My Tenuous Relationship with Fansub's

    As a member of the generation of American otaku ushered in by Akira in the early 90’s I have had a long and complicated relationship with fansub anime. 

    With the rapid growth in the early 90’s of anime being commercially available in the United States so grew the hunger for more than what the distribution companies could keep up with.  Once we ran out of things to rent from Blockbuster and Hollywood Video or buy from Suncoast Video and local comic book stores we had to look elsewhere.   The underground VHS tape trading market that had helped fuel the earlier generation of American otaku was where we turned.  The fansub distribution circles grew to accommodate the growth in demand in the mid 90’s.  You could pay 'per tape' fees or annual memberships to some of the groups to help support the costs associated with materials and mailing fees.  In this already illegal realm of pirating the idea of charging for the fansub was more than a gray area when it came to ‘morality’.  But, in some cases, $15 for a VHS full of TV episodes mailed to you seemed like a fair trade for time and expenses incurred.

    I started tapping into the world of fansub’s in 1997 with Rurouni Kenshin.  A friend of mine at the time owned a store that specialized in anime and manga, including video rental.  Certain video rental members of the store had access to fansub tapes and we all pitched in to cover the costs of acquiring these tapes.  We were mostly watching stuff that was not remotely close to being licensed in North America at that time; Yu Yu Hakusho, Rurouni Kenshin and Macross 7.  We looked at the consumption of illicit fansub anime with two mindsets; being able to watch anime that is currently not available and wouldn’t be commercially available for months if not years later.  Since he sold commercial anime it was in his best interest to not support fansub’s of licensed shows.  We liked being on top of everything that was new and to have access to shows and movies that never saw the light of day outside of Japan.  The other mindset; due to the majority of fansub being TV shows directly recorded from the broadcast, in many cases with commercial breaks intact, was that we were consuming it the same way people in Japan were.  Free over the airwaves.  The biggest hitch in this mindset is that we weren’t exactly the target audience for the advertisers that helped fund the shows existence.  

     When file sharing came about everything changed.  In 2004 my friend decided to close down his store after 10 years of being moderately successful.  His biggest competitors were Best Buy and internet based video and merchandise sales; not file sharing.  What file sharing did to the fansub community though was make the idea of paying anything for a fansub completely obsolete.  It also allowed for significantly rapid release periods.  We were able to receive new episodes within a matter of days of their airing in Japan…this was revolutionary and cemented the mentality of joy in being on the ground floor along with the Japanese.  This made viewing a fansub almost like a drug addiction.  Case and point; Naruto which began airing in Japan in 2002.  It began airing in North America 3 years later, roughly 150 episodes behind Japanese and active fansub viewers of the series.  It’s hard to put that pipe down and wait respectfully for the licensed material to catch up to where you were before it was licensed.

     The end of the 00’s saw this landscape change again with legitimate and accessible streaming services showing up, intent on trying to supply anime at the same pace as the fansub community.  This was a welcomed development in my mind, but I was skeptical at first.  At around this time, in 2009, I had stepped away from the anime community for a number of reasons, uncertain what was really in store for it in North America.  When I returned in the middle of 2013 I was pleasantly surprised to see what legitimate streaming services provided by Crunchyroll and FUNimation had been able to accomplish.  What I was also surprised by was the collapse of pretty much all of the distribution companies I had ‘grown up’ with.  Having not looked into the reasons behind the closure of ADV and Pioneer I can’t really speculate on how much the fansub community affected them in the end.  Either way the streaming services have almost rendered fansubs obsolete as the vast majority of TV shows released in Japan are being picked up for streaming distribution.  With these services sometimes releasing the episodes within hours of their broadcast in Japan the once revered speed-fansub’s have also become pointless.

    So where does that leave an otaku like me?  One who has spent as much time consuming licensed anime as fansub anime?  It leaves me in a rather comfortable place, with a few minor irritations.  I gladly pay my monthly fees to Crunchyroll and Hulu and eagerly countdown the release of each new episode for all the shows I watch.  I also enjoy their back catalog of shows I missed in my 4 year absence from the scene.  I gladly pay my Netflix fee and consume the anime it has, with disappointment that they are not following the simulcast policy of Crunchyroll and FUNimation.

    I also miss the flare that many ‘reputable’ fansub circles put into their work.  Would it kill some of these streaming services to provide subs for the OP and ED songs?  I have never seen the licensed version of Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei and wonder if Media Blasters did as much painstaking work explaining many of the obscure references the show is littered with.  I do know that FUNimation did a poor job in explaining the peripheral information scattered throughout Pani Poni Dash.  In the fansub world you can find people, who have strong passion for anime, unfortunately it’s an illegal output for their passion.

    While I don’t defend fansub as a legitimate thing and don’t argue against it being an illegal activity, I do think there is still a need for it and a place in fandom.  It is the only way North American otaku can have access to anime that will never be available to us in a commercial fashion.  Off the top of my head, here are 5 series’ I have used as case examples before.  Macross Zero; Harmony Gold’s long standing control of the Macross/Robotech world in the United States has kept almost everything Macross out of the country indefinitely.  Minami-ke; I have no idea why this has not been licensed.  Itazura na Kiss; classic 80s/90’s romance stories seem to be out of fashion (ItaKiss was released by Discotek Media on DVD at the end of 2014!).  Bokurano; Viz publishes the manga…I have no clue why they have not released or perhaps even licensed the anime (Bokurano has a pending Discotek DVD release as well).  The one I am most frustrated with, Denno Coil; it would seem the Japanese got fed up and decided to globally release it themselves with English subs on iTunes though.  Since I am not in the industry of licensing anime I really have no idea the reasons (aside from Macross) why these titles have not seen the light of day in North America.  Perhaps the Japanese license holders are asking for too much money?  I really don’t know, but it’s still frustrating.

    In conclusion, I want to support the companies that make it possible for these stories I have loved over my decades of fandom.  I greatly welcome the legitimate streaming services that are hopefully providing adequate compensation to the people that deserve it.  Yet since some stuff will never be available the fansub community is still a necessary evil for otaku outside of Japan, we just have to decide for ourselves how we want to approach and regard that aspect.  If you decide to go down or continue the path of illicit fansub viewing, be respectful.  Buy the DVD’s when they become available, pick up merch and don’t try to profit off of other people’s hard work.

    On a side note; I miss the hell out of the commercial breaks that were left in fansub’s during the 90’s.  The cutesy end to all Glico commercials runs through my head like sugar plums and I learned to fear the kabuki clown Ronald McDonald.