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ANNCast - North by Northrop

Wow, Zac and Justin sure call the forums on the crap justifications for scanlations.

Actually,this has happened on occasion, and we do have the relationships necessary with some companies to get subbed previews if they exist. But they don't exist for most shows, and it would take a lot of time and effort to get just a couple legit episodes.

So yes, we use fansubs.

rockman nes wrote:

What would you have us, who have no other way of getting translations of these particular kinds of works, do? Twiddle our thumbs and keep our eyes closed till a license magically appears?

Hey, it's what I do. And buy other stuff while you wait to read to increase the likelihood of a company licensing them. Buy similar stuff like DH's entire, seinen-oriented manga line for example. If companies have more $$$, they have more free time to experiment.

Wow, Zac and Justin sure call the forums on the crap justifications for scanlations.

A Wake-up Call

Posted by Nomad Soul on Jun 8, 2010 in General, News

I don’t usually use this blog to post personal thoughts, but I think this latest news deserves some kind of comment. According to Publishers Weekly (via ANN), a coalition between 36 Japanese manga publishers and 4 American ones has been formed with the goal to combat the “rampant and growing problem” of scanlations. The as-yet-to-be-named coalition is planning to take legal action against 30 scanlation sites for the beginning. The article does not disclose any names, but it’s widely assumed that MangaFox and OneManga, the two biggest scanlation aggregators, will be among the sites targeted.

While I have no reason to believe that Kotonoha is one of those 30 sites, there is no question that this news will have a significant impact on the English scanlation scene as a whole, including us. That said, I’m not in the least surprised about this development. The way things were going, it was only a question of time until those companies had enough and decided to take off the gloves. I think the majority of scanlators already knew that something like this would eventually happen, so I don’t expect a lot of reaction from “our side.” Besides, the focus at the moment seems to be mainly on the aggregator sites, which in retrospect makes Kotonoha’s decision not to upload our releases there look pretty wise. It’s quite simple really, online viewing sites increase the visibility of scanlations at a time when scanlators should actually be lying low. And now we all see why.

Unfortunately, getting rid of Mangafox & Co. won’t make the problem go away, not for us and not for those companies. That’s because they are only the symptoms of a malaise that has afflicted scanlation for a very long time, a malaise that was born out of arrogance, hubris and the general disrespect for simple rules that allowed scanlators to co-exist with the manga industry in the first place. There are a lot of people in the scanlation scene today who would argue that since scanlation is illegal either way, the scanlators should not feel obligated to follow any rules at all. What they seem to forget is that those rules were created specifically to prevent a situation like this from happening. They were the reason that scanlators today can have websites, blogs, and forums instead of just an anonymous email address at hushmail dot com. This all could change very soon.

I’d like to think of those rules as a boat that, flimsy as it might have been, was able to keep us scanlators afloat on a sea full of sharks. It used to be that those sharks would leave us alone as long as we kept quiet and did not invade their territories, which is exactly what happened when folks started scanlating licensed material. Every time you scanlate a manga that is officially available in English, you punch a hole in that boat. Then came Mangafox and OneManga and what they did is they fired a bunch of torpedoes down those holes and spilled blood like BP oil round about the boat. So here we are: sitting in a half-sunken boat and the sharks are circling.

The optimist in me still believes that a solution can be found that would benefit everyone, but this relies on the ability of us scanlators to acknowledge the fact that the current path is unsustainable, and that for us to be able to continue pursuing this hobby, some uncomfortable changes and sacrifices have to be made.

When I first started Kotonoha, I already had a clear idea of what kind of group I wanted it to be. From the beginning, I decided that there were certain lines we would not cross, no matter the circumstances. Ever since then we have tried to limit our selection to titles that are unlikely to be licensed in the USA. That means no works by big-name authors like Naoki Urasawa, Takehiko Inoue, Taiyo Matsumoto, Osamu Tezuka etc. who already have an established English fanbase and whose works are likely to be licensed sooner or later. You could say that All-rounder Meguru was an exception, but only because I was convinced that a slice-of-life manga about a niche sport wouldn’t sell well enough over here, not with Eden still struggling to break even.

What I want to say is, unlike scanlation readers who will simply go where the scans are, scanlators do have a choice about how to respond to the approaching storm. We can either keep our heads buried in the sand and hope for the best or we can take a step back and rethink our approach (that includes Kotonoha as well). If we don’t make this choice now, those companies will make it for us and I don’t believe any of us wants that to happen

The only one with any "crap justification" is you. Do you not realize what you just said is completely retarded? "keep buying random titles until the title YOU like gets licensed lol". So if I buy the entire Berserk series from DH, a license for a title like, say, Hanashippanashi will automatically appear?...

I wish that Japanese studios could just be given a Hollywood budget for these type of movies, and only have slight American involvement.

All I have to say to critics of Zac and Justin is that it's telling how consistently a certain inconvenient truth is ignored--namely the reality of aggregator sites that have scans of licensed titles and will even upload official releases. You don't get to write long polemics about fan translations of unlicensed titles as if they're the only thing at stake here or at least the most significant thing at stake.

Rockman, a flaw with your logic-

Companies are unlikely to license some titles if they are available online on a massive scale, so nowadays scanlating a title will decrease the likelihood of it getting licensed. Which will hurt the potential income of an artist. Vertical's Ed Chavez has mentioned this a few times- a middle-range title getting scanlated hurts its chances at getting licensed in the current market.

Rockman, a flaw with your logic-

Companies are unlikely to license some titles if they are available online on a massive scale, so nowadays scanlating a title will decrease the likelihood of it getting licensed. Which will hurt the potential income of an artist. I think Vertical's Ed Chavez has mentioned this a few times [checking for that]- a middle-range title getting scanlated hurts its chances at getting licensed in the current market.

animenewsnetwork.com/anncast/2010-04-23 I know the ANNCast talks a lot about these issues. When I find the link I was thinking of I'll share it. But I do recall that there's some titles publishers will pass on since the availability of the scans makes it less desirable to license.

Well the question is do I have to force my self to learn Japanese, just so I can read stuff like Ashita no Joe, and Devilman. Oh wait has Devilman been licensed yet?




Oh, me and my best friend really enjoyed Speed Racer, I saw it five times. My dad even liked the movie; since he saw the anime back when he was a kid, in spanish.