Are anime fans are getting too Fanatical?

[Seraph]

I was reading an column over at anime news network which, in some pretty harsh language, blasted people who obtained fansubs and justify it by saying number of things such as anime companies are evil or all anime should be free.  The huge long debate over that this created(some over the writer's opinion, some his harsh language, and then some who misread his opinions) got me thinking.

Are the anime fans starting to take their fandom way over the top?  Its one thing to download fansubs because the anime isn't out offically in the US, but another to say its a person's right to get anime for free.  Common arguement for "free" anime comes from that fact that Japanese people supposely dun have to pays for their's.  Others argues that fansubs are way better then the official verison(which is sometimes true) in every situation.  It doesn't change the fact you are still technically stealing.  

I see some of this showing whenever there is a dub vs. sub flame wars(debates usually start becoming flame wars it seems) even though all DVDs come with both sub and dub verisons.There are fans that are extremely picky in their translation(seems someone got upset over "restroom" becoming "bathroom" in the naruto manga).   Particularly annoying issue for me is, many of the sub fans are so devoted to their way of watching anime they looked down on anyone that perfers to watch the dub verison(even if the dub is rather good).  Sometimes, they even get a skewed view of an anime due a rather poor fansub(but they assume its "perfect" since its an fansub) so they cry to heavens when they see a correct translations from anime companies(not to say fansubs all suck or that all companies are perfect).  

Of course, it is a major issue if this change affects the story/character in some way, but some censorship is really rather minor.  Like I've heard people complained that the "nipple" from naruto's sexy no jutsu was censored......I dun see how a missing minor body part is going to hurt the manga in any way.  

I'm sure all of us like the minizie the "lost in translation" that happens when you translate anime/manga, but there should be a line drawn as there will always be something lost in dubs and in subs(although, potenically less then dubs).  Comparing one anime dub to another really isn't a good comparison imo.  Some anime are simply translate better/easier then others.  And we really shouldn't blast/look down on another person just perfer something differently then you do.

[oishiidesuyo]

I went to Joshua Seth's panel, where he talked about dubbing anime ... and it's not all easy. Most of the people who write the English scripts haven't even seen the anime/manga. As for dubbing anime, they want to match the mouth movement, so give'em a break if they're not the same words.
Although I do prefer sub, I agree with Kurimono that there are CHOICES on the dvds whether you want dub or sub.

but if you insist ...
go work for an anime company thing. they need you.

[Nyco27]

You're always going to have some people that think so closemindedly that all they can do is scream, flame, and since screaming and flaming tends to be more obvious than good natured enjoyment it get blown out of proportion, creating many steriotypes.

IMO when it comes to sub vs dub, fansub vs industry, the more people actually buy the anime, the more of it there will be. Stick to complanies that do good jobs on both sub and dub. If you don't know what companies are better, ask, investigate and in the end, make your own choice. Part of existing in this world today is being a informed consumer.

Anime is working to be "free" anime network is slowly spreading and that is about as free as anyone will ever get it. You want to own a DVD of your fave anime? Buy it like the Japanese have to.

but some censorship is really rather minor. Like I've heard people complained that the "nipple" from naruto's sexy no jutsu was censored...

Your right, it doesn't hurt the story, but someone worked hard to draw that picture and someone else worked hard to color it - and others to animate it. It's there because the artists feels it should be there. Covering it up is simply because American corperations and the steriotypical Americans can't deal with the human form. It also leads to more distruction of the anime like where they took out the acidental kissing scene in Naruto. We still know what happens, why even bother? Because as a nation we are still very homophobic and this is a good representation of that. If the erasure of one nipple is so minimal, than wouldn't be easier, less time consuming, and better if it wasn't messed with at all? Furthermore, it indicates that there could be a lot of other things taken out  - which in Naruto, there are. I haven't even seen an uncut version and I know there is a lot missing. For one thing, all brodcast anime is missing 5 mins of time for more ads. On top of that all the work it takes to remove blood, homosexual inuendo, sex inuendo, the nipple is unnessisary when we could just slap a 14 and over sticker on it and call it good.

Sorry that was long, but as you can tell I feel pretty stongly about this. That *does not* mean that I am not up for a *friendly* discussion on the subject.

[Seraph]

@Nyco
the issue that makes me wonder is if those closed minded anime fans are getting too numerous.  The case could very well be they're being very loud, making it seem like there is more then in reality.

As for becoming a informed customer, there is a particular problem when those closed mind fans start shouting out their skewed/mistaken views out to world and bash any different views.

As for censorship, I generally see it as trying either A) broaden their audience or B) playing it safe to avoid very painful lawsuit.  Usually, censors only an appear when the show is on public TV.  Manga is a different story however.  In the example of Naruto, the censorship is very inconsisent.  It seems to me, in manga world, the censorship lines isn't very clear so some play it safe(to where it hurts the manga) and others are really inconsistent.  Generally, like yourself, I dun really mind censorship in anime as long it doesn't hurt story.  Only part I would disagree with you would on the part of homosexual content.   Although, that sounds more about you disliking an cultural aspect of a large part of the country rather then what they're censoring.

