Compared to the end of the 20th century, nature of the anime industry, as well as its following, has been night and day. As the telecommunications infrastructure becomes more and more sophisticated, anime will become increasingly available to the masses. The animation industry and its fans face both new opportunities and new problems that must be reconciled.

Anime Before the Internet

Anime, a contracted form of the katakana “アニメーション”, meaning “animation”, originated around the year 1917. The definition of anime is rather thorny and a topic of debate, but it is generally agreed upon as animated work originating in Japan. The 1937 Disney animated feature film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was a huge turning point in how animation as a medium was perceived (O’Connell 1999). Disney showed for the first time that animation was just as sufficient as live-action in creating an expressive plot. Thus followed a shift in focus from simple animated shorts focused on the execution of animation techniques to more ambitious, full length feature film projects.

It is near impossible to talk about the history of anime without mentioning Dr. Tezuka Ozamu, the father of anime as we know it. His 1947 manga Shitakarajima, based off of Robert Louis Stevenson’s book Treasure Island featured a complex, fast paced plot and exhaustive length and was revolutionary at the time. The distinctive “large eyes” artistic style in anime, credited to Dr. Tezuka, allowed him to have characters easily express a wide range of emotions (O’Connell 1999). His portfolio of landmark anime and manga will never be matched: including Astro Boy, Metropolis, and Kimba the White Lion, among countless others.

Until the early 90′s, anime was extremely niche overseas. If you wanted to watch Astro Boy or Legend of the Galactic Heroes, you would have to find yourself an anime club, they would have to find some VHS copies (which were often copies of copies of copies). VHS fansubbing was possible though a complex procedure which I imagine involves crying nonstop for 13 hours.

A Worldwide Phenomenon

One prime appeal to animation is that a full length animated feature film is generally cheaper than a movie (Rana 2009). As anime movies and series started to become more and more prevalent in Japan, the United States and eventually other countries experimented with importing them. Pokemon was wildly successful stateside, creating a multi-million dollar franchise that still exists to this day. Dragonball Z and Sailor Moon also got ample screentime on Cartoon Network’s Toonami program in the late 90′s, exposing mainstream younger audiences to Japanese animation.

After the dot-com bubble burst in 2001, the advent of Web 2.0 really opened the floodgates for anime to come to the United States and all around the world. Web 2.0 is a fancy business/communications term for shift from the internet being used as a place to retrieve data to a place to share data. For example, Facebook, Twitter, and this blog are Web 2.0 applications. You share photos, update your Twitter page, and write thousand word research papers on your blog for all to read. As forums, bulletin boards (and yes, 4chan is a perfect example of Web 2.0), chatrooms, and blogs began to inundate the internet, knowledge and interest in anime grew. The internet breaks down national barriers; a man in Sweden can access all the anime websites that someone in Japan can. No longer did you need to drive to an anime club, just hop into Rizon in IRC and before you know it you are surrounded by hundreds of others who share your interest in anime.

As internet speeds become faster and more people came online, the community grew. Plain text became rich media. Like many other communities, the anime community grew exponentially and formed countless websites about their interests. Sites like AnimeNano, an anime blog index responsible for a sizable portion of my hits; MyAnimeList, one of the most useful sites on the web for anime fans; and Anime News Network, formed a haven for casual and hardcore fans alike. The largest 24 hour anime satellite channel, Animax, launched in Latin America in 2005.

You can read more about the video here, but the point is, look at how popular anime has become! Conan O’Brien is doing a skit about voice acting Ghost in the Shell. Anime’s meteoric rise in the global stage is unprecedented, but what challenges face the industry?

Digital Distribution and Anime

DVDs made selling anime outside of the United States possible. Even now when I go to my local Best Buy, I see the DVDs in the anime section catching dust. A main problem in selling niche media (most anime is still generally considered niche) is that a thinly spread out audience might as well be no audience at all. The store is immobile, and shelf space is limited. Only the best selling media will have a place on its shelf, so while 20,000 people might buy Sketchbook, they are going to stock Bleach in its place because it will sell to 200,000 people. Those 20,000 people have to look elsewhere. Furthermore, if those 20,000 people are spread out all over the United States, then each store might only sell a few copies, which is not worth their time when they could be using that shelf space to sell Carrie Underwood CDs. Licensers keep in mind the need for series they license to actually sell, so lots of niche content is overlooked.

Movies had NetFlix, Video games have GameFly, and now anime has Crunchyroll. The advantage of e-commerce is the ability to appeal to niche markets and target niche audiences without having to worry about limiting geographical factors. There is no “shelf” on the internet; there are thousands of terabytes Crunchyroll and throw on its servers. Now instead of sacrificing the 20,000 people who want to watch Sketchbook for the 200,000 Bleach fans, you can have both. This phenomenon is called “The Long Tail”, popularized by Chris Anderson in 2004.

But of course, nothing is perfect, and Crunchyroll is far from perfect. Not only is the selection rather paltry, but there is also region locking. This of course stems from details arising from licensing in a country. I used Bleach as an example, but it’s not available on Crunchyroll. Regardless, Crunchyroll is a viable, legal means for anime fans to watch currently airing anime for a reasonable monthly price. All the shows are pretty niche and they honestly do have a good variety of shows in the selection.

Fansubbing and Consumer Ethics

The same way Web 2.0 develops communities online, that collaboration can be used to develop something or work on a project. Many of you might be reading this in Firefox or running Linux, both which lend a major portion of its development to open source projects. Fansubbing communities take shows, put subtitles on them, and distribute them over the internet using means such as BitTorrent. Fansubbing communities offer their services for free and more often than not their quality (encoding, translation, timing) is indiscernible from professional work. “The appeal of fansubbing and fansubs is watching shows after they air instead of waiting for a license company to go through the notions and release it stateside or wherever you live” (gg 2009). Fans keep up with airing shows on a lag ranging from 24 hours to a week, and everyone is happy.

