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Gainax controversial stance on the industry and fansubs.

The UK release of Paranoia Agent isn't censored - though you're not the first person I've heard claim it is.
The episode that the BBFC had trouble with spoiler[(the one with the suicide club - anything with children and suicide is a red light as far as the BBFC is concerned)] is exactly the same length as all the other episodes and shows no signs of editing. All that happened was that the BBFC slapped an 18 certificate on that volume rather than the 12 or 15 that the other volumes got.

Because, to be quite frank, they suck.

There was a link posted a while back to a "documentary" on YouTube (actually a poorly-edited and overlong rant, but still an illuminating watch) that was by a fan disgusted with the degradation of the fansub scene since the mid 90's. And he brought up numerous problems with the kinds of work these people do- cluttering the screen with liner notes, strict and confined translations of idioms and sayings that are awkward in English, alienating the casual viewer with things that English just doesn't parse, just skipping over things that are beyond their skills as a translator, and so forth.

Yeah exactly, it was like that on the fansub of Paranoia Agent I streamed, there's no way the official DVD will have all those ace subs in it. (I haven't bought it so far because the UK version is censored, and the US one is out of print).

The US one is out of print, yes. But RightStuf still has some in stock (current stock check says 196) at $99.98. I'd get in on that action if you have any interest because I suspect that once those are gone the only hope will be ebay and other such sites.

This has nothing to do with anime, but lets not forget that the Dark Knight made something like $300,000,000 so yeah, if you make something good, at least some people are going to buy it. So yeah, Gainex's stance probably isn't the worst one to have.

BellosTheMighty wrote:

Because, to be quite frank, they suck. There was a link posted a while back to a "documentary" on YouTube (actually a poorly-edited and overlong rant, but still an illuminating watch) that was by a fan disgusted with the degradation of the fansub scene since the mid 90's. And he brought up numerous problems with the kinds of work these people do- cluttering the screen with liner notes, strict and confined translations of idioms and sayings that are awkward in English, alienating the casual viewer with things that English just doesn't parse, just skipping over things that are beyond their skills as a translator, and so forth.

Both yours and that youtube commentary's generalizations and conclusions are as credible as someone saying all fansubs are better.

There are good and there are bad fansubs, likewise with dubs/subs by the licensing companies. To lump all fansubs as 1 entity/group because some groups' releases are less than desirable will be no better than to state that all professional releases "suck" since 1 company's products are horrendous.

As for that commentator's view, that is nothing more than an elitist view - "old stuffs are better", "when we were young...", etc. You can always come up with numerous points to criticize for any given situation/thing in this world if you ignore everything and whatever doesn't prove your points.

For every good 90's fansub, there's probably an equal percentage of very decent fansubs now. Similarly with bad fansubs from the 90's. Anyone who think all fansubs from the 90's are of excellent quality are just deluding themselves. Everything is a matter of perspective, preferences and very relative.

My point was that their translation skills were not up to professional caliber which, I note with some interest, you didn't seem to object to.

...First, it's a lot easier. I remember reading up on what fansubbing required back in the days of alt.fan.sailor-moon, and it talked about needing timed scripts and tapes or laserdiscs and having to rent a genlock from somewhere, etc. etc. ...

The second reason is that the whole philosophy behind fansubbing has changed. It used to be about turning people on to new series, things that probably would never get picked up in the states, and certainly wouldn't get picked up without some fan support. Now... I can't, off the top of my head, name a SINGLE active group that is interested in bringing obscure unlicensed stuff to the fandom. Despite recent difficulties for the R1 industry, they still license nearly everything that's worth seeing, and a good number of things that aren't. But even then, the fansubbers aren't interested in the stuff that doesn't get picked up- they're too busy trying to outdo each other with Bleach or Naruto or One Piece or whatever the new hotness is this year. This is stuff that is ALREADY as big a hit in the states as it's going to be- it doesn't need any help.

I would go as far to say that fansubs themselves are outdated- a kind of a grey-market hobby that has outlived its usefulness by several years, and is now just leeching parasitically from the very thing it once claimed to support.

As for the "parasitical leechers", there are quite a number of those who would never buy anything. Without fansubs, they'll just migrate to some other forms of free entertainments. The X number of leechers are not equal to $X of unrealized profits. Without fansubs, the industry will make $0 of them. Industries love to use the numbers from piracy, etc as potential losses. They are NOT losses. Those are not potential customers in the 1st place. You can count everyone who had ever downloaded a fansub as a potential customer and you'll be dead wrong. Without fansubs, many of them won't even watch animes.