As for the "free" anime, the issue I see is that some people argue that it should perfectly okay to get fansubs(even when its released in the US) and in a few case, to even buy bootlegs!  Arguements supporting this is either the fact that Japanese viewers dun pay for it(which isn't true or if it is, then the ads pay for it) or some notion it should be free for the stake of being free.

I welcome *friendly* but I'm seeing a lot less of it these days sadly.

[Negima]

I figure in every topic, hobby, interest, etc. there will always be a group of people who will take it too far to a point.  What I don't understand is that it feels like when a person reaches a certain level of interest in something, some people consider that to be the bottom acceptable level.  Everyone needs to start somewhere.  If you're interested in the Japanese language, great, you can watch it sub if you wish.  If not and you prefer the English voices, that's fine as well, no one's stopping you.  Yet some people feel they should force their opinions on others saying things like "How can you like it that way??!!!  Watch it like this or DIE!!"  If they were to sit down for just a second they would realize that shouting at them to change someone's opinion would have about the same affect if it were the other way around.  If you feel that way about something, that's okay, you can feel about it like that, just don't force it down someone else's throat.  For example, I really dislike the US version of Cardcaptor Sakura to the point that it hurts.  But if someone were to say they really liked it, I would try to respect that opinion of theirs as best as I could.  Unfortunately, there will always be that group of people who feel they are unquestionably right and things should always go their way.  My advice: never get into a pee fight with them.  Definition of a pee fight: An argument or contest that 1.) Has no meaning, 2.) Is considered ridiculus, and 3.) At the end, it's always messy.

As far as my views go for some of these topics, when I comes to fansubs, I'm not really up to those sort of things but I'll watch them if they're my only choice.  Part of it has to do with some fansubs being incorrect, off track, or the picture could be off somehow (this after watching some of the Hong Kong Subs of anime).  I don't download fansubs but that more has to do with my not trusting downloading large files from the internet (is very protective of his laptop).

The changing of words?  So long as it doesn't alter the story, it's fine by me.  I know they need to alter the wording due to cultural differences or to go along with the mouth.  I don't really see why people should go berserk if they changed "restroom" into "bathroom."  That should be considered a droplet in the ocean. There will always be something lost in translation and dub companies need to change the wording a little to make it work.  You can't have "oyasuminasai" and have the US version just say "good night"; there would be five empty mouth movements.

*Sigh*
I think I'm going to stop there before I go too off topic or lose focus.
This is Mahou Sensei Negima, class dismissed.

[Nyco27]

There's also the fact that anime is being opened to a broader audiance and by simple percentiges if 10% of the anime watchers are closeminded jerks, and there's 10 times the amount of anime watchers than there were a few years ago then there will be a hell of a lot more people screaming their heads off.

On the note of homosexuality... yeah, Im going to a "liberal" college (Sothern Oregon University) and there's still some serious threat of gay bashing, beating, and harrassment and it really pisses me exactly how intolerent and cruel people can be. A while back I actually saw a bumper sticker (in a church parking lot) that said "Tolerance isn't tolerable." It made me shudder.

Nyco

[rygoody]

I'm too poor to buy all the anime I watch.

[Sinaj]

I've come across my fair share of anime fanatics as well, and one thing they all seem to have in common is that they have an elitist attitude. It is as if they think they "discovered" japanese anime first and therefore no one else should have access to it but a select few, and those select few must watch it in it's original form. Part of me wonders if it's a deep issue they have stemming from something else, becuase it has a lot to do with "I was the first in my school/neighborhood/college to know what anime is and watch it, so how dare you let another people in on the secret that makes me feel cool because I don't want to feel normal".

I'm not saying the all anime fanatics are like this, but it's an all to familiar trait that I keep running into over and over. When I lived in Seattle we used to call bike riding people who though they owned the rode Bike Nazis. I'm finding myself referring to these type of anime fantatics as Anime Nazis.

And the deal with the American editors changing things for the American audience... They did get approval to edit it from the creators, and if I get to be a fan of an anime shown like that, I am always curious to see the original version anyway.  I truly believe that Amercian edits drive sales of the original because people would rather own that version, and yet they "get hooked" on the series from the American version (when it's shown on TV that is).

[Negima]

@Sinaj
I know what you mean about people thinking they have done something for a longer time or were the first to see this or that.  The other day I saw an example of this: I was in the local comic store, a kid (I'm guessing upper-middle or lower-high school) walks in, talks with the clerk and mentions that he has been coming for so-many years, and it sounded like he was trying to find something that he was one-up on the clerk.  I didn't have the heart to walk over to him and say I'd been going there for 15 years.

