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Shinichi Watanabe's Thoughts on Anime Piracy.

Being that fansubbing is a way of advertising shows to the American public, how do you think this will affect the sales of DVDs?

Well, you can look at it that way but for example, I was at Anime Central recently and Shinichi Watanabe, the director for Excel Saga, was there. He was asked the fansub question by some of the fans there, who said, "How do you feel about it" Are you honored by this, that they're making fansubs in English?� His answer to that was, "If you are distributing the fansubs and not going out and buying the DVD's then basically, you're making it so I can't feed my wife and children." So you can say that it builds popularity but at the same time it also takes away from sales so it's kind of a tricky area. I can't tell you to do it and I also can't tell you not to. The only thing I can do is what we've done in the past, ask people, that if you're fansubbing the title and we announce it, take it down. That's all we ask, anything other than that is your business.

I wouldn't be surprised if he says something similar to this:

A 2004 Interview with ADV's David Williams wrote:

Being that fansubbing is a way of advertising shows to the American public, how do you think this will affect the sales of DVDs? Well, you can look at it that way but for example, I was at Anime Central recently and Shinichi Watanabe, the director for Excel Saga, was there. He was asked the fansub question by some of the fans there, who said, "How do you feel about it" Are you honored by this, that they're making fansubs in English?� His answer to that was, "If you are distributing the fansubs and not going out and buying the DVD's then basically, you're making it so I can't feed my wife and children." So you can say that it builds popularity but at the same time it also takes away from sales so it's kind of a tricky area. I can't tell you to do it and I also can't tell you not to. The only thing I can do is what we've done in the past, ask people, that if you're fansubbing the title and we announce it, take it down. That's all we ask, anything other than that is your business.