I recently stumbled upon a thread on Crunchyroll that discussed the controversy behind anime fansubs.  The OP is against uploading any anime illegally.  I understand completely.  No companies are directly benefiting from fansubs.  They get no money from it.  Now this thread starts spiraling towards pro-fansub vs. anti-fansub.  Instead of simply posting in that thread, I figured I would post here in my blog about my opinion on this matter.  (Especially since the OP is so upset that he refuses to respond to more people.)


First off, the OP seems to think that the anime fanbase in America would be just as big now without fansubs.  I admit that there is no hard evidence to refute this.  However, I know for a fact that probably 90% (or more) of my friends who like anime have found out about it because of fansubs either by watching them or hearing about them from friends.  I guarantee that most of the people I know would never have watched anime as young adults and adults.  I wouldn't have gotten into cosplay, conventions, figurines, blurays, DVDs, manga, etc. if I never found out about fansubs.  Why?  Because I would have thought anime is for kids.

Yes, when I was younger, I watched Japanese animation legally on TV, but if you think about it the only shows that have gotten big in American are kids shows.  My pre-fansub era consisted of Dragonball Z, Pokemon, Speed Racer, Digimon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and Saliormoon.  I guess you could also include series like Anpanman and Doraemon since I watched some cartoons on the Japanese TV station as a little kid.  If it weren't for the availability of fansubs, I probably would have found a different hobby to kill time.  Yes, these kid series were cool and all, but I'm sure I would have brushed off anime as a kids thing.  Only kids shows are big enough to bring over.  American companies see a potential dollar by licensing a series, so they bring it over and do what they've been doing: show it on kids TV stations.  In my opinion, things haven't really changed.  Only kid-oriented animes are truly known nationwide (more modern series include Naruto and Bleach). Yes, the kid-oriented animes are the biggest money makers even now in America (Naruto and Bleach), but without fansubs the American fan base would mainly consist of children.  This means that the fanbase would be completely different.  I can only imagine that anime conventions like Anime Expo would have significantly less attendees.  Kids wouldn't go, and only hardcore anime fans who really go out of their way to find anime would attend.  I'm pretty sure this sounds like the anime conventions back in the 1990's.

I admit that Naruto and Bleach were actually a couple of the first fansub series I started watching back in 2002.  I was a sophomore in high school then, and I thought the series were pretty good so I kept watching and eventually became a fan.  There weren't that many American fans back then, but about a year later a lot more people knew about it.  Then a few years later, it became even more well known when both series started airing on American television.  However, I don't actually know anyone who watched the dubbed version on TV other than little kids (elementary school age).  Everyone still watched the fansubs.

The internet was really the game changer for the American anime industry. You can say it changed it in a bad way since American anime companies started to fall, but that's just how it goes.  Things change.  Unfortunately, they were unable to adapt (probably for various reasons and I'm not blaming them).  I know it's a tough industry, especially when you have these Japanese companies running them.  Japanese companies tend to have a Japan-only mindset.  They don't think about the big picture (in general).
I've bought my fair share of anime series on DVD and bluray, but I would never have bought them if I didn't watch them first.  The same goes for the DVDs and blurays of my American show and movie collection.  I wouldn't buy a movie on bluray unless I watched it and liked it OR I already knew that I really wanted to watch it.

You could counter my argument by saying that people might really want to watch an anime and want to buy the DVD regardless of whether they watched it or not.  But let me ask this: how would people know if a series was good enough to want to buy?  From a friend?  But your friends probably won't know since you'd have less friends who like anime.  Also, you probably wouldn't be bombarded with ads and commercials of anime other than kids shows.

This is actually the biggest reason why I love what Crunchyroll has done over the past few years.  They legally bring over streaming anime.  In a way, they're legal fansubs.  They allow me to watch a pretty decent selection of series without worrying about "breaking the law".  I am a premium member, because I support what they're doing.  I'm sure it was tough for them to start it off, but I really think they went in the right direction.  I notice some companies are letting Crunchyroll put up their series on the site.  I have a feeling it's because people like to watch first.  That's how a lot of people are. There are people who just buy, but that's a honestly a small percentage.  You either have money to throw around or you're that confident you'll like something.  I personally like to research things to death before I make a purchase.

Now, did companies directly benefit from fansubs?  The easy answer is no.  American anime companies went out of business.  However, the anime fanbase has significantly grown in the past 10+ years since fansubs became available.  I am only talking about America here since I have no idea what other countries are like.  The real answer is more complicated.  How do you measure the affect of fansubs on the anime industry?  Fans?  DVD sales? Streaming views? Fansub downloads?  It's tough to say.  I am still on the side of pro-fansub only because without them, I would never have gotten into anime.  But, I can't give a definite answer as to whether fansubs are good or bad, because I don't have the data to back up my opinion and there's really no one way to measure it.