Over at ANN they just posted an article about how Bang Zoom is going to stop dubbed Anime. Well here just read it:
“Eric P. Sherman, President and CEO of the anime dubbing company Bang Zoom! Entertainment, has posted an editorial on the AnimeTV blog on Saturday, urging fans to buy anime instead of watching it via fan-subbed videos. In the “Anime – R.I.P.” editorial, Sherman wrote that if fans do not support anime by buying it legally, “I can guarantee you that this time next year, Bang Zoom won’t be bringing you anymore English language versions of it.”
Sherman added in his editorial, “If people don’t resist the urge to get their fix illegally, the entire industry is about to fizzle out.” Sherman cited the demises of Geneon Entertainment USA, Central Park Media, and ADV Films, as well as the January 2009 layoffs at Bandai Entertainment, as past examples. In a boldfaced statement in the editorial, Sherman wrote that “anime is going to die.”
Sherman also wrote about the rise of streaming content online, but added that “so far, there are no successful ways to monetize online entertainment. Not so that creators can afford to produce and distribute quality content.” Source ANN
Well let me get this out of the way first. I love well made fansubs. I download them, watch’em, even support must of them. But I do believe if you can buy or rent it then do so when you can. Ok with that being said. It’s a little hard to feel sorry for these big Anime distributors because they say things like fansubs are killing Anime in the US but it’s not, just their company’s. And I have to say it’s mostly their fault. When I first got into Anime I preferred dubbed to subs even though I thought that the voice work sucked. But then I started to check out the sub versions and I noticed that the scripts were different, some times very different. And the Japanese acting was better in most cases. I started to see online how many fans hated the changed scripts but even to this day it’s still happening in US Anime.
And there enters problem number one, most big Anime distributors don’t listen to the fans that buy their dvds and back in the day the fans did buy Anime dvds. But then fansubs started to produce better versions of Anime like the same week it would come out in Japan. So fans would download them. Then when the same Anime would come to the US, the version produced just did not match the quality that the fan subbers produced like a year in advance. And when you think about it that’s kinda sad, just a small group with like no funding can make something better than a big name Anime company. And then two I think most fans would have still bought Anime dvds but the prices were and still are a joke. Three episodes on one dvd for $20 to $25 bucks, when you can buy most full seasons of a US TV series for $30 to $40 bucks. And what you get is not as good as what you can download. That’s just bad business and now they are going out of business. I sorry but it’s just hard to feel bad about it.
And they say that Anime will die, umm… no it won’t. It will just go back the the way it started, for the fans by the fans. But even with all this being said, I still believe that we should support legal Anime when you can and download fansubs only when the series has not been licensed in your country. Because right is right, legal is legal. And when you buy Anime legally the Japanese company’s that make Anime get a return on their work with means more Anime for all. In the end I do not think that fansubs are evil or even wrong when watched how they should be. So if you can rent Anime or buy it you should before you download it.
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