I'm always curious too about how many people who first get into anime not realize that the shows on cable have been editted somewhat.  I can't really think back to what it was like too much, but I remember finding out shows like Sailor Moon being editted a long time after the show was on cable.

[the_wind_the_sea]

It seems to me that anime is seemingly becoming a political thing. That there are "Conservatives" and "Liberals." If you can get my meanings on both, then we're all good. To me, the people who are all rawr about the fansubs and subs are the "Conservatives" and the people who don't really care are the "Liberals."

There always extremes to each end of the spectrum. Personally, I look at it from a middle or "Moderate" point of view. You have got to be able to enjoy everything in the world of anime, or you shall miss something.

Then again, I think I spend too much time thinking and studying about my goverment class.

[BigGuy]

On the fansub subject, as I ran an anime club for a while we only watched fansubs of unlicensed shows, Animesuki.com only lists torrents of shows that are unliscensed, when an American company announced it had bought the rights we stopped watching it in club.
 I usualy buy shows as they come out after seeing how I like it as a fansub.
 On the subject of people being too serious about anime: Ahem, IT'S CARTOONS! Some people just have to have something to be upset about and sometimes those things are Anime.

[Seraph]

Something to remember when comparing dubs is that comparing one dubbed anime quality to another doesn't always work as some are able to come out in english better then the other.  Sure, there are many great dubs out are there, but anime companies won't always be able to reach that lvl of quality every single time as human error and what they have to work with affects what they can do.  Sometimes its because of the company, the producer/director, the voice actors, or just simply the anime they working on.

I'm sure many people remember Naruto dub debate a few weeks ago.  I personally felt much of critisim of the dub went overboard.  Its one thing to dislike its censorship/mispronuication of names/voice actors, but quite another I believe to hate it all to hell and call people who actually like it stupid.  There was also a lot of people saying they didn't like how it would potenially create a large new set of fans.  That elitist attitude, mentioned above by Sinaj and Negima, is something I find particularly annoying and I have seen it in here and in the bakazoku.org forums during debates over the Naruto dub.  Some of it is more flaming the dub/new fans it creates then an actual debate on the dub quality.

[HaSanGo]

I pretty much said it my Naruto post:

I personally never understand the Dub vs Sub battles. They are almost as bad as the Manga vs Anime or the Movie vs Book battles. All pointless, no understanding of the actual process of how production works and can't seem to except it for what it simply is... entertainment. If you like the Dub great, watch it. If you like the Sub great, watch it but quit the whole elitist arguments about how they don't understand American anime audience or Japanese method is so much better. These aren't targeted towards people who have already seen them and have fan dubs honestly; they are targeted at a much broader audience.

How many people were actually at the Dubbing Demonstration with Toshi? How many people actually paid attention, listened and watched how much work goes into just a few minutes of work?

The first thing when a new anime comes out is people complain about the dubbing and how they changed this or that. They make assumptions based that they don't care, they just change whatever they want. Sure there is probably one or two cases to that but this isn't like dubbing back in the 80s, everything is much better. A lot of consideration is taken into even the slightest changes.

Most American audiences react differently to certain things that only mainstream anime fans would understand, it is like an inside joke. In order for anime industry to keep making money they have to target a broader audience not just the anime elite. Certain things due to cultural differences do need to happen otherwise it wouldn’t sell.

The Japanese language doesn't directly translate into English perfectly, if they dubbed the literal Japanese the flaps (mouth motions) would never match. So yes adjustments have to be made. Not to mention anyone who thinks they can do better I would challenge them to try. It is voice acting, it isn't simply reading a script and it is 10 times harder than normal acting. The only tools a voice actor has to work with is their voice. They also have to match their dialogue to the flaps.

I agree there are some anime that are better than dubbed, just as there are some that are better subbed. Just watch it, enjoy it or don't but why does everyone have to rip everything apart.

I would like to also add that most Sub vs Dub battles happen because Sub fans want justification to have their Sub version, which they believe is legal. It actually isn't legal and is still covered under international copyright law. However since it isn't a market they are in, it also generates publicity they don't pursue it. They are typically people who are not making purchases for the anime because one reason or another, usually can't afford it. So instead I'll complain that the quality is bad, that dubbing is awful or that it is censored so I am not going to buy it. But I'll watch my illegal version.

Don't get me wrong either I am not completely against fan-subs, I have them despite knowing they are illegal. I usually get them to determine if I want to purchase an anime when it comes to the states. I purchase all my anime though once it hits US distribution because I believe in supporting the distributors. I remember how hard it was to get anime years ago and how large the gap between released in the US as compared to when it was released in Japan. We are have about a 6 month - 1 year turn around now for new anime in Japan before it reaches US, when it used to be 2-5 years.