by Ryan Mathews

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November 1997

	GO TRIBE!

What does that have to with anime, you ask? Well, nothing. But I'm as big an Indians fan as I am an anime fan, so I couldn't resist. As I write this, they've lost Game 1 and are on their way to blowing their second World Series in three years. (That's right, I'm the pessimistic, grumpy kind of fan!) Of course, I'm probably losing my audience. Many anime fans' eyes tend to glaze over when you talk about sports.

So let's drop this subject and pick up a juicier one: anime fan politics!

Ah, yes, fan politics. I doubt there are many fandoms out there that have politics as intense as anime. That's because there's so much doing in anime fandom. Fans of most things can enjoy whatever it is they're a fan of by buying a ticket or a book or turning on the TV. And sure, we can buy tapes, and when we're lucky, find a tiny amount of anime on TV. But to truly experience anime, fans have to network with each other. They translate, subtitle, and distribute anime that is too "Japanese" to be distributed commercially in the United States. The people doing this work tend to have egos. Also, very few fandoms have anything like the subtitled/dubbed split we have in our fandom. All these egos and strong feelings combine to create an intense political atmosphere.

I was going to write an "Anime Politics Primer" for last month's column, but I gave up on it when I couldn't reduce the problem to anything simple. However, politics play an unfortunate role in this month's column, so I'm going to give it another shot.

The problem with understanding fan politics is that there are more than two factions fighting it out. There are at least three, and only one is definable by age: the "old-timers", the fans who came into anime back when there was very little organized fandom and being an anime fan consisted of watching fuzzy nth-generation tapes off TV in Japan. The other two factions could perhaps be called "Nippocentric" and "non-Nippocentric" fans, classified by how important Japanese culture is to the fan. For example, try to find a fan who has a Japanese penpal and eats ramen with chopsticks, but prefers dubbed anime. It'll take awhile.

But even with these factions defined, you can't easily separate the issues along factional lines. The factions split on issues, and some issues are internal to one faction. So the key to understanding anime politics is to understand the issues. There are three main issues of contentions. Get a handle on them and you've got politics licked.

• Subbed or dubbed? - At first, you may think this an unimportant issue. After all, whether you prefer your anime in English or Japanese, it's just a matter of taste, right? True, but the Nippocentric fans tend to worry that new fans will naturally prefer dubs unless taught otherwise. The "sub-lovers" worry (and rightfully so, in my opinion), that unless new fans are turned on to subs, the demand will drop and companies will eventually stop releasing them. So they try to preach the gospel of subtitles whenever possible. Most people in the other factions have a "live and let live" attitude, but some of the non-Nippocentrics get upset that their tastes are being "dissed" and strike back with opinions that dubs are in fact superior to to subs.

• Fansubbing - "Fan-subtitling", the art of creating homemade subtitled anime tapes, using a Japanese laserdisc, a fan-translated script, and a personal computer, has long been an integral part of anime fandom. It is also the most contentious issue. Fansubs are, strictly speaking, illegal, since they are unlicensed copies of copyrighted material. However, they remain a fan's only way of seeing a great deal of anime in a understandable format. The illegality of it has always bothered those who believe that "illegal" always equals "wrong", but the issue has come to a head in recent years, for two reasons.

  First, the quality of fansubs has greatly improved. No longer the fuzzy ugly things they used to be, the best now equal the quality of commercial tapes. Second, the method of distribution has changed. Fansubs had been traded, club to club, fan to fan. Now, "massive distributors" send tapes to anyone who sends them five to ten dollars, in a sense competing with the commercial companies for the anime distribution market. This incenses some fans, who see fansubbing as evil and want it shut down. These fans include non-Nippocentrics who see their favorite U.S. anime companies as being hurt, and some hard-core Nippocentrics, most of whom know some Japanese and don't need subs, and see fansubs as taking money out of the mouths of starving Japanese creators. The rest of the Nippocentrics are in favor of fansubbing, seeing it as the only way to see the anime they want to see in a format they want to see it. They see fansubbing as harmless, and even helpful in the additional exposure it gives to the creators.

• Script distribution - This is an squabble internal to the fansubbers. When a fan-translator translates the script to an anime, should he or she feel obligated to share it with fellow fans? Or are fans who expect translators to share their hard work just greedy? In my opinion, the answer to both questions is "yes", which is why this is one of the nastiest fights out there. Fans angry at translators "hogging" their work have resorted to guerrilla tactics, transcribing scripts from fansubs and posting them on the Web for all to use. Translators have responded by no longer producing fansubs. The fan-translators see the other fans as lazy, greedy pigs, and the other fans see the fan-translators as selfish, egotistical prima donnas. They're both right.

So, now that I've given you the low-down on how anime politics works, let's move on to this month's topic, and you'll see why this primer is relevant.