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Last edited by crilix on Tue Mar 11, 2008 7:17 am; edited 1 time in total

I think the whole "glory" aspect was, again, interpreted wrongly. The observation that feedback is important is spot-on, but so is for any blog, any professional Internet site (like ANN), any DVD release, any TV show etc. It's just how entertainment breathes, and I'm appalled to have the whole "glory" side of the fansubbing stigmatized once again just because fansubbers do it, especially when it's not as bad as Zac's indulgence on the issue likes to portray. When it comes to fansubbers, glory is minus the money.

The second complaint I have is on Tofu's ethics. Pretty much everybody in fansubbing and the industry is calling for fundamental changes the way official anime distribution models work, but it seems they still take "worldwide" out of the equation. Simultaneous worldwide anime distribution may never happen, but fansubbing ethics shouldn't be constructed on the North American region alone. I know it's a bit silly to even talk about this, but Tofu just did a huge disservice to all the hardworking European, Asian, African etc. fansubbers. Some of us buy R1 releases because they're cheap, but we're hardcore enough to go through the heaps of importation. The majority of consumer market where anime companies strive to tap in doesn't do that, and I think it's a bit disrespectful.

shadowblack wrote:

Labbes wrote:

I think Anime DVDs are accessible from nearly anywhere in the world

If only it was that simple...

1) I don't want a DVD in the first place. I just want to watch the anime
2) Even if we ignore the relative cost what I would get is NOT the same as what the US anime fan would get by ordering the same DVD. The American fan gets a DVD with subtitles (and dub, if it is dual audio) in his first language - he's an English-speaking person and the subs are in English. I, on the other hand, would get something that is NOT in my first language. So the American fan gets a DVD in his country's language while I would get a DVD with subs in some other country's language (having a dub in another language is fine since our country's dubs are horrible). Yet I'm paying more (due to import costs).

Fansubs allow me to watch what I want when I want. If I get the chance to watch a title on TV - good, I'll do so (I've watched Death Note fansubbed, but that doesn't stop me from watching it on TV now that I can). If they decide to air an anime I have not yet watched (like they did with Sakura Wars TV, and like they are doing with Blood+ now) - all the better. But even if I would watch something on TV that doesn't mean I'd want to buy it on DVD (or pay for it in any other way, since I don't consider watching TV to be paying for what I watch).

So it's really not as simple as saying "DVDs are available to everyone, so there's no reason to download fansubs".

Judging from the few series I have seen that didn't have English fansubs, the language of the subs sucked totally. Most of the time, people are translating the english sub to their own language (in my case), though their command of both is not very good. I admit there might be good non-english-fansubbers, but there are very, very few.
And I don't think English subs are that hard to understand.

Apart from that, I agree with you. There are Anime I want to have on DVD, and there are Anime I just watch for fun and buying them would be very expensive and stupid, because I would not watch them a second time. Would happen with Bleach or Naruto, for example.
Having these available on TV, with a good dub, would be great, and that was the case - at least for some time - in Germany, but now, they nearly stopped airing Anime at all. Yugi-Oh and crap like that is still there, but who cares?

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I wasn't trying to justifying it as an excuse. I just wanted to point out that it really isn't as cheap and easy to get your hands on anime in some countries as it might be in the US. Wink

Yupp, I agree that it isn't as simple as it may have sounded - in fact, it is quite a nuisance. I still hope my package arrives without the additional cost of duty Very Happy

Last edited by Blue_Mage on Tue Mar 11, 2008 8:34 am; edited 1 time in total

crilix, Tofu wasn't disrespecting non-North American fansubbers. Like any fairly large group, the members of his group are from around the world. I should know. I'm in it. But let's face it, the primary non-Japanese market is North America. This (since I live in Canada) is where the companies get the vast majority of their revenue, and this is where changes will occur.

And as for the glory thing, I think they actually rather downplayed it on the whole. I've had some rather unenviable experiences that suggest that "glory" is definitely why a lot of fansubbers do what they do. To be honest, considering the sheer number of people who whine at me on IRC when my other group doesn't have something out within a week of it airing suggests that what we commonly call "leechers" aren't helping the problem any. As long as they're willing to go with the fastest release of a show regardless of format or quality, and that format isn't DVDs, the fansubbers looking for glory aren't going to go awy.

I feel I should mention, though, that even if some sort of service does become available that rivals fansubs in terms of speed and quality (the optimum solution in my humble opinion), if this service is only available to the US, that leaves a whole lot of us with nothing still. Unless Japanese and American companies would be willing to turn a blind eye on us little guys downloading fansubs in countries like mine that have no real market for anime.

Ai no Kareshi wrote:

I feel I should mention, though, that even if some sort of service does become available that rivals fansubs in terms of speed and quality (the optimum solution in my humble opinion), if this service is only available to the US, that leaves a whole lot of us with nothing still. Unless Japanese and American companies would be willing to turn a blind eye on us little guys downloading fansubs in countries like mine that have no real market for anime.

