How to Fix the Industry: Move On
It’s time to move on.
We all know anime doesn’t make itself. For some reason the fact that Japanese (and Chinese and Korean and Vietnamese and Thai) animators make a shiny pocket lint for their hard work always bothered me. Maybe it would’ve bothered me less if fewer anime fans in the West are not whiny. But like you, I’m powerless to do anything about it.
I’d like to think we are at a crossroad in the progression of human history. And I think with the advent of internet and the slowly and surely bridging of the digital divide, humanity will get to a place that telecommunication will transform the world from the top to bottom again, much like how A. G.’s telephone did.
At the same time, what is so fearful, to me, is that moment may have came and went. It’s like some silly fictional prediction of the Rapture–like a thief in the night, some are taken to the heavens for eternity while others remain. Will the same happen for salvation through our technological and social advancements? In a world where change is exponential, will the outdated and antiquated remain?
We had to ask ourselves: did the anime industry miss the boat to digital media heaven? Or are they on a boat with Enma Ai, with a one-way ticket?
Okay, I’ll drop the fearmongering.
Back on topic: the greatest enemy of today’s era are those who resist change for the wrong reasons. Hopefully this is not a wrong reason–
The anarchist in me embraces concept identifying with the free market. Things like “0-day warez” have supporters that argue against the monopolistic nature of copyright and it doesn’t help that there is a software monopoly driving much of the world. And after all, my hard-earned money is no different than yours? Pry it out of my cold, dead hands? It’s a very capitalist view of the world, but it is one shared first and foremost by a lot of people, as I know better now, who are outdated and antiquated. All these pirates are doing the same thing the black-suited corporate whores are doing. It is exactly this kind of thinking, in a false dichotomy, that binds and ties us, collectively, to the dark ages of the late 20th century.
And I think the Japanese, as a tribe of businesspeople, are great at resisting change. They definitely fear the internet much like how Hollywood did in 1996. It is for good reasons, too; the internet is a massive copyright infringement machine, and that is the literal truth. Script kiddies and yours truly have no problem prying mass media out of their hands, and that is why there’s an anticircumvention provision in the US copyright laws that makes these things illegal.
But that’s because mass media is meant to be seen broad and wide, even if sometimes it’s like shota rape or non-shota rape or fake rape or anything else that makes you want to wash your eyes out with bleach. Or Bleach. Whatever it may be, at the end of the day these entertainment or art form or genre or medium or whatever we call are a form of communication, and these audience-less communications want an audience. It’s hard to keep down on good news if you want to tell anyone at all. It’s as natural as expecting water to flow down hill and a fire to be hot. It’s like expecting the ghost that haunts you to have a grudge against you, like callers on Hell Girl’s revenge website.
And equally natural, I guess, is when control breeds a culture of anti-control. Lessig’s presentation here serves that purpose much better than my pathetic attempt to stir up alarm. And fansubbing is exactly an example of this, at least today. Its noble heritage is one that can be characterized by passion, obsession, and all the things that makes terms like “grassroot” and “word-of-mouth” positive marketing terms to use to sell your spiel. The changing times, social norms, drive this rebellion fueled by technology.
The world begs for someone who can show us the way out of this 20th century mindset. WTB the right change PST?
Still, not all changes are good. Today’s fansubbing is probably a good example of a bad change. Most people have long ceased to view fansubs as an expression for the love of the show. My pet peeves with different fansubbers (and people who like this stuff) desecrating OP/ED and credits and the anime’s real estate with fancy translation notes runs along these lines. Let’s leave aside terms like egosubbing and speed subbing, but equally so, fans have grown reliant on fansubs as an outlet for entertainment. They think of it no different than a game they could be playing or a book to be read or a TV show playing on the TV. It’s how I plan my night, anyways.
What’s so shocking is how we rely on fansubs to the extent that it gained a form of validity. We compare legit things to it without much a thought. The general disregard of fansubbing’s shadowy status is not particularly alarming, but rather the disregard of commercial product’s legit status is. Just how does the fansub of a show compare to a legitimate release of a show? Are they really the same? When I spend money and buy some DVD, is it really worth no more than the fansubs of the same show I watched 6 months ago?
In fact, I think this is probably what makes this guy’s argument work (despite it being lame and wrong). I agree that people rely on fansubs too much. It’s gotten to the degree that even if a company legitimately wants to change things and offers an operational alternative to fansubs, people will still cling to fansubs, if only because the price is right. Now in some cases indeed the price is right (legitimately), but if we choose fansubs over the legit stuff, motivated by malice instead of benevolence, then it would have completely transform the nature of fansubbing to something 100% not legitimate (not mentioning the legality of it). The passion would no longer be what drives people to it, but merely a spirit of poverty and disregard for the inherent value of what was once worth thousands of dollars in imported laser disc-ness and SVHS tapes and matching hardware into worthless bits sitting on a $75 hard disk drive.
What’s probably new, as I realized lately, is also that change itself has its costs in this context. You could very well have a free and legal alternative, but people might still prefer fansubs because it’s more comfortable and it is what people are used to. It’s more fun going to IRC and hang with other fans while sharing a work, than to pull down some pant-less, flash-based video every Thursday night. But I guess that’s not something people value in this generation of bittorrenting fandom; anime is anime no matter what it’s printed on, or how, or who had to get hit on the head to make it happen.
[Satoshi Kon’s recent comment about the disposable nature of anime really hits home for me on this point.]
As much as people debate the nature of fansubs, I think it is hiding well the true question: what is the nature of legitimate commercial releases? What do you think makes a commercial release legitimate; as in, it is more desirable than fansubs? This is the first question we have to ask ourselves, as buyers and sellers.