“As noted by Japanese entrepreneur Joi Ito, fans of the Japanese anime series Naruto regularly post translated episodes of the show to BitTorrent, which attracts more fans to the series.

The relatively obscure program has spawned a global following in online forums, internet relay chat channels and fan sites.

With box sets and special edition DVDs, Ito wrote, the copyright holders can make a tidy sum from fans prepared to “spend thousands of dollars on one show.”

-Patrick Gray, Wired Magazine 2005

Except the studios, who are attacking the fansubbing scene much like the RIAA is attacking the music and filesharing scene. Quite simply they are being robbed of a DVD sale, and when you get to the bottom line, fansubbing probably does hurt the industry. It is not all black and white, however. Many fansubbing groups are rather docile. Anime-Faith stopped subbing a show upon receiving a C&D, and many other groups have a similar policy (Borland 2005). Also, anime quite simply would not be as popular worldwide if fansubs did not exist. Many shows such as Azumanga Daioh or The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi owe a great deal of its worldwide popularity to fansubbing.

Frustration with the quality, speed, and overall development of the licensing process has led to an erosion in ethical fansubbing in recent years. To an increasing number of fans, downloading fansubs is justified because they do not support the industry, specifically the licensing industry. Others take a more mellow route and simply choose to no longer purchase their products (Tiamat 2009). Quite simply, fans are tired of the disconnect between the fanbase and licensing companies. It is increasingly apparent that the licensing companies are businessmen, not fans, and while decisions they make are rational in a corporate point of view, they are not satisfactory in a fan’s point of view. This is not really their fault and it’s generally unavoidable; people want to make money and you can’t make everyone happy all the time. Maybe one day more people will realize that the whole licensing thing doesn’t really work.

The arguments for and against fansubs among fans carry on, the quantity innumerable. This very essay is a response to Janai’s post. While fansubs are not always of the highest quality, and fans are quick and eager to point out quirks, they are most importantly widely available to the community (Shin 2008). Choosing fansubs or legal means thus becomes an issue of consumer ethics. According to economic theory, people will not pay for a product that can be offered for free. The only leverage “official” anime has is the “officialness” and the fact you don’t need to torrent it then burn it to a disc, which is why people buy it. Have you taken a look at how much DVD box sets cost? That’s quite a change in lifestyle going from free fansubs to buying box sets of DVDs for 50 dollars without even knowing how good the show it. Fans are happy to support their industry, to an extent. That extent is simply too much.

Conclusions

If the anime industry wants to solve this problem they have, they have to realize the risk of alienating 80% of its fans. They have to take full advantage of digital distribution, a superior (and cheaper) way of generating revenue from media. Crunchyroll is a great start, and the numbers look good, but the things hurting its selection and region locking is, you guessed it, licensers.

As a college student on a tight budget, I will gladly pay $20 a month to watch anime, which is more than Crunchyroll charges. Crunchyroll offers a diverse array of anime for an affordable price, satisfying consumer concerns, and it shares profits directly with the Japanese animation companies, satisfying ethical concerns.

Look at American television, for example. You can watch your favorite shows on primetime television, but also for free on the internet. Did you have to work late at the office today? No problem, nothing is more satisfying than propping down with your laptop at night and catching up on 24 or rewatching your favorite episodes of The Colbert Report. NBC and Fox make money in this sense with internet ad revenue. We don’t get to watch anime on TV, but you can bet we would be happy to watch it streaming. SHAFT and some other studios have already experimented with streaming shows. This problem with licensing and fansubbing is daunting yes, but resolutions exist. It’s a matter of changing your perspective.

If Dr. Tezuka were alive today, I’m sure he would be very happy at where anime is. With the genius of Shinkai and Miyazaki as well as the craziness of Shinbo, the world of anime has never been more diverse or colorful. Anime has succeeded in putting Japan on the map, as interest in its language and culture has never been higher. Anime will still be around in ten, twenty, and even a hundred years, I know it. They say fansubbing is ruining the industry but I see new exciting shows every season. Rock on, fans, and keep watching anime, however way you see fit.

Works Cited

Anderson, Chris. The Long Tail. Wired. October 2004. Retrieved from <http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail_pr.html>

Borlan, John. Anxious Times in the Cartoon Underground. CNET News. February 2005. Retrieved from <http://news.cnet.com/Anxious-times-in-the-cartoon-underground/2100-1026_3-5557177.html>

gg Fansubs. About & FAQ. 2009. Retrieved from <http://www.ggkthx.org/about/>

Gray, Patrick. The Other Side of BitTorent. Wired. June 2005. Retrieved from <http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/news/2005/06/67641>

O’Connell, Michael. A Brief History of Anime. Otakon 1999 Program Book. 1999. Retrieved from <http://www.corneredangel.com/amwess/papers/history.html>

Rana, Faizan. Rising Anime Popularity in The Western World. 2 Jul 2009 EzineArticles.com. Retrieved from <http://ezinearticles.com/?Rising-­Anime-­Popularity-­in-­The-­Western-­World&id=2558768>.

Shin. Fansubs. Serious Business. Atarashii Prelude. 30 May 2008. Retrieved from <http://www.atalude.net/2008/05/30/fansubs-serious-business/>

Tiamat. Why I no longer support Funimation. Tiamat’s Manga Reviews. 6 Nov 2009. Retrieved from <http://www.tiamatsreviews.com/?p=1999>

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