

Do people not know the term "daisy chain" anymore? Used to be quite common in electrical engineering and electronics.

I remember sending money off for fansubs and getting the first Pokemon movie in return. It was neat to see the edited scenes and that version first, and I was completely disappointed when Mewtwo was portrayed in the US as a villain rather than one that had suffered at the hands of its creator.