In Defence of Bandai
Yes, defence. It’s British spelling, okay? Deal with it.
It seems like Bandai has been getting a lot of, to misuse tj han’s term, “negative energy” recently for the whole Solid State Society fiasco. Some people see my latest rant on the Long Tail phenomenon as an indirect attack on Bandai.
The truth is, as hypocrite as this may sound considering my rant on the Wind incident, I support Bandai in its business decision to protect its profits. Bandai exists not to spread the love for anime but to make money. Popularizing anime is one of the ways through which Bandai can make money but the difference between an end and a mean to an end must be made clear.
It does not serve Bandai’s purpose as a company responsible to its investors to continue to turn a blind eye on fansubbers, especially for its most popular franchises.
It’s illegal. GASP!
First thing first, fansubs are illegal. There is no possible defence. Most of the world belongs to the Berne Convention that establishes the shared international laws of copyright. All rights of all works of any value, monetary or otherwise, belong to their creators unless the creator explicitly releases it to public domain or a set time period has elapsed since the creator’s death.
These rights include the right to translate the work, the right to distribute the work and the right to make derivative works based on it. Fair Use is a clause to grants very limited rights to people to use very limited portions of a copyrighted material for special purposes such as education. You can quote a line from a novel in your school essay without seeking permission from the author. You can watch a DVD with your friends without buying a copy for every one of them. If you translate a movie for your friends and families, then it can probably be considered Fair Use. But once you start distributing the translation online in great numbers, good luck trying to convince the judge/jury (depending on your country).
Fansubbing has nothing to do with Fair Use. Fansubbing is illegal in all countries except certain African states and Pacific islands that you are most likely not living in if you are reading this entry. There is no “grey” area with regards to copyright laws and fansubbing.
That said…
However, fansubbing does have (or did have, if you ask certain experts on the subject) a very special difference from bootlegging and piracy in general.
Fansubs are created for people who fall outside the target audience. As mentioned in my arguments on Wind, fansubs serve to create new markets where there were none. This should always be the main purpose of fansubbing: to induce more fans into the hobby.
The purpose of fansubbing was never to let you “try before you buy” or get things for free if you don’t think they deserve your money. When you think that way, you are basically admitting the fact that those things are available in your local market and they are being sold with you as the target audience. That means that fansubbing, by that stage, has already lost its original meaning: to give us access to shows that have excluded us from their target audience. Because now we ARE the target audience and yet we choose to download pirated copies citing the same reasons that I have heard a million times before in the warez scene long before digital fansubbing took off in the Love Hina era.
It’s more convenient for us to download a fansub than to buy a physical DVD, I agree. That is a limitation of traditional distribution that has to be re-examined by the industry soon. But that does not grant us the god-given right to download and watch fansubs faster than the companies can bring them over to the English-speaking world.
The state of fansubbing
The truth is that fansubbing in America today plays a terribly minute role in promoting new anime series. It probably does a better job at promoting piracy.
Unlike the underground anime fandom of the last century and the ren’ai game community of now, anime has already achieved the amount of success needed to guarantee its continued survival and growth in North America. Fansubbing will occasionally create success stories of an obscure anime title being brought to fame by the internet, but that’s simply insignificant when you compare it to the market that Bandai, ADV and Geneon are enjoying right now. They don’t NEED fansubs.
Pulling statistics out of my ass (actually I think I read this somewhere before), only a very tiny portion of American fans was introduced to anime by fansubs. The anime on TV, the HUUUUUUUUGE variety of anime DVDs and manga you get in stores and the various major anime conventions held in America, those things do a LOT MORE to help promote anime than fansubs are doing now. Clearly, fansubs, at least for the anime market, are losing their original purpose of promoting anime. Without that purpose, fansubs are no different from bootlegs of Hollywood movies.
And indeed, Ghost in the Shell, along with most of Bandai’s portfolio, DO NOT need fansubs. Bandai is well-established in North America and Ghost in the Shell is already very popular there due to the previous titles in the franchise. The very same titles that you can just waltz into a store and purchase, i.e. they are marketed at you! GASP!
