Fansubs: publicity or piracy?
Part 1 of a series about the fansub phenomenon
Sep 1, 2006 Dominic von Riedemann
Fansubbing is a very different wrinkle on the explosive issue of movie piracy. Depending on who you talk to, fansubbers are either stealing from Japanese animators, or introducing anime to new markets.
A Short History of Fansubbing:
The 1980's were a dark time for cartoons. Disney's reputation as the #1 animation studio had steadily declined since Walt Disney's death in 1966, and the company seemed more interested in revisiting past glories than in creating new ones. Likewise with Warner Bros., whose Looney Tunes shorts had pushed artistic envelopes during the 1950's and 60's.
Cartoons of the 1980's, like G.I. Joe, Transformers and He-Man: Masters of the Universe, were nothing more than cheaply made, half-hour toy commercials. He-Man was especially notorious for the fact that recycled footage made up 75% of each episode.
Former Disney animator Don Bluth, who produced movies like 1982's The Secret of NIMH and 1986's An American Tail. These were successful family films firmly grounded in the classic Disney animation style. Bluth had also created Dragon's Lair in 1983, which successfully combined Disney-style animation with video game action. But Bluth was the sole bright spot in an industry that had given up on animation as a legitimate art form.
Happily, Akira gave North American animation a major wake-up call when it hit movie screens in 1988. The cult success of this adult-oriented anime proved two things. Firstly, that Japan had once again taken a uniquely American art form and improved on it. Secondly, that there was a genuine market for cartoons, and it wasn't just for kids. Adults (especially university students) liked what they saw in this hard-driving, gritty style of animation, and they wanted more.
Anime ran into two problems in North America. First off, distributors still consider animation to be "kids' stuff:" The relentless violence and dark tone in movies like Akira scared them. Even cartoons such as Kagaku ninja tai Gatchaman, which were intended for a younger audience, had too many adult elements for scissor-happy North American censors. Gatchaman, which was retooled as Battle of the Planets, had to be severely edited before it could be shown on American TV.
The second problem had to do with the fact that animes had to be redubbed into English before being distributed. Translation always kills subtleties of language, and Americans are notorious for hating movie subtitles. Distributors had to be sure that an anime would appeal to a large North American audience for them to pay to redub an anime into English.
There was also plain old ethnocentricity at work here. The dastardly Japanese had kicked American butt with cars and home appliances. Now they had the gall to make better animation?
So how could anime fans get their fix without having to learn a new language? Enter that uniquely 1980's invention: the videocassette.
Multilingual anime fans started making their own dubs and subtitled versions of existing animes, and passing them around to fellow fans. The practice was quickly called "fan subtitling" or "fansubbing."
Respecting international copyright laws, fansubbers rarely sold their dubs for a profit. Fansubbers made a limited number of copies of their subs, and sent them out to anime clubs. Members of these clubs would quite often tape these copies onto their own cassettes.
Not surprisingly, these early fansubs were very low quality. The fansub owner would end up with a third-generation videocassette transfer, if they were lucky. Translation quality varied wildly, depending on the skill of the translator.
Despite the illegality of fansubbing, subbers justified their actions by saying they were developing a fanbase for certain titles.
As GHDpro from Anime Suki says, "The idea is to fansub shows so that they gain popularity and are more likely to be licensed by U.S. companies."
Subbers would demonstrate that a ready-made market already existed for a certain title, encouraging producers to make an official version. Since fansubs were of such low quality, fans would readily open their wallets if it meant seeing their favourite animes the way they were meant to be seen.
The advent of high-speed internet and DVD's changed the field for fansubbers and anime producers alike. Now fans could get a pirated copy that looked almost as good as the original, with no generational fade issues. Not only that, fansubs could be disseminated faster around the world.
This was a double-edged sword. On one side, anime titles could find new markets even faster than before. On the other side, fans would be less likely to buy an officially-licensed product if they could get a high-quality fansub for a lot less money. This is a major issue, considering that many fans (and fansubbers) are university students on tight budgets.
Movie and music producers had major court battles against Napster and other free sites. Now anime companies felt they had to take action against fansubbers.
(In Part#2: The anime producers' response to fansubbing, and does fansubbing hurt sales?)
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