And this is why we need to move on. We should be focused on making legitimate releases better, faster, cheaper, more accessible, more profitable, more meaningful, more sustainable, and more ethical. Some say it’s a dialog, and it indeed is one of the first ways the fans can affect change, if it’s only among other fans.
We need to start caring about things that actually matters. Like, having a bijillion DVDs. And for the most part, it has nothing to do with fansubbing.
Honestly, this entire fixation with fansubs that has sprung up lately has gotten far to much attention for something that can’t be solved. It’s like trying to stop a forest fire with buckets of water: admirable intention, but in the end, you didn’t stop the fire from spreading.
While I understand media companies can’t ignore illegal distribution completely, I think they need to focus much less on it. They can try whatever they want: sue fansubbers, take down sites, DRM the hell out of everything, etc… but in the end, these things won’t change anything. There’s nothing that can be digitally distributed that won’t be copied and shared. That’s just the nature of the world now.
On the other hand, fans, also, need to pay less attention to them. We constantly bicker between ourselves over the ethic and morality of it, but we’ll never all agree on that. I doubt the next generation would even argue over it as much as the older fans do. At the end, all we can do is try to make people aware of what’s going on and ask that they take some responsibility and buy some stuff now and again. That’s about all that’s going to work from a fan point of view.
Still, not all hope is lost. Things like Xam’d, for instance, do show a way that provides quick, easy, and special access to people. While they still haven’t nailed the price, as you, I, and many others have said, it’s still a good jumping point for more things like it. And, while it’s still on torrent sites, you can’t replicate the high quality or release time that they have on them now.
Either way, once everyone works towards more instant access across the globe for stuff, we’ll have a better marketplace. I don’t think we’ve missed that trip to digital heaven for the anime industry, but it’s nearing and they don’t have much longer to get on board.
But that’s because mass media is meant to be seen broad and wide, even if sometimes it’s like shota rape or non-shota rape or fake rape or anything else that makes you want to wash your eyes out with bleach. Or Bleach
That cracked me up, just so you know. XD
A lot of what you’ve said here hits home with me. My very first fansubs were 3rd generation VHS tapes with audio issues … I still have those tapes, and I plan on keeping them. They’re a part of my heritage, dammit! Anyway…
I remember the first time I got a fansubbed video file from an IRC channel, too (it was Soldats, I believe … they were subbing Final Fantasy: Unlimited). I had a 56k connection, and the XDCC bot kept terminating my download every 5 minutes as I couldn’t maintain a speed of >4kbps. I sat there and restarted my download until I got the file and was AMAZED with the ease I’d managed to get it. It was right there! I didn’t have to pay for shipping or a VHS tape or wait 2 or 3 weeks for them to get to me. It took a little patience, but it went a long way.
BitTorrent is a wonderful thing, but it has “de-humanized” the community quite a bit. I kinda miss trolling through people’s fservs (and setting up my own) in a DOS-esque environment while chatting with other people who’re just as crazy about anime as I was (and still am).
I do like to buy the DVDs when I can, but for a blasphemous reason: dubs. I owe my interest in the genre to dubs, and I’m fascinated with how they’ve evolved. I’ve been called “lazy” for liking dubs, but that’s not really the case. Really, anime is ART, and I’m 100% positive the director’s original intention wasn’t to have little bits of text flashing at the bottom of the screen. I also love localization, especially when it’s done well. I like seeing how jokes are translated so that they’re funny from an English POV. When the Japanese jokes are left to their literal translation and explained at length with asterisk’d notes that cover even more of the screen … I find that it takes away from the experience, even though it IS educational.
All industry fears new technology at first, it seems. It’s either sink or swim, and if they are committed to making money they’ll start doggy-paddling their way through uncharted waters. I have a lot of faith in the anime/manga industry, I think it’ll survive but it’s gonna take some lessons learned the hard way. That’s just how things work.
There will always be whiners, elitists, purists and snobs in general … it can be hard to ignore them, extremely frustrating to deal with them, but thankfully … they don’t make up 100% of the fanbase.
This is a terrible bit of rambling, and for that I apologize. -.-
[…] Thanks to omo as well for all the intelligent participation in the comments, here’s his take on […]
Well I appreciate your comments. You two are both right, and everyone else will have their own opinion on this. But the bottom line has to be one that is reasonable. I think that’s just something hard to get out from this fanbase, which is quite diverse to begin with.
I’ve been thinking about this for a long time I really think we are at the dawn of a new age. The Digital Revolution has really taken off and I don’t think any of us and especially the business world know what to do with ourselves. Thanks to this new age we can become more cynical and put more thought into whether we should by your products are not thanks to the incredible information monster known as the internet. The internet allows us all to become our own critics and find out the whether something is worth spending our hard earned cash on.No longer are we at the mercy of retailers forcing us to try out new things and giving us the big fack you when we don’t like it (or at the very least a majority of of whatever the product is offering offers.) I think industry may be stepping in the right direction like what Gonzo is doing right now with distributing some of their newest series online and I really hope to see more of that. I think the more the industry as a whole is willing to do this the more it may one day become accepted. Kinda killing your opponent not by force but taking away the major reason why he exist in the first place.
I also think the only way anime will have a much better chance of succeeding in the States as legitimate form of entertainment like Itunes and the like would be to improve or internet infrastructure/ high speed ISPs & their plans but that’s another topic. XD
I feel inspired to do a post on the morals inherent in fanboyism : O
[…] 30, 2008 in Uncategorized Partly inspired, somehow, by Omo’s latest industry-based post, I’m going to talk about the sort of moral code and unspoken laws that exist between hardcore […]