Many people will tell you it is the fansubber’s fault, because they release material before it is licensed onto the Internet, and let other people otherwise unable to view it, able to view it with subtitles. Others blame the Economy, and bootleggers. Others blame all of these factors.
I blame the companies.
Why should American fans wait months or years for their favorite series to be picked up by an American Anime company and aired on Television when all they have to do is log onto the Internet, search their favorite Torrent site, and download the series right to their computer, a process all of which takes maybe 2 hours for one episode. I don’t blame people for getting online and downloading fansubs, after all, there really are no downsides to them, besides taking up hard drive space.
The American companies like to blame their problems on the fansubbing community, a community in which has no chance to stand up against them, and are doing what the big companies can do, for free, faster, and sometimes better. If the American Companies would license series quicker, of have both the Japanese version and the American version being worked on at the same time, and released at the same time for more popular series, fansubbing would fade out quickly. What companies like Funimation don’t understand is that people don’t like waiting for something they could get right now, and the high price and economic situation in the United States is making people less and less enthusiastic to buy the high priced DVDs, some of which I have seen cost in the thirty dollar range, just for one.
How companies fix this problem? Well, first off they can stop treating it as a problem, and start treating it as an alternative solution too a bigger problem. The main problem at hand is us Americans do not want to wait months or years for our favorite series to be Licnsned, dubbed, and aired on Television, then shell out a fortune to get the DVDs, we just want to watch the series. Fansubs let us do that, and at our own pace by the way. On Television the schedule is set, you MUST wait a certain amount of time for the next episode to come on. With fansubs, you can watch them at your own leisure, without having to plan your day around when your favorite series’ episode comes on.
Trying to fight the fansubbing community is futile. Since the invention of the Internet, and it’s now widespread use, it is almost impossible to control what people do. The companies need to copy what the fansubbers are doing, and bring the Anime to their audeince quicker and at their leisure.
My suggestion is that Major series such as Naruto and Bleach, which are currently airing in the Japan and the United States, though with a large gap in episodes, are synchronized. Have the Japanese and American company both work together, the Japanese doing the episode as usual, only with the Americans dubbing it as they are making it, so it can be released in Japan and the United States at the same time. To make fansubbing even more useless, they need to enact a streaming website, for a possible monthly fee, that lets you watch your favorite episodes online, and at your own leisure.
Of course, this will not stop fansubs, but it will make them less attractive to people, and will provide an alternative. Currently, the only alternative to watching a fansub of your favorite series is waiting. Nobody likes waiting, and I am tired of waiting on the American Anime Industry to make their move. It is so logical, yet they are completely ignoring it.
In all, the problem is not the fansubbing or the bootleggers, the problem is the time that American Audiences have to wait to receive their Anime, and that prices are too high. It can be fixed, and it can be fixed easily, it just takes a little bit of cooperation from America and Japan.
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