New at Reason

Henry Jenkins reveals how fansubbers, otaku, and other nice people the industry can't stand popularized anime.

Comments

Lamar | November 17, 2006, 9:48am | #

It also suggests that the RIAA and MPAA's philosophy of "sue everybody" has hurt their industry.

savunh | November 17, 2006, 9:50am | #

"Consequently, the American markets for these cartoons dried up in the early ’70s, and discouraged distributors dumped their cartoons on Japanese-language cable channels."

Not to nitpick, and at the risk of showing my geek side, this just isn't true. The late 70's and early 80's had Battle of the Planets, Voltron (two versions) and Star Blazers in regular syndication. Not to mention the popularity of the Power Rangers, which was essentially a live action ripoff of anime.

I can't believe I just wrote that.

Zeno | November 17, 2006, 9:58am | #

Fansubbers have been saying this for years and years now.

Lamar | November 17, 2006, 10:11am | #

I think the point of the story is that the early 70's were the doldrums, but by the late 70's and early 80's the revival was in full swing. BTW: you forgot G-Force!!!

Again | November 17, 2006, 10:18am | #

"G-Force" was "Battle of the Planets" IIRC.

Voltron was pretty huge when I was in grade school.

JD | November 17, 2006, 10:23am | #

I go to cons pretty frequently, and one of my best friends is a manga translator, and I can tell you that a frequent topic of conversation is how the industry is still often its own worst enemy, by completely screwing up the American release and massacreing it in the editing process.

The fantrans stuff is also kind of interesting from a kind of cultural-expression-ownership POV. While generally fantrans stop getting circulated once the official release is out, I've heard of a few cases of people disliking the official translation so much that the fan version keeps circulating - kind of a low-key assertion of ownership over the meaning of the content.

ed | November 17, 2006, 10:25am | #

It has won this worldwide success in part because Japanese media companies paid little attention to the kinds of grassroots activities—call it piracy, unauthorized duplication and circulation, or simply file-sharing—that American media companies seem so determined to shut down.

Typical backhanded libertarian support of piracy, but where is the evidence that anime thrived as a result of its creators' alleged lack of concern? As American or other Western media companies attempt to "shut down" piracy, do they also shut down their own creative processes? Does the creative process suffer as the legal branch of a media company does its thing? Jenkins offers no support for this statement. He throws it out there as a settled fact which has become a cliché if not a contradiction: that piracy somehow encourages and nourishes the creative process.

Lamar | November 17, 2006, 10:36am | #

ed,
Why do you keep saying "typical libertarian" this or that? Doesn't the fact that there is a label to which people ascribe mean that there is a general consensus on some issues?

The point of the story isn't that anime thrived because of the creators' lack of concern, but that if today's MPAA ethic were in place, the companies would have stamped out the anime fan base, and anime itself. It's a story about the studios being out of touch, and learning from the fans....not suing them. Unfortunately, you see all that suing as just something the legal department does that doesn't affect the creativity. However, when the creative forces of a show get so bad that fans take over, the legal department is a last ditch effort to keep the thing afloat. I'm not surprised that your analysis is so unsophisticated as to lump all forms of piracy into one bucket. Making a derivative work, according to your pathetic analysis, is "piracy" and yet making a derivative work most certainly nourishes the creative process.

C'mon ed, do you understand that not all copyright infringement is piracy? And that not all copyright infringement is illegal?

Lamar | November 17, 2006, 10:41am | #

Again,
I looked at the Wikipedia entry, and you are absolutely correct about G-Force. The timeline there also seems to support Henry Jenkins's story.

Hey, I can talk about this! | November 17, 2006, 11:02am | #

Frankly, ed, I think *any* American viewing anime during that time was something of a victory for the creators. For a foreign media industry trying to break into a new overseas market, I would suppose it's more important to garner interest than to create a revenue stream. And while I don't think the "creative process" suffers from small-scale underground distribution while it scrabbles for a foothold, I'm sure minds focus much more quickly once the various permutations of a property start infringing on the original source. At that point, you could do what Valve did for Half-Life once the mods Counterstrike, Day of Defeat, and Team Fortress became more popular than the original game: you appropriate the creative team that makes it and you proceed to make bank.

