Or, ~A Weeb Defending Stealing Art~ “Support the industry you leech!” Of course watching anime through “other” means is not exactly the morally right thing to do, but it really is the only possible way to consume anime growing up as a teenager with no job and a family who have the means to pay for Netflix. However, even now that I am an adult with a bank account and stuff I still can’t bring myself to watch legal streams of anime simply because of they are official translations. For many people it might suffice but for some reason I can’t bring myself to find a valid reason why watching Crunchyroll’s translation and paying for it gives me more of an advantage over an arguably superior fan translation. Nothing against the translators working in the industry, who deserve my respect, but there is just something about how those official translations come across that I can’t help but feel like something is missing. Before moving forward, this is by no means an argument to cancel your subscription of choice, rather it is a case in support of fan translations and the impact they have had on my anime watching over the years. (Not to be confused with the justification of piracy or not supporting the animators!) Ever since I started watching anime exclusively on my laptop I have been locating fansubs for my anime. It’s more natural to me than going over to legal sites at this point. I guess the reason I started torrenting was due to a horribly inconsistent internet connection. If someone else in my house was streaming video I’d easily be on 200+ ping when playing online games making it almost unplayable. This was a time when money was tight in my family so having access to a decent internet connection was not really an option, considering we didn’t get cable or Wifi until around 2012. Before that it we used a landline and a wired internet connection for an early 2000’s Windows XP Dell computer. So out of consideration for everyone else at home, and for the sake of avoiding buffering during my anime, I’d torrent stuff at night when everyone else went to sleep. It soon became a habit of downloading a new show every week and have it sit on my hard drive waiting for me when I woke up. This was how I really got used to using torrents and knowing about fansubs. I think it was Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood for me, the first anime I torrented fansubs for. Thinking back on it, it was probably a really bad 480p mp4 encode or something. Back then it didn’t really bother me much and I was mostly oblivious to quality and codecs so I took what I was able to get me hands on. I think I was just using VLC to play video as well, if that says anything about my technical know-how of watching anime back then. Regardless, it was because of this series that I got into torrenting anime and realizing how important fansubs really are. The main reason I prefer fansubs is because the localization. There is argument to be had over more literally or less literal translations, so watching a legal stream of an anime might not have the same effect as a fan translation. I fall under the latter party since I prefer the Japanese words kept untranslated if there is a narrative justification for it. Honorifics also fall into this argument for me, as they add a lot to the structure of relationships in said anime. For example, characters appending “-sama” to the end of a name shows that they think highly of whoever they are talking about. This is important in a show like Mahouka since Miyuki refers to her brother as “Onii-sama.” Those of us who have been watching anime for a while already have a basic understanding of honorifics so we know the different levels of respect implied between “Onii-chan” and “Onii-sama.” However if you are a new anime fan this might not seem important to you because official translations usually don’t translate honorifics. So not seeing them might lead you believe they are unimportant and have some meaning lost in translation. I rewatched Welcome to the NHK earlier this year with Oyasumi’s fansubs and it made a world of difference in my experience with the show. I originally watched Welcome to the NHK on DVD with Funimation subs about two years ago and loved it. I can’t say that the fansub necessarily made me like NHK anymore than I already did, but it made watching the show much more of a cultural experience than before. For example, Oyasumi kept colloquial words and phrases intact such as “Aniota” referring to an anime otaku, “Kimo-ota,” a combination of the phrase Kimochi Warui and otaku, and “Natsucomi” meaning Summer Comiket. For me, knowing weeaboo level of Japanese, these untranslated phrases really add more depth to the character interactions than I remembered from my original watch. I kinda knew that “kimochi warui” meant the speaker was feeling bad or sick, so seeing other characters referring to Yamazaki as a kimo-ota really added more nuance to this simple scene, and it was important to the narrative as well. For context, Yamazaki had been interested in a girl he knew from a game development class and had began talking to her. He was under the impression that she was interested in him so he was feeling hopeful for the future of their relationship. However, Satou saw the girl and her friends saying that “Yamazaki’s looks aren’t bad, but he’s a kimo-ota.” To me there is a big difference in this scene compared to the official translation from Crunchyroll which reads “He doesn’t look that bad, but he’s a creepy otaku!” (Oyamusi pic) (CR pic) The official translation makes it seem like the girls are just normal people who think Yamazaki is just a weird otaku. But in reality they call him a kimo-ota, expressing their feelings of disgust or discomfort (“kimochi warui”) when referring to him. This is just one example from a single anime so it might not be hold the same importance in every other show, but there is something else fansubs add. Similar to my point on localization, I really like when fansubs keep colloquial words relevant to Japan intact. I have learned more about Japanese culture in anime than I have in a history class because of these little translation notes. Of course overuse of translation notes is annoying but I like the little aside they give for the translator to explain something, like with WinD’s translation of Higurashi no naka koro Ni Kai. It was minor, but I really liked how they added a translation note for this scene in episode 21 when a character explains a plan as “H173,” which can coincidentally be read as “Hinami” as in “Hinamizawa” which is the setting of Higurashi. (picture) Not just in Higurashi, but in other shows with fansubs I appreciate learning about various Japanese food like “Kagami-mochi” from Lucky Star or “Ohagi” from Higurashi. (Picture) I’d otherwise not know about them. Even with simple meals like Onigiri feel more traditional when written in romanization rather than rice balls. Localizing too much can really take away from a unique Japanese cultural experience that really can only come from anime. For many people, anime or manga is the first exposure to Japan and the culture they have. (Video games are a whole other topic since there is a history of awful western localizations in the past.) Assuming you don’t already know Japanese, it’s the job of the translators to make the dialogue understandable while retaining the culture it is from, out of respect. Maybe I’m just a big weeb, but I feel like there is more I can take out of an anime if I understand the cultural or linguistic significance of certain moments in a show. I’m sure we all take this knowledge for granted since we pick up on little references here and there, but how about watching an anime with a non-otaku? I know when I showed my mom Koe no Katachi and my brother Death Note, I had to pause the TV on multiple occasions to explain the nuance of certain cultural aspects of Japan that found their way into the anime we were watching. Like in Koe no Katachi when Nishimiya attempts to say “suki” to express love but it sounds more like “tsuki” meaning moon, creating a painful misunderstanding. Anime is Japanese, and I feel like there is more to be taken out of a show if you understand the culture more. It’s thanks to all those fansubs I watched that I can get more out of my anime, and that is what’s important to me. -------------------------------------------------- Further reading: Fansubing in the 2000’s: http://blogsuki.com/archives/2016/03/06/7053/ Short History: https://github.com/bibanon/bibanon/wiki/The-People%27s-History-of-Fansubs Recommended Viewing: Otaku no Video Genshiken