Bandai doesn’t need fansubs!
What can Bandai hope to ever gain if it allows fansubs for a series that was created with the obvious intention of being brought over to North America? NOTHING! So what if it appeased a few “fans” who absolutely must watch the series within two days of its Japanese release? There’s no guarantee that the fansubs will reach a bigger North American audience than what the series is already reaching. The only guarantee is that there is now a free and easily-available bootleg copy of the series before it has even been released in the North American market.
If you want to “try before you buy”? Go watch it on cable TV! I bet it’ll be there. You Americans have it all so good but yet you demand for more. There are anime that were created with YOU in mind. Just look for those sponsored by Geneon.
“I want my anime now!” Well it’s not YOURS, it’s BANDAI’S. Shut the fuck up and wait for it.
If you plan to download Solid State Society like I will be doing, please at least admit that you are a pirate. I download pirated games and movies all the time too. But it just sounds terribly silly if you start calling foul when the company tells you to stop pirating. :) Stop pretending to be fighting the good fight, it’s not the 1990s any more.
Repeat after me:
We are just selfish bastards who want to watch anime for free and we have no right to whine if Bandai chooses to do something about it.
We are just selfish bastards who want to watch anime for free and we have no right to whine if Bandai chooses to do something about it.
We are just selfish bastards who want to watch anime for free and we have no right to whine if Bandai chooses to do something about it.
In conclusion
There is a huge difference between fansubbing an obscure eroge-based anime that would never have had a 1/100000 chance of being released for the North American market and fansubbing a series that is pre-licensed and obviously made with the North American market in mind.
Doing the former produces the occasional success stories like KimiNozo (aka Rumbling Hearts).
Doing the latter pisses off the hand that feeds you.
Just some thoughts from a disillusioned ex-fansubber.
August 29th, 2006 at 5:38 am
>>Actually, it’s defense. Defence is the noun.
I’m American, and thus don’t know when or whether to use “defence” or “defense” in British English, but when used in “In Defence of Bandai,” “defence” *is* a noun.
That said, I’m technically a pirate, I’ll admit. I’ve got several series of fansubs on my computer that have been licensed (see, American) for NA release. That said, I fully intend to purchase the DVDs for all those series when available (if they aren’t already), with the exception of Samurai Champloo, which is just too damn expensive right now. (I’ll be waiting for the Thinpak boxset of that one) I also have a number of series that have not been licensed yet but probably will (ie: SHnY), which I also plan on buying when they arrive, and some that likely never will be licensed (Ouran Host Club, for example) that I like, but probably not enough to buy DVDs for.
For titles that will be or are domestically licensed, I look at it as, if it’s not worth me spending money on, it’s not worth me spending the time to download or watch. The licensors spend good money on these titles, and whether or not someone likes, for instance, the English dub, someone at Bandai, or Geneon, or FUNi, or even ADV, worked hard to get it out to the public in a language it didn’t originally come in (and which you don’t have to listen to if you don’t like it), or to make the DVD menus, or to design the packaging, so they ought to get paid back, if you’re going to watch the show.
As for GitS:SSS, I fully intend to watch it on [adult swim] whenever it comes on (probably very shortly after its Japanese broadcast end, as things look), and burn it to my hard drive for my own use using my TV tuner card. (Ghost in the Shell DVDs are too expensive, too) I can wait, and either spoil myself beforehand reading the blogs that will be covering the RAWs, or exercise some restraint and avoid the reviews, and hopefully be as pleasantly surprised and entertained by SSS as I was by 2nd Gig and SAC.
August 29th, 2006 at 5:50 am
I think you underestimate the usefulness of fansubs.
In my case without fansubs I would not buy DVDs, of which I have a couple hundred now.
Anime is not nearly as available in Canada as it is stateside. Its not like we don’t have ANY anime, but it seems like we only have a small portion of what you get in the states. On the last couple of trips I made into the states I noticed stores generally carried anywhere between 2 and 10x or more what I could purchase here. I honestly have a better selection of DVDs at home than my local shops do.