That was my whole point two posts ago. In the end we'd just download stream rips if that were to happen, and American distributors would, again, complain about loss of revenue, whether it be ad- or fee-based.

Ohoni wrote:

Eh. Maybe. So what? All that would change is that SOME people would pay rather than NONE, net gain! Look, any anime that airs on US TV is available on the Internet as soon as it airs. Any TV show that airs on US TV is on the Internet as soon as it airs. Yet sitll, millions of people watch these programs on comercial television, or download off of legal streaming sources, so clearly the "if it's avaialble for free then EVERYONE will choose the free option" does not hold true.

That's the idea though, you'll never get rid of stuff like that completely, same as music sharing or anything else. The way to start to fix the problem is with baby steps by making things available legally in a way that they are already available illegally. It's what killed much of the illegal online music downloading scene. Legal download sites became much more common, and it slowly but surely pushed people towards that and away from illegal. If you provide people with legal alternatives that are equal in quality/speed etc. to what they find illegally people will migrate to that.

Maybe not all, but that's not what you're going for, the fansub industry is now huge, and the idea is to weaken it by taking away some of the fanbase, and some of the people inside it (to possibly work for you, just like with hacking and music download program makers). Eventually you weaken it enough so that it's not everyone with a computer doing it like it practically is now, and just a select "hardcore" few.

On the subject of non-US anime, I agree completely, any channel online or or TV (I do agree that online would probably be a great way to start, then maybe if it's successful leverage it into a cable network) should be multi-lingual. Which is why in my first post I went out of my way to gear everything I said towards "foreign" or "non-Japanese", as a visit to any torrent tracker site will quickly tell you that anime is fansubbed into many languages, not just English. English would be a great start, and serve to elimitinate a bulk of the issue (as most of the major groups and downloads are english) but to get full access out there and really weaken the fansub industry it would need to cover many languages.

And that is the whole point, the idea isn't that they need a magic bullet idea that will stop EVERYONE from downloading, just a few good well-thought out ideas that will slowly bring people back to pay models, and weaken fansubs bit by bit until it's only just a select few that do it anymore.

crilix wrote:

That was my whole point two posts ago.

It was that post of yours that inspired mine. I'm basically voicing my agreement.

A really great interview. I suspected some fansubbers cared a lot about the "glory" per se, now its nice to see I wasn't far off. I also enjoyed the tale of the demise of AnimeJunkies, God knows they were a bunch of trolls, I remember reading the ANN story on them way back too.

From what I got Fansubbers do it because they enjoy doing it not so much for the love of anime but the Fansub scene in general. Sounds a lot like other "scenes" to me.

Also good to know they hate sites like crunyroll and the like as much as pretty much every other person in the anime community.

Quote:

We do it because it's fun and makes us popular on teh internet." It's really selfish and kinda pathetic.

Meh, better than using Myspace. At least they're providing a valuable service to their community.

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4) Most animes are not broadcast across all of Japan on the same day at the same time. It may air in the greater Tokyo/Osaka area on Saturday at 1am, but at 3am on Sunday in Nagano and Hokkaido. If the shows go up on the internet with the first airing, it will kill off the local commercials.

Oooor, motivate those slowpoke stations to air the shows at the same time. It's not like the people prone to watching the shows online aren't already watching the shows online, at least this way the companies would make at least some money off of it.

Besides, they don't have to show them simultaniously in Japan, they can broadcast the Internet version only to non-Japanese countries. There are workarounds but it's very easy to block streaming sites from casual users in unwanted countries.

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But would you be willing to support to the industry as a whole if the shows were made available online subbed for $2 an episode?

It's a bit much for a 20-minute episode, especially for a show like Naruto or Bleach where they really milk them out, I definitely wouldn't want it to be my primary source for anime, but I'd probably chip in for at least a few episodes every now and then, just to make an effort.

I agree with some things he said about the sub world going bad, but I live in The Netherlands (Europe) and anime's are hardly released here, especially not on television. If I want to buy one, I have to go to the biggest shop in town and watch their dvd collection and if I'm in luck they could have 1-3 anime dvds. (once every 2-3 months)

So basicly in America you can be lucky with that, but the industry is gonna lose a lot of anime fans here. Since the change might come around that subbers would stop.

And I'm a big fan of Anime, so I would be really pissed of it might get cut off. Confused

Well this interview just confirmed my suspicions. And it's the reason why I don't even want to be associated with fansubs at all anymore, or haven't been on IRC in years! Despite all the faux Robin Hood or the servicing of real fans rhetoric that you hear from such goers of sites in the "buisness". Truth be told the majority are nothing more than grubby attention whores. Who would just as soon as spit on you than take an objective look at what they are doing and the reasons they love it. Just don't get in the way of their massive "lulz" or whatever people are calling it these days.

