Reponse to Fansub Post
So I told my girlfriend right before I posted on Thursday that a lot of people will be pissed off at what I had to say. I know that my website’s target audience was the fansub community, and I was flat-out telling them that they were wrong. So I got a lot of negative feedback from a lot of people, and let me just take this time to retort and clarify some things said.
First of all, of course, there is no absolute. Nothing is all bad, just as nothing is purely good either. Maybe this is where a lot of the misunderstandings came from. But anyway, to clear it up, the point of my previous post was that I believe most of the fansubbing community doesn’t support the industry the way that they should be. There’s a code out there that says when a series is licensed, you delete the fansubs and purchase the legit DVD when they come out. But from what I’ve been seeing around the community, with websites such as Baka Updates and all the a-holes asking for the latest “Samurai Champloo” torrent on internet forums, it appears to me that this code is dead. What the hell, people?
Now, that’s not to say that everyone out there is wrong. As I said, most people are screwing over the industry, but this does not mean everybody. Do I have any evidence to back that up? No, of course not. Like I would have the resources to do so! But supposedly the US anime companies have done the research and they do have the factual evidence to support it. Maybe I might try to contact them to provide me with the actual data. I do know the evidence exists because I actually brought up the question at panels at Anime Boston this year.
But all the evidence you really need is right in front of you. Look at yourself and figure out if my claims are true. If you really do delete the fansubs and buy the legit DVDs, buy the manga, or even just watch the shows on American television, then I believe you can call yourself a fan of anime. And if everyone in the fansub community was like that, then the market would be great. We would have lower DVD prices and more content available on TV. But most of the community is not like that, and instead claim that I’m full of shit instead of admitting to their own downfalls. So let me just clear up some things that some very disrespectful people have been throwing at me.
First of all, it was said that I’m hypocritical for not buying any DVDs myself. Really? That’s strange because if you look at the toolbar towards your right, I have links to my on-line cataloging of my DVD collection and manga collection. To sum it up, I have around 130 disks of Anime DVDs, 275 books of manga in English, and 80 books of manga in Japanese. Now, I would estimate that the average cost of these things would be $20 a DVD, $10 an English book, and $3 a Japanese book. If you plug in those numbers, my collection is worth over $5,500.
Am I rich? Hell no. But as long as I was gainfully employed, I could afford a DVD or a couple of manga books per week during my high school years. When I got to college, I was no longer able to afford as much, so I had to drop collecting my DVD series and some of my manga series. However, I still kept and eye out for large sales at my local bookstores and went on manga shopping sprees when they came around. For DVDs, I started my own anime club and worked out deals with companies to get their products in exchange for my cooperation in “pimping it” to my club. I still earned the DVDs in that respect.
But supporting the industry doesn’t have to be restricted to just that looking at how much money you fork over. Considering that many of you are in college, you have cable TV supplied to you as being part of your dorm room in most colleges. For others, I’m sure that your parents pay for cable at your house. Use it. Watch the great programming on Adult Swim like Ghost in the Shell or Paranoia Agent. You not spending any more money, and the ratings turn into success for the industry and interest in putting more content on TV.
Now as far as my position on fansubs are concerned, I believe it’s okay as long as you follow the code mentioned earlier. The reason I watch fansubs is because you cannot get these series in the US. The Japanese DVDs are too expensive, and you don’t have the option of seeing these shows on TV either. And besides that, the DVDs are region coded and un-translated. They intentionally make it so you can’t watch them in the US without turning to illegal methods! However, once a company picks up a series for US distribution, you can no longer justify watching bootlegged versions of these series with these reasons. If you are a fan, you are now obligated to support the series legitly now that you have the power to do so.
I do delete the series once it’s licensed. In fact, I usually delete them before they’re licensed 
. So far, there’s only five series I’ve downloaded that’s been licensed:
Girls Bravo
DearS
Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo
Psychic Academy
Ah! My Goddess! TV
I mentioned the first two in my previous post, and mistakenly put that “Sometimes I doubt I will buy them.” That’s because at the moment I’m currently unemployed, so I will unable to do so for financial reasons. But God, I wanna get them! If I can’t pay for it, I’ll earn them in other ways. I’ve been trying to get a hold of Geneon to work out some kind of deal of promoting these two series on this site. But if that doesn’t work out, I’m about to start a new job so I’m pretty sure I will be able to afford them. But besides that, I do currently own all the DearS manga that’s out right now in the US.
As far as the other series go, Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo is going to start airing on Cartoon Network this fall, and you can bet your ass I’ll be watching that every day and telling all of you to watch it with me. The releases for Psychic Academy and AMG are still pretty far away, but I believe with the help of this site, my situation will be better when they do and I’ll gladly buy them with no issue.
So I hope that this cleared up exactly what I was pissed off about, as well as disprove many people’s claims at my hypocrisy. This is my blog, and so I can freely express my opinions and feelings on whatever I want. I respect your views and opinions as well, and therefore I never delete a comment from a reader unless it’s blatantly disrespectful to my other readers. However, I leave up all the comments that are blatantly disrespectful to me to show just how one should not react to something. If you don’t agree with me, then let me know so, but still be respectful to my views as I am to yours. Satoshi and Kabitzin at SeaSlugs have both done so in a very tasteful manner, and so I really commend them on that. There is a clear difference between constructive criticism and simply being an asshole. Please remember that.
So, my stance is still the same. If you rely solely on fansubs for your anime entertainment, then you are leeching off of the industry. And you don’t need facts to prove this, just take a personal look at yourselves and fansubbing friends. The industry is on the decline right now, and it’s up to us to restore it to it’s former glory and make it better then ever.
I’m doing all I can. How about you?
