The Deviant Art’s Otaku Spot (THE DAOS!)
Issue Six: A Pirate’s Life For Me!

This week, the DAOS, will be talking about Fansubs and Scanlations. We will be discussing how they are made, its history, their positive and negative impact on the anime/manga industry, and what the industry can do in order to promote series and still protect themselves from illegal bootlegging sales.

Missed an issue? They are now available for deviation and download at our fellow members James DA spot! You can also get information on the DAOS Art Contests Rules and Questions at the same spot!

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Manga Reviews of the Week:

Kanna by Takeru Kirishima
Volume One Out Now by Go! Comi!

Kagura is struggling to juggle prep school and his part-time job, with mixed results. When he wakes up one day to find the little girl, Kanna, sleeping on his futon, his world is turned upside down. Kanna, he learns, is from the "Dark" world, and she is the daughter of his other self, and the other version of his childhood crush in that dimension. She has the ability to bend the laws of Heaven and Earth, and fearing her, the Black God wants to sacrifice her soul. As the worlds overlap, she has been hidden from the Black God, and given into Kagura’s care. Now that he has demons chasing after them, it looks like getting into college is going to get a lot harder.

Pros to This Manga: The plot in this series is SO CRAZY! It has an awesome mix of science fiction, romance, action and moe cuteness. Kanna, the little girl is SO CUTE!! Especially in many of the outfits that she wears in the manga.

Cons to This Manga: While Kanna looks cute, the artwork is not really anything out of the traditional style of design. In addition, even though the plot line is very interesting to read, the panel work is sometimes really hard to follow. I am not against different styles of panel layout, but for an action manga like this one, it is hard to keep up and know what you are reading if the panel layout is really weird.

Miss Red Rose’ Verdict: So, even though there are many cons, this manga is very interesting to read! I am a huge fan of the weird plot lines, so this is definitely one series you will see me continue to review here on the DAOS.

Missing-Kamikakushi No Monogatari
Story by Gakuto Coda, Artwork by Rei Mutsuki
Volume One Out by TokyoPop

At Seisou Graduate Academy Auxiliary High School, there is a Literature Club. That club has a star attraction. It is Kyoichi Utsume a.k.a. “His Majesty, Lord of Darkness,” and club members would rather discuss their dark and compelling friend than books. When His Majesty shows up at a club meeting with a girlfriend (named “Ayame”, his fellow clubbers are shocked because His Majesty Kyo had previously spoken so badly of dating and love. When Kyo suddenly disappears, his friends start to believe that it has something to do with Ayame. As they dig deeper, they discover dark plans by Kyo and something even more horrifying about Ayame.

Pros to the Manga: The artwork is seriously impressive! The plot is also very mysterious, you do not really know or even expect what could very well happen next.

Cons to the Manga: Character and plot development is very abrupt and hard to follow. It seems really weird, because there are all these characters, but you do not quite get what the story is all about.

Miss Red Rose’s Verdict: Honestly, because the volume was so awkward and short in character development and plot, the verdict is still out for me. It is a good series so far, but the mysteriousness in the plot makes is hard to judge this series completely. I will be sure to add this to the watch list and make sure to keep you informed!

Issue Six--A Pirate’s Life for Me!

So let us start with this. How many of you own downloads of your favorite series? How many of you, know websites that have translated manga pages of your personal favorite series? If you do not download them, how about watched a bunch on You Tube (when they had them) and discovered new series that way? Quite a lot huh?

Whether you realized you have done it or not, you have committed an illegal act. And that act is what the world knows now as internet piracy. Internet piracy, has become a well-known topic with the rise and fall of free downloading file-share programs such as Napster, Bear Share and others. And averages of almost 500 millions files are illegally downloaded daily. Not only is this super illegal, this also has lead to a lot of students and adults who have been downloading to pay some serious fines and punishments from the music and file industry.

The Otaku Community, has the same form of internet piracy, it is known as Fansubs and Scanlations. And their history is as old as the otaku community itself. In the 70’s and 80’s fansubs were very few in numbers, and were extremely expensive to obtain a VHS of your favorite old school series. On average, many series such as Eva, Bubblegum Crisis, Macross, Akira, and so many others had to be fan subbed and were sold at rates of $40-$50 for just less than 3 hours of anime. For scanlators, they did it because up until the early 2000’s, manga was not a hot ticket item in the international otaku community. (Thank goodness, book publishers and distributors caught on right?)

Well, both are somewhat made the same way. You take the original (or RAW as we call it) version of the series, run them through a video editing program or a standard art program like Photoshop. And you begin to translate what they are saying in Japanese to whatever language you want to. Many fansub circles take them from one group and translate them into another language. (Such as Chinese to English and English to Spanish) and so on. From there you put it up on a hosting sever and TA-DA! Anime and Manga for FREE!!!