I applaud Zac and Tofusensei for a great interview. It seems to me that Tofusensei still has some of the old eithical code left in him(and I use the term loosely, no offense Tofu). So I applaud him for sticking to it, when it would be easier not too. But I got to say man, your a dying breed. I know you still do what you love, and you do want the anime industry to grow, but look at this uncontrollable mess that it has turned into. Even with the few remaining "old schoolers", does it not enter into the factor that many of your colleagues are more akin to taking the slash and burn approach? That would bother me, and certainly why I put so much distance between myself and modern fansubs.

I feel I need to make a statement about a comparison I thought was unfair and inaccurate, regarding musicians versus anime producers/distributors.

First, my bonafieds: I am currently attending Expression College of Digital Art, in one of the most prestigious audio programs on the west coast. I work with musicians on a daily basis, and music is a large part of what we do here. Knowing the music industry is vital to our careers, if for no other reason that it will always be a fallback position if things go south in other mediums we actually want to be involved in.

MUSIC ARTISTS RARELY MAKE MONEY THROUGH CONCERTS. At least, signed musicians to big labels. This is a popular myth spawned by a public's unclear understanding of how the music industry works.

Music concerts are a wildly expensive undertaking. There is a greater profit margin per attendee than CD or radio airplay, to be sure, but people need to understand those models first.

Radio airplay doesn't do crap unless you recorded the music, mixed the music, or most importantly wrote the music. Modern singer songwriters almost never get played on the radio because the RIAA doesn't like the idea of its artists actually getting money before they do.

CD and album sales are always a huge net loss to the artist. Most artists--major, successful artists whom you probably have multiple albums of on your shelf--have gone broke, or are broke today, because of the sheer expense of printing and distributing CDs. Only exceptionally old bands who can afford to make their own copies themselves and who were smart enough to acquire rights to their own music make money off of CD sales, often decades and millions of sales after the music was written. This is because CD PRINT RUNS ARE PAID BY THE ARTIST WITH LOANS FROM THE RECORD COMPANIES. Those loans must be paid off or the artist will never see a cent offstage. Similar business models apply to music videos.

Concerts are first and foremost the method that signed musicians use to get out of debt fast. It is the only method within the music industry with sufficient profit margin to rapidly repay the loan that does not involve being free of the record label (often not possible, or if possible actively prevented). CD sales and radio airplay are merely advertisements for the purpose of bringing in paying attendees to concerts. FAILURE TO HAVE A SUCCESSFUL CONCERT RUN (THE LOANS ARE PAID OFF) ALMOST ALWAYS INSURES THAT THE BAND IS DONE AND PERMANENTLY BROKE.

TLC. Booker T and the MGs (actually, most of the artists of the once great STAX records). Almost every small band who's tried to "make it big," and plenty more who did.

Here is a great (if somewhat foulmouthed, so warnings aforetime) article that accurately explains to people with a complete cost breakdown what I'm talking about: Warning ! Some foul language ahead!

Why is this different from anime, especially in terms of fansubbing?

Anime has a guaranteed distribution channel upon release that recovers most or all of the money spent on the product. This would be ad or PPV-supported distribution on Japanese television, along with exhaustive and potentially lucrative ancilliary products like toys, statues, manga, etc.

This means that unlike CDs and concerts, anime actually makes money during the act of fansubbing assuming that the subs are released after the airing of each episode. Obviously, releasing shows before they premiere has the potential to rob viewership from those shows. They make money through ad revenue earned during the broadcast, or from the purchase of DVD footage. Often, this is not the case during music piracy. Also, obviously, this revenue stream is largely restricted to a regional basis (Japan).

A simple market change could make up the difference in ad revenue that fansubbing causes, whereas the music industry is very soon going to find itself gutted like a caught fish becaus it could not and would not revert to a musician- and engineer-friendly system, which is inevitably driving away large numbers of bright and skilled young talent.

OK, my rant is over, back to studying for tests.[/url]

Lovely article. I'm reminded that I should give the fansubbers more thanks.

I'd like to add my thanks to Zac and Tofusensei for this interview. It's definitely the most interesting article I've ever read on ANN, and I think it puts the whole debate into some much-needed perspective.

bayoab wrote:

You forgot the very rarely mentioned #4.
4) Most animes are not broadcast across all of Japan on the same day at the same time. It may air in the greater Tokyo/Osaka area on Saturday at 1am, but at 3am on Sunday in Nagano and Hokkaido. If the shows go up on the internet with the first airing, it will kill off the local commercials.

That would be a ridiculous reason to not do it. I know the main US TV stations already stream their shows after broadcast and we have different broadcast times on the east and west coasts. Absolute WORST case, put it up 2 hrs later. Considering sub turnaround time I don't think that would be a "deal-killer", but I also don't think it'd matter much.

Seriously though, why DON'T we just transition to computer as the broadcast model of the future? It expands your audience base and really improves on the model so much.

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