Rise and Fall of Anime Fansubs

A professional translator cum anime fan made a video last year on fansubs (anime that has been subtitled by fans). The video (which shares the same title on as this blog entry) is available on Youtube. Here's the link to part one of the video:



Here are the other parts: 2, 3, 4, 5

I think the videos should be taken together with an online interview with the videomaker which would give people watching the documentary more insights to the videomaker's intent and purpose.

My interpretation is that the videomaker, Paul 'Otaking' Johnson, was seriously making a cry of protest against the current state of fansubs. I don't really see much information on the rise of fansubs (maybe about one minute in the first part?) although there is plenty of lamenting about how terrible fansubs nowadays are. His main grouses seem to be that fansubs nowadays are flashy, retain too much Japanese (and then uses plenty of notes that take up lots of screen space to explain the Japanese words and the context in which they are used), distracts viewers from the visuals and essentially are a way for fansubs to show off their expert understanding of Japanese as well as their fancy editing skills.

I personally think that some of his criticisms are spot on-> the dazzling array of words at the opening and ending sequences of the anime which he term 'karaoke sequences' are indeed very distracting. However, there is no denying that Johnson's video seems to be rather subjective and a little biased. Johnson has only highlighted the flaws of current fansubs and the good points of professional subtitling as well as the good points of fansubs of yesteryear. Current fansubs are available a lot faster and visual quality is a lot better than fansubs of yesteryear. While this is due largely to technology, we need to take note that there has been effort made by fans to ensure that the subtitles are in sync with the audio and this requires great effort (trust me, I used to do video edits).

Moreover, Johnson's standards might differ greatly from the average anime fan's standards and expectations. Johnson tackles this topic with the view that anime ought to be localised when translated and ought to be accessible to as many people as possible. However, he seems to have forgotten that anime fandom remains very much a subculture (although anime is now available on mainstream television channels) and the anime fan community remains a closed one with some fans not being very eager to share anime with the general masses. In fact, according to Leonard (2005), this issue of whether to spread anime to the masses or to keep it to a closed group is not new and was present even in the early days of fansubbing. Not explaining the context is not very helpful to the average viewer or a person who simply views anime but is not very much aware of these undercurrents. After all, Geertz (1973)# noted the importance of context and how it is necessary to have "thick descriptions" of the situation and context for the audience to better understand and make sense of the situation. After all, a wink is just a twitching of one's eyelid and has no meaning unless one knows the context in which it occurs.

However, despite Johnson's evidence of the shortcomings of today's fansubs and his useful suggestions, I think it must be kept in mind that his video is laced with his own subjectivities. Perhaps he doesn't mean for his video to come across as objective or as a well thought out piece of research ( although I doubt that given that he mentioned he spent much time and effort on this with no monetary reward and the citations that he have of translation theories/theorists). Assuming that he does want people to acknowledge the effort he put in, I think he could have improve upon it (and reduce the amount of wrath he incurred from the fansubbers) by acknowledging his bias or at least show his attempt to reduce the bias his own interest might have generated in his analysis of fansubs, a challenge that Marshal and Rossman (2006)## noted that all qualitative researchers face. (yes, I consider documentary filmmakers qualitative researchers of sorts). It might be tedious but perhaps if Johnson had explained how he collected his data (especially the fansubs that he chose to analyse and raise as examples), his case might be more convincing. Fans were accusing him of selecting a biased sample and raised the fact that there are many fansub groups who create high-quality fansubs as well which he appears to have neglected.

Nevertheless, I must say this is an interesting video worth watching to get a (subjective) sense of the fansub scene for someone interested in anime. The fans' responses are also quite an interesting read on their own.

*See Leonard, S (2005) Celebrating two decades of unlawful progress: Fan distribution, proselytization commons, and the explosive growth of Japanese animation. UCLA Entertainment Law Review 12(2) 191-265

#See Geertz, C (1973) Thick description: Towards an interpretive theory of culture. In The interpretation of cultures: Selected essays (pp 3-30). New York: Basic Books

## See Marshall, C., & Rossman, G. (2006). The what of the study: Building the conceptual framework. In Designing qualitative research (4th ed.) (pp. 23-50). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.