But of course, the anime/manga industry is not happy about that. And thus begins the ethical, legal, and otaku preference debate of fansubs and Scanlations. We are going to give you an official view of both sides, and then the DAOS will comment at the end.

The Pros of Fansubs and Scanlations

1) Fansubs and Scanlations, are FREE INTERNATIONAL ADVERTISING for a Japanese series. It sparks commotion and press for a series before it’s even licensed for any other country. Otakus also have the ability to keep up with what is hot and new from Japan that can spark their personal taste. And Japanese companies get to see what series will sell well in the international community and which ones will not, thereby selling their licenses accordingly.

2) Series that are subbed or scanned, usually get a bigger response from the otaku community than in comparison to many other series that get no press whatsoever. And international licensing companies such as Viz and Funimation, are paying attention to what is going on in the Fansubbing communities. If one series is being downloaded more than another, it means that when the official comes out on DVD, it will be a hit! Furthermore, for anime dealers, they have the ability to see what is hot in the anime scene and buy the merchandise that is going to be a hit. They add to their personal sales.

3) Fansubbers and Scanlators also are doing a favor for anime companies who have longer series and fans that are chomping at the bit for more material. This is also good for those series that are what we call “transitional series” where only episodes up to a certain number are licensed for international distribution but are still being produced and broadcasted in Japan. Series such as Naruto Shippuden, Bleach, Inuyasha, and Code Geass, are still big hits in the international community thanks in part to fansubs and Scanlations. To put it bluntly, fans have little wait time and stay interested in a longer series whereas many other series would have died out in popularity if there were no Fansubbing. Many fans would have never been able to keep up with the Dragonball franchise and the Sailor Moon one if it had not been for the rise of Fansubbing. (Dragonball ended with 550 episodes in six different arcs, Sailor Moon ended at about 300 in 5 different arcs.)

4) Fansubbing and Scanlations, are also a good way for fans to learn about a series, without having to pay a lot of money to watch it. While many of the original otakus are now of money making age and have the finances to buy a series outright. The newest generation of otakus does not have the funds to invest in a series on a whim. Fansubs and Scanlations, gives a fan a chance to see if they actually like a series enough to invest in buying it. So they do not have to waste their money and be really angry. Happy otakus means more money to the industry.

Furthermore, many fans are not impressed with the price of anime and mangas that are coming from distributors. Yes, it is cheaper than what it was almost 15-20 years ago, but the demographics of the otaku community has changed as well. While many otakus in the very beginning, were ages 18-25 and male, the age demographic now varies from 9-30 and a majority of the community is now FEMALE! As a repercussion of this, younger fans, do not have the money to spend on DVD’s that cost almost a month’s (or even two months) allowance.

Furthermore, if you break it down: The average anime DVD costs $20 bucks, and it has four episodes on it (and we‘re not including any bonus material here). So you divide that, and fans are paying 5 BUCKS PER EPISODE! That is quite a lot for a 30-minute show, when you compare to how much an episode of Grey’s Anatomy sells on I-Tunes (2 dollars per episode!) Yes, anime is still a very “special” item. But honestly, the average anime series is broken down into four or more volumes. So spend almost 20 bucks, per DVD set is SUPER EXPENSIVE! I know most fans of the series Full Metal Alchemist spent a good $150 to $200 buying the entire series! (And I bet they must be mad that they are releasing the series box sets this week too.)

5) A common reason also why many fans turn to subbing, is that many fans do not think that distributors should be the one and only group to tell otakus what is hot and what is not. The Otaku’s lifestyle is very well known for its freedom of choice. We can pick any anime/manga from any genre and love it! And you would find people who share the same love. Fansubs and Scanlations do that for otakus and give them a chance to determine for themselves what is awesome and what is not awesome.

6) But one of the biggest reasons however that most fans check out Fansubbing, is because they are edited very little in content. Many series when they come to the US or other countries become very heavily regulated and edited for content. While some of the reasons are practical ones such as editing to protect other copyrights, or editing and replacing culture references so that the international otaku community can understand, there has been a lot of controversy in the otaku community concerning the intensity of the edits, which leave episode either seriously butchered or left out all together. The biggest controversy to date has been the series One Piece. This was seriously cut down into nothing in order to be on TV. As a result, the company that formerly owned the series received a lot of negative feedback from fans for their serious editing. Since then, a new series has acquired the series and is now set on editing it as little as possible.

The Cons to Fansubbing and Scanlations

1) IT’S ILLEGAL!! Fansubbing and Scanlations are a violation of pretty much every copyright law in the world.