Its the same way on TV, only a couple stations show it (YTV and Teletoon) and they aim it squarely at children. No Adult Swim type shows here.
If not for fansubs I probably would only have seen a handful of Anime movies, if that. Instead I have watched hundreds of shows, and bought hundreds of DVDs over the years, and will continue to do so.
August 29th, 2006 at 9:51 am
As I said, fansub has its uses, but Ghost in the Shell doesn’t need them.
Fansubbers seem to be getting the wrong idea that companies NEED them to help popularize a series.
Some companies keep quiet because their shows don’t stand a chance of being licensed otherwise and that is why they tolerate fansubbing.
But Bandai doesn’t need us for GitS. Potential harm outweighs potential benefit.
It’s like if you watered my garden without my permission and expect to get something out of it. Thanks for the help, but get the fuck out of my property. It might sound ungrateful, but we are the ones who fansubbed on our own accord. The companies owe us nothing. (Well they do, but for other things)
August 29th, 2006 at 10:10 am
actually, Singapore has a lot of anime, quite reasonably priced, because I believe the licensing is regional, or country-specific. There’s like this whole collection every time I walk into Comics Connection or TS. I’ve never bought one of those, though, because I’m really not sure about the quality of the translation. Having bought locally-translated (and fully legal) manga from Chuang Yi makes me very leery of local production standards.
Does anyone have any opinion on the quality of such anime?
August 29th, 2006 at 10:34 am
Well, I understand that. That’s why I don’t whine about Bandai.
But I must confess that when reding that announcement, a chill ran down my spine, and it said “Maybe no fansubbers wil do it! >
August 29th, 2006 at 10:49 am
However, one must consider the likely results of Bandai’s actions - people will still pirate the show, and now they have weakened their image in the eyes of some of their hard-core supporters. It doesen’t even matter if said supporters do not pirate the show; their announcement aligns them with the likes of the RIAA and MPAA, and this will help push the collective mental image of Bandai from “content creator” towards “money grabber.”
Weakening the image of your company in the eyes of your most fervent fans is a bad idea IMO, as even if you argue that the people who would take notice aren’t the mass-market, this hard-core group is precisely the group that influences mass-market opinion though blogs and word of mouth.
In the end, I think they would have done better to use the normal tactics of adding tangible extras to the physical DVD package to encourage legal purchase (even after an illegal download, perhaps), rather than going down the “enforcement” route.
August 29th, 2006 at 10:51 am
Fansubs are useful to expose certain shows (example: Simoun, H&C) which would never ever see the light of day over here. Haruhi may never have seen exposure here if not for the efforts of various fansubbers, given the material (let’s play with anime cliches), and without that, it may not have had the overseas splash it did… especially since the Japanese response to it was decidedly mixed, IIRC.
Personally, I hope that Bandai releases GITS:SAC - Solid State Society QUICKLY, and does a good job in the process. I’ve been waiting for the Official Log Volume 2 for about a year and a bit now, and they have yet to release that, even though it was promised… ages ago. :P
August 29th, 2006 at 12:06 pm
I have to disagree that Bandai is a money grabber, the aim of the firm is to make profits and money. They are just safeguarding their interests in this case, I have to agree that fansubs would help to expose shows but it’s not the only way to do it. There are animes that are known in America such as Cowboy Bebop and such without much assistance of fansubs to start with. We may like to portray fansubs as the only or one of the best means to propagate animes to certain markets (North America) but it’s not the only one or it’s the only good one.
Not to sound contradictory but in my opinion, fansubbing dont cut in that much into profits of the studios. Since there’s a difference between wanting to buy and able to buy. If you want to buy but yet dont possess the ability to, the studios should produce price-sensitive goods to capture this market or wait till this group of potential buyers has the power to buy it. Likewise if you want to buy, possess the ability to but choose not to because of a free alternative such as fansubbing that provide them an alternative to bypass the studios and that’s probably why Bandai have to clamp down on fansubbing so as to force their hand into buying it and regaining effective demand.
