Forum - View topichow important have Fan-subs been to you as an anime fan ?
|
Goto page 1, 2, 3 Next |
| Author | Message | ||
|---|---|---|---|
|
Concrete Donkey
Posts: 17 Location: England, UK |
|
||
|
I would like to discuss the importance fan subbing has been to fans as individuals either in their past or today. I am not writing to this to advertise or endorce fan-subs and will not talk about how to get a hold of them. I also don't intend this thread to be a pro or anti fansub topic but to simply explore the importance fan subbing has played to people as fans.
Before I was an anime fan I was downloading American TV shows from the net, not having the patients to wait for them to be shown on tv in England. So after I brought my first set of anime dvds, it didn't take me long to look for other anime the same way I got U.S. shows. I was overwhelmed with how many shows their were, and took to downloading all that my friends could recomend. I do prefer to own the real thing and fansubs havn't stopped me from buying anime on dvd, it mainly helps me decide what to buy. I would never have brought Initial D on dvd were it not for seeing some of it fansubbed first. I also fully intend to buy Azumanga Diaoh when it's released on DVD, a show I'm sure I wouldn't have given a second thought to were it not for seeing most of it fan subbed firt. To be honest though, I do base alot of my buying decisions by how hard it is to get shows online. For examole, I brought Irresponsible Captain Tylor OVA after watching the tv show fansubbed simply because the OVA was hard for me to find. I brought Trigun in my first month of being an anime fan simply to reduce the load of what I was downloading. It turned out to be a pirate box set I recived. If I wanted it illigitimatly I would have simply downloaded it. (At the time I did not see £25 for the show as underpriced. I had just spent the same amount of monery on a legitimate box set of the Dead Zone season 1 which had roughly the same running time). I am wiser now when it comes to buying anime, but the only economical way to get collections of shows is to wait until friends go to the states and get them to buy them there. (Fortuantly this happens a lot.) Then bulk of what I watch is from the net, Some of it like Wolfs rain is fansubbed, others seem to be DVD rips. But fansubs are the only way I get to judge new shows as worth buying. If it wern't for downloading anime, Neon Genesis, Hack sign and Cowboy Bebop would be the only shows I own. Anime isn't as available on tv in the UK as it is in the states and even if it were, I can only watch anime subtitled. I guess thats another thing I owe to fansubs. Most anime available online is subtitled so I had no choice in the begining but to watch subbed. Now I can't watch anime tv any other way. (the friend who got me into anime is responsible for this. He hates dubbed anime, so I watched my stuff subbed with him.) I wonder if those who started watching anime on tv can only watched dubbed anime ? Anyway, thats my piece. I would like to hear the importance fansubbed and downloading anime have effected others as fans. |
|||
|
|||
Arkard
 Posts: 677 Location: Poland |
|
||
|
How important? Most important
listen - If you can read then you know I live in Poland. And this is what I can get in Poland: TV DragonBall Pokemon Digimon BeyBlade Slayers Soul Hunter Yaiba Cowboy Bebop Gene Shaft WP Miyu VHS Cowboy Bebop DVD Ninja Scroll Perfect Blue Thats all.... as you can see there is not many of them, right? Of course I got the couple od DVD and the VHS but do you really think that would be enough for me? I started my anime "carrier" by watching fan subs. There were and still are the ONLY way to get anime here. Fan subs played and important role in my anime life. I am still downloading them because these fan subs I have are legal in Poland. So I am not a thief or anythign like that. Fan subs are the only way I can get new anime. FIN I hope that answers your question |
|||
|
|||
|
RantingOtaku
Posts: 219 Location: Sudbury, Ontario, Canada |
|
||
|
I don't mind fansubs all that much, usually I grab 3 episodes from a series (from random points, non sequential), and if I like it, I wait for the dvd releases and buy it, or on occasion, rent/rip them until I can get enough money to buy a legit copy (which is usually a month after).
Recently I have stopped getting fansubs, mostly because there are so many subbers out there, making it hard to choose, plus the fact that alot are just doing it for the "I got it our first and you didn't" type of releases, with poor quality on subs and compression (thinks of a few GitS: TV Series subs). Overall, they are beneficial to introduce people to shows they may have never known of, it also seems like some of the bigger dub companies are looking at what subs get downloaded the most, and decide what to bring over... sort of free market analysis using actual fans like us, rather than a bunch of 'suits' watching a show to decide (probably prevents alot of good ones from coming here). It's sort of like all these 'reality tv' shows, seems more like it's a bunch of guys who just took their viagra pills decided to put these "primetime porno's" on the air. |
|||
|
|||
Swordfish_II
 Posts: 617 |
|
||
|
I've only recently gotten into downloading fansubs. The same applys for actually buying dvds. The first anime I bought was the EVA box set (purpously forgets the dozen or so Pokemon VHS on his shelf) which was only October of last year. Of course, being the moral person I am, I only download series not yet licenced. And with the intent of buying the dvds once they become available.