Oh, evidence. Right. I offer myself as, anecdotally, Exhibit A. My only access to anime, other than the semi-bowdlerized viewings of Robotech and Voltron, came from trekking out to Rockville, MD, and visiting a Japanese market that rented bootlegged VHS tapes. Half the time my friends and I picked things at random because couldn't read the titles on the tapes, and most of the time there wasn't any kind of English subbing. But we saw some of the coolest (we thought so, anyway) shit ever: Mystic Defender, Iczer One, Castle in the Sky, Akira (WAY before the American release), My Neighbor Totoro, Crusher Joe (still can't really find it here), Nausicaa, Dirty Pair, MegaTokyo, and on and on. Later, as a video clerk, I convinced my boss to carry anime -- one of the only video stores in Maryland at the time to do so. It helped that the place was large and not a big chain store like Blockbuster. Of course, then he had to be more careful when clerks would rent La Blue Girl and Urotsukidoji to minors. Oops.

These days, anime's as common as dirt, and about as exciting to me. I'm still convinced most of the really good stuff stays over in Japan, and they dump total garbage like Pokemon and Dragonball on us. But if you want real evidence, let's all find out what prompted U.S. distributors (like Walt Disney) to bother acquiring rights for a media property that must have seemed like a bad bet, or at best a niche market.

Shem | November 17, 2006, 11:34am | #

I'm still convinced most of the really good stuff stays over in Japan, and they dump total garbage like Pokemon and Dragonball on us.

BS. The issue isn't that they dump the bad stuff on the US, the issue is that most anime, like most mass media, just isn't that good. Like anything else, it ranges from sublime works of art to puerile trash, with the latter being much, much better represented than the former. Mostly it's just an attempt to capitalize on proven formulas like Harem or Teenaged Mutant Giant Robot Pilots. There's nothing special about it folks, it's just TV by other means.

Hey, I can talk about this! | November 17, 2006, 12:07pm | #

That last bit was supposed kinda tongue-in-cheek, but point taken.

Shem | November 17, 2006, 12:24pm | #

Ah, my mistake.

isildur | November 17, 2006, 12:30pm | #

I agree with Shem. There's a whole lot of high-quality anime out there. It's just lost its cult veneer, so 'omg they're speaking japanese' isn't a compelling reason to watch anymore.

Yes, the disturbing longevity of DBZ is horrifying. But pick up Stellvia, Fruits Basket, or Full Metal Alchemist, and tell me that anime isn't still a vibrant, exciting medium for storytelling.

I can, by the way, offer the same anectdotal evidence: my wife was a huge fansub collector; I think we have fansub tapes of all of Sailor Moon from season 2 onwards, and all 99 episodes of Ruroni Kenshin, in crates in the garage. And as this stuff was released to the US market, we replaced the VHS tapes with official DVDs. Lamar's argument sounds fine unless you've actually seen the growth of the anime market first-hand; then it becomes obviously ridiculous. The role of fansubs in growing the American market is well-known to anyone who's been a fan for long enough.

Lamar | November 17, 2006, 12:39pm | #

"The role of fansubs in growing the American market is well-known to anyone who's been a fan for long enough."

We agree on this. My argument is that the fans are the life blood of any show, and if they've reached a critical mass, they'll keep the show going regardless of the creative output of the creators. It is in the best interest of the creators to allow that to go on instead of MPAA/RIAA style lawsuits. Where do we disagree?

Lamar | November 17, 2006, 1:50pm | #

I think the problem with America's content community is that they are supposedly protected by trade groups that have been sold a bridge by their law firms. They obstructed innovation and overfished their economic model. I'm against bootlegging and stealing someone's work without attribution, but people like ed (i.e., the MPAA and RIAA) have expanded copyright protection to the point of suffocated their own product.

Sam-Hec | November 20, 2006, 6:10pm | #

To get an idea of whats out there and popular outside of the main market, just google 'anime' and 'Fansub' together, and go to the first link. Therein you find listings of hundreds fansubed bittorrents in various video formats. Also listed is how many seeders there are for each torrent, and thus the momentary popularity of each torrent.

No descriptions are given of what each is about, but having visited frequently, I ahve noted that almost none are of the Hentai variety...and thats not out of prudishness. CartoonPorn is apparantly popular enough to get liscensed quickly. Another link within the site shows what has been liscensed recently.

Outside of special ordering or visitng your local 'JapanTown' (if any) this is probably the only way (short of going to Japan) you will ever get to see old school anime like Doreamon