2) Going off the above point, many companies are now striking back against scanlators and fansubbers. The Tokyo District Court awarded 20.32 million yen (about US$178,000) to 11 manga artists on September 13, 2007, in a lawsuit against two homepage maintainers and two Internet companies that uploaded the artists' manga online. The artists included Tetsuya Chiba, Takehiko Inoue, Hiroshi Motomiya, Go Nagai, and Takao Saito. The plaintiffs had originally sought 20.5 million yen (US$180,000) in compensation in the copyright infringement case. (1)

And the same is happening with anime companies as well. On December 7, 2004, a Tokyo law firm representing Media Factory Inc., a Japanese animation company, sent letters and e-mails to the anime BitTorrent directory AnimeSuki and fansub groups Lunar Anime and Wannabe Fansubs requesting that they halt the fansubbing and hosting of all current and future fansubbing productions. AnimeSuki and Lunar Anime complied, and shortly after, other fansub groups such as Solar and Shining Fansubs followed suit. Despite the request, Wannabe Fansubs and a handful of other fansubbing groups, continued to produce fansubs of MFI anime series. To date, this has been one of the few legal actions taken by a Japanese anime company against the fansubbing community. (2) And Singapore is one of the biggest fansubbing countries, to the point where the President of Odex, the number one anime distributor in that country has begun a serious crackdown to the point of fines up to 5,000 dollars to each person, the youngest being a nine year old boy. (3)

3) While anime and mangas are being translated, licensed and distributed much faster than it has in the last ten years. The length of time it takes for it to finally hit the DVD shelves, is very much still long. Fansubs end up doing a disservice to the industry, because no one will want the DVD’s by the time the actually show up to the shelves.

4) While fansubbers and scanlators have an unofficial code of ethics. Many have broken that code and have no respect for the artists and the community supporting it. Many fansubbers and scanlators not only break this code, they sell the CD’s and pages for profit, instead of the original purpose of just spreading the love anime to those who don’t always have instant access to it.

~The fansubbers’/scanlators code of ethics states, that subbers and scanlators are allowed to translate a series on two conditions: 1) They do not EVER sell their work, or make it available for free downloading. 2) All translating must cease upon the license of a series to a US or closer distribution company, to promote actually buying the official series.

5) One of the biggest reasons that Fansubs and Scanlations are not a good thing, is that sometimes, they are not always accurate on their translating. Every true otaku, has at least one REALLY BAD import DVD of their favorite series. And they probably spent a lot of money on it too.. (Mine was the complete collection of Ouran High School Host Club. It was a good thing I did watch the fansubs, because this import DVD has HORRIBLE subtitles.)

6) When you bootleg, you are ripping the artists off money that they well deserve for designing an awesome series. This also makes companies less likely to invest in anime/mangas because they will be afraid to lose money. And this also makes licensing for other countries even more difficult, because it raises the rates at which an anime episode is licensed at. Many companies can pay up to $20,000 PER EPISODE for a series license. If they are being bootlegged, the rates get higher, and companies are less likely to buy it and bring it over. Which hurts many anime companies, as well as the otaku community cause we can’t get the DVD’s to watch our favorites over and over again.

The DAOS’ Final Judgment

We at the DAOS, promote all forms of legal distribution for anime and manga, but there is not denying, that fansubs and scanlations, play a vital role in a series being brought to the US or other country. Many series that are the talk of the otaku community, would have never gotten off the ground had it not been for fansubs and scanlations. Series such as “Death Note,” “Code Geass”, “Ouran High School Host Club” , and “Hayate The Combat Butler”, would not have such a big fan base as they do because of fansubs and scanlations.

One of the biggest series that has literally taken the entire world by storm actually is grateful to fansubbers. And that series is known as “The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.” In which both Bandai (The US licenser) and Kyoto Animation (the Japanese Company producing it) thanked all the fans who watched the original fansubs and making the series a hit all around the world. And we all already know that, the second season will be just as awesome as the first season.

“Cheating Otakus” as we at the DAOS like to call them, are those who discover a majority of their favorites by going thorough the fansub and scanlation circle and hearing from fellow otakus what is awesome and what is not. Instead of waiting for distribution companies to advertise about a series, they “cheat” and check out the series for themselves, if they love it, then they buy it. They do not, they just move onto another series that they hear about and come to check it out themselves. While being a “cheater” is not a bad thing, it is important to know that otakus that watching without eventually buying does really hurt the industry.

But the industry does face a rather big dilemma. How do they beat 21st century bootleggers and still test their series in an international market? In a world, where otakus can get anything, and find anything they want at their fingertips thanks to the internet, will the otaku community ever consider buying the actual official works? The answer to that question, is THEY CAN.. But they must think smart, the community is so good at getting series translated into any language, that within 24 hours of the television release of an anime series, it can be available for fansub downloading. The industry must think of ways to get gear out to fans not only faster, but at a rate where otakus can afford to watch and the industry can still profit off it.

