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This Week in Anime - The Tribulations of Fan Anime


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Greed1914



Joined: 28 Oct 2007
Posts: 4559
PostPosted: Tue Sep 17, 2024 9:36 am Reply with quote
I think that something like having a Patreon account puts these things in a different perspective for the rights owners than your more traditional doujin. It's a little easier to ignore somebody who risks going out of pocket if they don't sell enough books over a couple of days. Having that donation account open, especially for something promoting itself as more of a replacement to anything official, sure looks more like direct competition.
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Lord Geo



Joined: 18 Sep 2005
Posts: 2639
Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey
PostPosted: Tue Sep 17, 2024 9:45 am Reply with quote
Studio Eclypse's Berserk fan animation had good intentions, but definitely went into the territory of "What we're doing is better, and we should get paid to do this" the moment they started taking money to keep producing it without an official license. Doujins in Japan tend to get away with it because they're already finished by the time they're being sold at places like Comiket, so it's kind of too late to really stop anything, and most fan animations over in Japan tend to be for original works.

Meanwhile, there's at least one example of a foreign fan animation (allegedly) resulting in an official anime production. Back in 2001 a couple of short fan animations were made in France adapting portions of Saint Seiya's Hades Chapter, which had yet to be animated at the time, with the animation being matched to audio from the drama CD adaptation from the early 90s.

According to legend Shingo Araki was at JapanExpo 2001 in Paris, not as a guest but rather just as a visitor, and somehow was shown these Seiya fan animations while there. Araki then apparently asked for a copy, which he then brought back to Japan & eventually showed to Toei Animation to indicate that there was still interest in seeing Saint Seiya's final story being made into anime. This would match with the apparent story that Masami Kurumada was looking to get Ring ni Kakero made into anime around 2002 or so, and Toei agreed to make that anime (which they did starting in 2004) as long as they could also make a Hades Chapter anime.

So, as the story goes, the Saint Seiya Hades OVAs were allegedly made because of a French fan animation. Most interesting of all, though, is that the man who made those Seiya fan animations was Jérome Alquié, who has since gone on to become a comic book writer & artist... and is now currently making Saint Seiya: Time Odyssey.
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bassgs435



Joined: 21 Mar 2015
Posts: 344
PostPosted: Tue Sep 17, 2024 9:47 am Reply with quote
Speaking of Touhou doujin stuff, there's the anime Musou Kakyou (A Summer Day's Dream), which is notable because many professional seiyuu you can hear in official anime projects voice the characters here.
Aoi Yuuki, Miyuki Sawashiro , Nakara Mai and more https://anidb.net/anime/6262#characterlist. It's very interesting how their contracts don't forbid them from working on fan-made derivative stuff like this
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Joe Mello



Joined: 31 May 2004
Posts: 2293
Location: Online Terminal
PostPosted: Tue Sep 17, 2024 9:48 am Reply with quote
I liked this column because it felt a bit more focused on the central topic and like there was a clear point of view.

Aside from the audacity of pulling it off, my only reaction to the McTouhou ad is hoping that the people who made it got a literal bag of money.
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andramus



Joined: 19 Apr 2020
Posts: 187
PostPosted: Tue Sep 17, 2024 11:03 am Reply with quote
Quote:
Irrespective of all legal points, I'm also going to be petty here and say: The Black Swordsman Arc? Again?


The Black Swordsman arc has never been adapted in any of the animes. Fragments of it have but not the entirety. Neither has the Lost Children arc. Personally I would love a well-done faithful anime adaptation that adapts all the arcs. I would be content with such an adaptation skipping the Golden Age arc - or at least leaving it to adapt till last given the two prior adaptations of that arc.

I was under the impression that in countries like the US at least copyright infringement laws regarding fan creations only applied if there was some financial benefit involved ie. the infringers were selling their fan creations. If someone draws a Superman comic or makes a Superman fan film then distributes it for free unless it can be proven someone involved in the creation or distribution financially benefited then Warner Brothers/DC Comics technically can't pursue the matter.

The impression that I've always been under is that when corporations go after fan productions and win it's less about who is legally in the right and more about the fans backing down because they can't afford the legal fees to fight the battle.

Even crowd-funding to produce fan content should be possible if you can prove that there is no profit being made. Which I suppose is the tricky bit. Dotting your i's and crossing your t's to that degree is extremely difficult.