|
|||
|
|||
|
Godaistudios
Posts: 2075 Location: Albuquerque, NM (the land of entrapment) |
|
||
|
I must agree that over the years, that fansubs have usually made or broke a show for me. If I've made the commitment to buy the series when it comes out here, then it doesn't really matter if I see the entire series fansubbed or not. Really, what's the difference between watching three episodes of a series or the whole thing fansubbed if they aren't losing a dime of my hard earned money? The only thing that happens there is that I decide to delay my enjoyment while thousands of others have watched it already? Forgive me for sounding a little arrogant, but I've got better things to do with my time than to worry about such trivial semantics. (ergo I do what I want as long as I follow through on my commitments. ^_^)
It would be unethical of me to decided to watch a whole series fansubbed and not buy it, but then again, that's another matter. |
|||
|
|||
Kagato
 Posts: 156 |
|
||
|
Without fansubs I wouldn't have seen some great shows,like Hajime no Ippo and AMSD.Also,fansubs were the only way I could get some shows in the earlier years(1988-1996).Even though I prefer dubs to subs,they will always have a place in my
heart as a peice of history. |
|||
|
|||
Ataru
 Posts: 2350 Location: Missouri (Strikeman) |
|
||
|
Much like the Force, it can be used for good or evil. Some fansubers still, to this day, fansubs stuff that has been already picked up a US company (IE: Ghost in the Shell: SAC and, of course, Ninja Scroll TV), but series like Naruto and Mermaid Forest, it is great. It gives people a look at a series that might take awhile before it hits State side.
|
|||
|
|||
Shorty22
 Posts: 504 |
|
||
|
Not really important at all. Not having a computer for most of my life, I didn't realize they existed. My old friend sent me 2 fansubs over the past summer, one was the CCS Movie 2 and the other had 3 episodes of Azumanga Daioh. I didn't watch the CCS movie because I knew it was coming out soon and I was going to pick it up, so I tossed it. I wasn't going to watch Azu either, since it didn't sound interesting at all to me, but my friend constantly nagged me about it until I sat through them. Now that I have, I can say... it's still not interesting and I don't want to see anymore of it, so I tossed it too. Now I have two nice little empty CD holders. Yay me!
|
|||
|
|||
|
cookie
Former ANN Editor in Chief
 Posts: 2460 Location: Do not contact me for support. |
|
||
|
[ADMINISTRIVIA: Standard rules apply; don't link or cite names of specific (still-existant) fansubbers. Ditto for scanilation groups. This is a discussion about the relevance of fansubs to your anime fanhood, not where you can find the latest downloads.]
As for myself, I come from the mid-90s, when vhs fansubs were the biggest thing going on. My first fansub purchase was a set of 36 vhs from a guy selling his collection on the net. It wasn't clear, but I had a fair idea that they were fansubs when I purchased them.for $1-2/tape, that's not bad. It was his raw copies, actually, that interested me the most. In my early years in college, I spent a lot of time acquiring digisubs because they were free and because I had no other way to buy anime on my limited ramen-and-water budget. After many hundreds of CDs (and 2 cd burners breaking from the pace at which I burnt) I realized how little of it I had actually watched. That's when I realized that what I was doing really wasn't worthwhile.. so I cut back to downloading only what I was actually going to watch. When I got a "real" job and started taking additional credits, my viewing time was further-reduced. Most of those titles I downloaded, I hadn't actually watched more than 1 or 2 episodes of, even if I grabbed the entire series. Likewise, when I bought DVDs, I didn't have time to watch them. Many of the series that I own from this timeperiod are likewise incomplete (Cowboy Bebop, Evangelion) for much the same reason -- why buy it if I can't watch it? The worst offender was fairly recent: I purchased all of Crest of the Stars, and then didn't watch it for nearly 7 months. The last fansubs (or raws, for that matter) that I had downloaded were AzuDai (I had downloaded 1-20, but couldn't find the last 6 episodes, but by that point I had already decided I wanted to buy the R2 set) and Mao-chan. I only saw Mao-chan episode 9 (er, the one where they're all sleepy), and went out and spent $300 on the R2 tins the following week. Since then, my R2 imports have been titles that I have an innate feel that I will like, or titles that I have been known to enjoy.. they also seem to be boxed sets rather than individual discs, except for titles that I had already started buying separately. I guess what I'm saying is, my use of fansubs and raws was an indicator (on the whole) of my status as a fan. When I was poor and unemployed, my time was consumed with fansub acquisition. when i got a job, my fansub "need" decreased and so did my time to watch anime. now, i prefer spending money in a single lump sum rather than spreading it out over multiple purchases. thus, if i can buy a complete set for a single payment of $300, I'll do it rather than buying individual discs. Old titles that I had started collecting singles of, I never finished buying. I also didn't replace them with the boxed sets when they came out, probably because selling them would've been too much of a hastle. |
|||
|
|||
gnollman
 Posts: 535 Location: Richmond, KY |
|
||
|
Fansubs are fairly important to me as an anime fan, as that's what I use to keep abreast of what is going on in Japan. They're becoming less useful, though, given the recent trend for American anime distributors to quickly license new titles in Japan....