We at the DAOS, have come up with a few suggestions for the industry to consider so they can keep up with the intense otaku demands, without hurting their advertising and sales.

1) Continue to allow fansubbing/scanlations until a series is completed in Japan. Once a series has completed it’s run in Japan, then add the series to a cease and desist list, which fansubbers must honor and respect. Any offenders who still host any series on that list, are then subjected to fines or have their sites shut down.

~ This not only allows otakus to continue watching without being hurt, but it gives licensing companies a chance to regulate fansubbers who would use the fansubs to make profit and therefore break their own code. It also still gives the industry a chance to test the international market to see if a series would do well in another market.

2) Downloads SHOULD NOT be made available. If they are made available, they must be burn-protected files. Most movies in the US have burn-proof movies for downloading, and that it. If they do have the power to be downloaded for personal use, they should be downloadable only through a pay site only. While there has been an increase in what I-Tunes and other downloading pay services that show anime, it is not being uploaded fast enough for otakus to keep buying.

3) Promote Anime Rental Companies like Netflix does for movies.. Otakus can just rent the series that they want to check out for a small price a month. It’s frugal for those who don’t have the money to buy a million DVD’s, and at the same time, many anime rental companies, sell their used DVD’s at a rate that is cheaper than buying it new! It is legal, and you can get your fix without doing something illegal!

(Shameless Promotion Note: The DAOS use Animelane.com, it has over 30,000 titles of anime and Asian TV shows on DVD. It is affordable, and we can keep up with what is hot in the anime world.)

4) Lower the prices of DVD’s!!! As I was mentioning earlier, most otakus are not banks. So we do not have a whole bunch of money to waste! Yes, anime is considered a “specialty” item, but with many big store distributors now selling animes and mangas, it is becoming less and less specialty items and become mainstream. If you lower the prices of series that have less than three or four volumes, fans are more likely to buy the entire series outright.

5) The cheapest way to promote anime today is still done by using the TV. Anime licensers and distributors have to thank Cartoon Network, for bringing many series to the states and making the bridge to the US easier. But at the same time, there is not enough anime on Cartoon Network to keep fans captivated long enough. And while there are new developments such as the Anime Network, Imagine Film, Asian TV, and the Viz Channel, those channels are only for those who pay for full fledged cable subscribers, and most fans, do not have full cable if cable at all. So the industry must continue to bring more anime to mainstream TV, in order to hook newer fans to the otaku community.

Fansubs and Scanlations while illegal, have become a seriously important aspect in the otaku community, and it is not going away for quite sometime. So the industry, must be able to keep up with the growing demand of the otaku community, in order to stay afloat. It is the DAOS’ hope that the anime/manga industry will stop trying to break down ways of fan distribution, and instead use it the community to their advantage.

So that ends this week’s topic of fansubbing and scanlations! We want to thank all our readers and apologize for our one-week hiatus! Starting with this issue, if you miss an issue, you can check them out, or download them to read at your own speed, at :iconprintedotkaus: DA site. All the issues of the DAOS will be there and they will be regulated by our awesome friend and member of the DAOS, James!

Next week we will begin our two week discussion about the otakus' favorite topic in the whole wide world... COSPLAYING!!!! So come check us out next week and find out what we are all about!

See you next week!
~Miss Red Rose~

Source Notes:
1) Manga Artist Win Lawsuit Against Uploaders
(Sept 2007/Anime News Network)
[link]

2) Recent Legal Action--From Wikipedia-
[link]

3) Anime Film Boss Gets Death Threats-(August 2007, The Strait Times)
[link]

Missed an issue? They are now available for deviation and download at our fellow members James DA spot! You can also get information on the DAOS Art Contests Rules and Questions at the same spot!

Check em’ out here:

Upcoming Releases: Remember that all release dates and actual prices vary from seller to seller, so remember to look around okay? Good Otakus..

Upcoming DVD Releases for 09/18/2007
Black Lagoon Vol. #3 (also w/limited edition)
Do You Know the Milfing Man
Dragon Ball Z Season 3 (of 0)
Full Moon Vol. #06
Fullmetal Alchemist Season 1 Set 1
Karin Vol. #3 (of 6)
Law of Ueki Vol. #09 (of 13)
Noein Vol. #5 (of 5)
Ramen Fighter Miki Vol. #1 (of 3)
Red Garden Vol. #1 (of 6)
This Ugly Yet Beautiful World DVD Collection (Thinpak)
YuGiOh GX Vol. #4

Upcoming Manga Releases for 09/18/2007
Banya: the Explosive Delivery Man (aka: Banxya) Vol. #05
Dokebi Bride Vol. #06
Emperor\'s Castle Vol. #04
Let\'s Be Perverts Vol. #04
Satsuma Gishiden Vol. #04
Dragon Eye Vol. #02