To my mind crowd-funding a fan project is not qualitatively different to knocking on the doors of family, friends and acquaintainces to ask for financial support for such an endeavour. For example if I wanted to make a Superman fan film and asked a friend or family member to donate the funds so I could purchase a camera to film my project on vs crowd-funding the money to purchase said camera. So long as all the funds went towards the purchase of that camera and none went into my pocket it shouldn't be a problem. At least that was how I thought the copyright system was supposed to operate.
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tinyirnfist0



Joined: 13 Oct 2021
Posts: 34
PostPosted: Tue Sep 17, 2024 11:11 am Reply with quote
Hayato Sakamoto is a very controversial figure within the Transformers community. When it was announced he was going to do art for issue #39 of Transformers MTMTE; there was an uproar due to the way he depicted female Transformers in his prior works which was overly sexualized. There were also other factors but it appears to have been forgotten. Anyways the art he did for it was very chaste compared to his other work. Nickel, the sole female Transformer in that issue is never sexualised throughout the issue.
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ChirashiD



Joined: 11 Oct 2006
Posts: 176
Location: WA
PostPosted: Tue Sep 17, 2024 11:26 am Reply with quote
Quote:
Steve, it's amazing that all our antics here on TWIA still haven't prompted us to be disowned by our distant Kadokawa overlords. It may seem like we've tried everything, but there's at least one option left. One thing you can do that will get you disavowed by a major publisher. Making your own anime.

Speaking of that, let me direct everyone's attention to a post from almost 2 years ago:
animenewsnetwork.com/bbs/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=5383809&highlight=overlords#5383809 (last post on the page)
Well it's been almost 2 years so it's pretty obvious you guys haven't been trying hard enough. Laughing
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Glordit



Joined: 11 Sep 2020
Posts: 620
PostPosted: Tue Sep 17, 2024 12:18 pm Reply with quote
There was a post on /r/berserk about some inside info:
Apparently, there's nothing happening with the whole Berserk fan animation. They took the money and then have remained silent on it for months.

https://files.catbox.moe/a89asn.webp

https://www.reddit.com/r/Berserk/comments/1fgn6ms/big_allegations_happen_as_someone_claim_that/

Further proof that they are stalling/A statement from Studio Eclypse. Note: This was in their Patreon and not on Twitter. https://x.com/capyblapi/status/1835575784708374846?t=R8GsF-y0tZibBuIugIi-ng&s=19
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Lord Geo



Joined: 18 Sep 2005
Posts: 2639
Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey
PostPosted: Tue Sep 17, 2024 12:27 pm Reply with quote
andramus wrote:
To my mind crowd-funding a fan project is not qualitatively different to knocking on the doors of family, friends and acquaintainces to ask for financial support for such an endeavour. For example if I wanted to make a Superman fan film and asked a friend or family member to donate the funds so I could purchase a camera to film my project on vs crowd-funding the money to purchase said camera. So long as all the funds went towards the purchase of that camera and none went into my pocket it shouldn't be a problem. At least that was how I thought the copyright system was supposed to operate.


I'd argue that there is a distinct difference between crowdfunding & fund raising from family/friends/etc.: Crowdfunding is public, while the other method is private.

If you want to make a Superman fan film & are funding it entirely in a private manner, then there's really nothing to stop you from actually making the film, since you're not publicly revealing it (&, ideally, no one involved in any fashion reveals it until it's released) and the only thing DC can do is ask that it not be shared publicly after it's been made. However, the fan film itself is still fully made, so DC can only really do so much by that point. It's really no different than how doujin's work in Japan.

However, if you want to make a Superman fan film & are using crowdfunding to help pay for its production, then by its very nature you're publicly revealing your intention to produce it. Because of that, DC now have every right & ability to C&D you to no end, and they are within their legal right to prevent its very creation, especially since you are now getting financial support. Whether or not that's legal, as long as you're not profiting off of it, would have to be determined via court of law, and no one's really bothered to go through with that because the fees to successfully argue that against a major company that owns the actual rights would be astronomical, in comparison.
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Greed1914



Joined: 28 Oct 2007
Posts: 4559
PostPosted: Tue Sep 17, 2024 1:42 pm Reply with quote
Glordit wrote:
There was a post on /r/berserk about some inside info:
Apparently, there's nothing happening with the whole Berserk fan animation. They took the money and then have remained silent on it for months.

https://files.catbox.moe/a89asn.webp

https://www.reddit.com/r/Berserk/comments/1fgn6ms/big_allegations_happen_as_someone_claim_that/

Further proof that they are stalling/A statement from Studio Eclypse. Note: This was in their Patreon and not on Twitter. https://x.com/capyblapi/status/1835575784708374846?t=R8GsF-y0tZibBuIugIi-ng&s=19


I read that last one, and oh boy. The most generous I can be is that they went about this completely backwards. A Japanese company isn't going to respond positively to something unauthorized now asking for permission, and no amount of "quality" will excuse not getting permission ahead of time.