They're a good method for me to test what I want to buy... I'll check out an entire series via fansub or other downlods, and then if I like them, I'll decide to pick up the R1 DVD releases. I don't own an R2 DVD player, nor do I feel like buying one, so I'll just keep doing what I do now. I used to import Japanese laserdiscs, but that market has more or less dried up. |
|||
|
|||
Legato 2057
 Posts: 437 Location: Soon to be Japan |
|
||
|
To me, watching fansubs is simply another way to view anime, like HK or R1 dvds. I simply don't see a reason why I should wait a year or two to watch an anime, when I have a means to watch it now. Because of fansubs, I have been able to watch shows like Saikano, Naruto, Texhnolyze and Rumic Theater. Fansubs can also be a means to watch anime that you might never other wise see such as Condor Hero or Rose of Versaile.
|
|||
|
|||
|
Nagisa
Moderator
 Posts: 6128 Location: Atlanta-ish, Jawjuh |
|
||
|
Without fansubs, I would never have seen Noir, Full Metal Panic!, Azumanga Daioh, Mahoromatic, Read or Die: THE TV, Mobile Suit Gundam SEED, or the series I'm currently working on right now, Uchuu no Stellvia.
As far as how I use fansubs, if I start a series, I try my best to see it all the way through, unless it's completely godawful (saw some fansubs of Dragon Ball GT years ago...the horror...the hooorrrrooorrrr!). I almost always go after unlicensed series, yet because I'm on a less-than-stellar (read: BROKE) college student budget, I will sometimes download licensed series, BUT. Before you go and lynch me, I NEVER keep anything I download. I watch it once, delete it, and if I really liked it, I'll go buy it. Last Exile, for example, I intend to start on after I finish Stellvia. If I like it as much as I think I will, I'll go buy the series afterwards once I get money. The rationale for this "trial by watching the whole thing" process is such: what little spending money I have, I don't wanna waste on something that's going to suck. However, since it may be a looong while until I actually get around to buying a certain series, I'll go ahead and see the whole thing now because I HATE seeing the first couple episodes of a series, and then not following it up for several months/years. Also, I'd like to see if the series remains good all the way through, or if it pulls a Hellsing (first two discs were GREAT stuff, but the last two I plan to avoid). Plus, the nice-&-legal rental shop I frequent tends to be a little on the slow side in getting some titles (they put out FLCL & X: TV Series right away, but are just now getting all of the post-volume 2 Chobits & non-fansub Noir). Last edited by Nagisa on Thu Nov 27, 2003 4:59 pm; edited 1 time in total |
|||
|
|||
Inu-Yasha
 Posts: 373 Location: Quad Cities, Iowa |
|
||
|
Fansubs are very useful and I've seen part of a couple series thru them:Naruto,Love Hina,NGE,YYH and Inuyasha. Sometimes the only way for me to see new anime and/or new espisodes is to download it.
|
|||
|
|||
|
Steventheeunuch
|
|
||
|
I don't need fansubs. I've got other ways of determining how a show will be.
|
|||
king_micah
 Posts: 994 Location: OSU |
|
||
|
Now, the thing of it is, some of those series you can watch, if you wait. Last Exile is out now, at least the banners tell me so. ROD TV is off the legitish Fansubbers because it was gotten from the git go. Most have a simlar stituation. Now, that said, it is a great way to decide if you want a series. I saw many series that I have bought via fansubs first. I also know several folks that don't buy if they can dl. That is what makes the issue sticky. It is hard to say how much it hurts and helps. I know Naruto will have a huge push once they release it here, I also know that it's long time on fansub lists will translate into many people passing on buying, since they already dled it.
|
|||
|
|||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group