The majority of the folks out here though, are often too poor to buy the DVDs, either they are staying too far from the targeted market to have those sold in their region and there’s no local distributor to sell it at retail price and they have to opt for online shops that cost more or they are just broke.
Fansubbing is the best recourse for them, but this very avenue is used by people who are willing to buy, able to buy but choose to use this free alternative out of sheer petty greed. In the eyes of the studios, this is going against their mantra, which is to make money. Fansubbing is no longer the only method to branch out into markets anymore and the scene in America is well developed enough to progress on with or without fansubbing although whether is this a good thing, I am not sure.
Anime is different from other mediums where piracy is rampant such as music because in animes, the audience are highly communal. The communities is one of the huge driving forces in anime, different communities themselves propagates, reviews and evaluates animes and filter them out to suit their own tastes. I am referring to forums/blogs that different individuals use to disseminate their own views/preferences such as this blog. Such communities help to spread the word on animes, popularise it. Fansubbing was not and won’t be the only means of advertisment.
Yet we are all too broke to be part of the targeted consumers of the studios and we want our animes :\ This is where fansubbing comes to save us but as I said, it has lost its cloak of ambiguity and it’s nothing but piracy yet we still need it. This wave of reaction against Bandai is nothing but a knee-jerk one which seems terribly petty compared to the efforts put in by the studios who made this and rely on this on a living.
August 29th, 2006 at 12:08 pm
Paper, you need to put in an edit function. Too many grammar errors on my post :\
August 29th, 2006 at 12:30 pm
I am just a just a selfish Colombian bastard who wants to watch anime he will quite possibly never watch in his entire lifetime unless Cartagena’s temperature goes below 35ºF (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartagena%2C_Colombia).
Yeah, I might just agree that you are mostly right with everything you said above, but:
- Maybe you already have an established market there on the States, but in countries like mine, there is none of that, and the possibilities of it evolving here in… let’s say, 10 years, are slim to none. Fansubs are the way to go for people like me who want to stay in touch with the new animation jewels. And I DO buy anime, say hello to my batch of R2 DVDs (just bought Elfen Lied, btw. If it weren’t because of fansubs, I still wouldn’t know about series like this one).
- If fansubs never existed, the anime blogosphere wouldn’t exist as we know it. Maybe it even wouldn’t have existed at all. If fansubbing dies, this blogosphere will wither and die. Even the whole internet fandom revolving around anime would have never been like we know it, sites like 4chan wouldn’t have existed, we would still be on mediocre internet forums talking about .
The way I see it, whatever the anime industry loses because of fansubbing, they get it back as an even wider market. If anime didn’t sell overseas, it wouldn’t be as profitable as it is right now, and maybe Japan wouldn’t be producing the sheer quantity of series that are made every year.
August 29th, 2006 at 12:32 pm
Errr it seems one of my points was wrongly parsed by the system. I’ll rephrase it:
“…”
Even the whole internet fandom revolving around anime would have never been like we know it, sites like 4chan wouldn’t have existed, we would still be on mediocre internet forums talking about “insert random series at least 8yo already distributed on the states”
August 29th, 2006 at 12:58 pm
I have a similar take on the subject. (Note: Temporary link on a beta-testing site. The permanent link will shift to here in a few days.)
Needless to say, I agree.
August 29th, 2006 at 12:58 pm
Crest, you’ve missed my point: I said “[Bandai's actions will] push the collective mental image of Bandai from ‘content creator’ towards ‘money grabber.’” I’m not saying that they are money grabbing in any way, rather that public opinion will be negatively affected by their announcement. Furthermore, they have little to gain from their announcement as piracy will nevertheless occur.
August 29th, 2006 at 2:03 pm
As a firm, Bandai has always been milking out money :3 Just imagine all the merchandise and games that they have been making or through Banpresto. I note your point, but I dont think that public opinion of them can be any more adversely affected but that annoucement is necessary although it is futile which I agree with you.
Fervent fans are just as likely to buy their stuff irregardless of how badly they smudge their PR as long they do the games right :3. My opinion though
August 29th, 2006 at 2:04 pm
Stuff I mean not just games… *wants an edit function* T_T