I think Hakusensha has made its position known, and was being relatively kind in just tweeting about it.
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Lord Geo



Joined: 18 Sep 2005
Posts: 2639
Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey
PostPosted: Tue Sep 17, 2024 2:12 pm Reply with quote
Greed1914 wrote:
I read that last one, and oh boy. The most generous I can be is that they went about this completely backwards. A Japanese company isn't going to respond positively to something unauthorized now asking for permission, and no amount of "quality" will excuse not getting permission ahead of time.

I think Hakusensha has made its position known, and was being relatively kind in just tweeting about it.


There was a similar instance when Kineko Video was about to release its remasters of the Daicon III & IV Videos a couple of years ago, but then Gainax started talking about them before it happened. From all reports by Kineko the conversations between the two sides were very cordial, and both sides wanted something to happen there, but even that wound up going nowhere, in the end.

Even if Studio Eclypse was to actually make progress with Hakusensha, though, you can be damn sure that there'd be a "You can't crowdfund to pay for the license" requirement, so they'd be unable to do anything anyway.
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FilthyCasual



Joined: 01 Jun 2015
Posts: 2330
PostPosted: Tue Sep 17, 2024 3:03 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
But yeah, Touhou for the longest time was doujin culture to me. It was much bigger than any of its contemporaries, and it frequently dominated the Comiket scene.
And now it's been replaced on the Comiket intro book by Blue Archive...

The East has fallen. Billions must die.
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residentgrigo



Joined: 23 Dec 2007
Posts: 2534
Location: Germany
PostPosted: Tue Sep 17, 2024 3:44 pm Reply with quote
If you want to put your name out there through animation but also want to be propped up by an IP then create a story in its world (Nas Pasha, Paul OtaKing, Syama Pedersen) or adapt a pilot chapter of a famous manga and then move on to the next ultimately worthless curiosity one-shot, if we disregard that One Piece did it twice, till an actual studio grabs you off Xitter to put you in the One Piece or MAPPA mines. How would anyone make a sustainable career of Shonen Guts fighting Dracula in a one-off video and then moving over to whatever Naruto 1997 is supposed to be? All were seen as unviable in some way by the rights holders and they might understand that the fan creators had to shoot themselves in the foot before drawing a single frame. Especially if the often wonky art and designs of the early works are adhered to. Companies have bigger battles to fight.

Stupid Sexy Griffith. You were too pure for this world. Berserk Prototype is crazy good for what it is and has better art than Vol 1-3 due to Miura choosing to polish up the pages of the Bronson gigs.

Bleach, Death Note, Dragon Ball, FotNS, FMA, Kenshin or Tokyo Ghoul have published prototypes and you still get ready-made storyboards to work with. Some IPs have multiple. Both cases are still illegal but aren´t competing with any possible adaption and are forced to put enough personal energy (Dragon Boy looks unique enough from Dragon Ball that animation charts would need to be figured out) or ideas into the video that the end product shows the first signs of being transformative. Especially if you release tutorials alongside giving added educational value. Or you make Berserk from Wish.com and ask for money before your first release. A user of my library asked me about this "project" 2 months ago! How the hell did these hacks get this traction?

PS: Transformer 40 is badly directed and looks cheap in parts. A clear case of passion outpacing all else.
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oilers2007



Joined: 23 Sep 2022
Posts: 117
PostPosted: Tue Sep 17, 2024 4:10 pm Reply with quote
FilthyCasual wrote:
And now it's been replaced on the Comiket intro book by Blue Archive...

The East has fallen. Billions must die.


Korea is still the east.

spoiler[And BA is better anyway so its fine]
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Vanadise



Joined: 06 Apr 2015
Posts: 518
PostPosted: Tue Sep 17, 2024 5:42 pm Reply with quote
FilthyCasual wrote:
And now it's been replaced on the Comiket intro book by Blue Archive...

Remember that time when Kancolle was more popular than Touhou at Comiket?

Yeah, neither does anybody else. It's good to vary things up a little every now and then, but Reimu and Marisa will still be popular long after Shiroko has been forgotten.

Besides, most of the Touhou circles focus on Reitaisai, a whole event dedicated just to Touhou, and as far as I'm aware, BA has nothing comparable.
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