CBI Archive
Manga Before Flowers — Fanworks and How the Fan works
Tuesday, May 27th, 2008 at 7:19 AM EST
Updated: Tuesday, May 27th, 2008 at 8:18 AM EST
This week I really wanted to discuss two anime series that started up this spring in Japan which I’ve been following week-to-week thanks to the efforts of two fansub groups who subtitle episodes of each series in English within days of their release in Japan. (My justification for discussing anime on a comic book blog was that both anime series I’m watching are based on manga originals and we often discuss film or animated adaptations of comic books. Turnabout is fair play, right?) But I stopped when I felt it was a little dodgy, ethically speaking, to discuss material only available in fansubs – since wouldn’t I be encouraging, you know, the complete and total disintegration of the anime market in the U.S.?
Even though I clearly am participating in that ethically dodgy behavior.
Oh dear. This is going to get…icky isn’t it?
In case folks don’t know, there are hundreds (if not thousands now) groups of fans who work to edit, translate and distribute manga and anime on-line. In the case of anime, groups release video files with English subtitles of anime series known as “subs” or “fansubs,” and in the case of manga they release scans of manga series, edited with English text in place of the original Japanese, called “scanlations.” In spite of the fact these are not “original” creations by fangroups, the groups feel a sense of pride in the work they do(sometimes even entitlement about the series they work on, which can be problematic), since they work to bring other fans a better understanding of (or simply access to) Japanese creative works through practices of translation & through various distribution networks.
I believe these practices, at least, in the U.S. are very, very illegal. (I’m reminded of the ice-skating coach from The Cutting Edge: “Legano…Illegano…is grey area!”) My, probably misguided, understanding of copyright law that in Japan it is not illegal to download copyrighted material for personal use but it is illegal to mass distribute copies of it. If anyone wants to correct my very fairly nonexistent basic understanding of international / domestic copyright here, I would be quite grateful.
Fangroups often distinguish between works that are licensed for the U.S. market and works that are not. Meaning, they will translate and distribute titles so long as no U.S. company has bought the rights to distribute it in the U.S. However, some groups DO NOT make such distinctions and continue to translate licensed series. For example, there are something like 5 billion groups (I exaggerate. sort of.) who continue to translate current chapters of Naruto even though Viz has clearly cornered the market on everything even vaguely related to that franchise in the U.S. and is not shy about bringing us as much Naruto as humanly possible (seriously, 12 manga volumes in 4 months. We will never not have enough Naruto in this country).
Some various perspectives on these practices (please do not mistake my stating each perspective for my endorsement of each perspective, I’ll get to my opinion later, trust me.):
1) It is NEVER okay to create fansubs. Whether or not an anime or series is licensed for the U.S. market does not matter — by creating these amateur translations fans are *hurting* these industries by stealing from the original creators and damaging the later sales potential of these media should they ever be licensed for the U.S. market.
2) It is okay to translate & distribute works which are not licensed for the U.S. market. There are a few rationales behind this reasoning:
a) Certain works will never ever be licensed for the U.S. market. For instance, Glass Mask, a shojo manga which started in the 1970’s and STILL continues to this day (42 volumes and thousands of pages still not collected in tankobon format because the creator now wants to change certain developments) will never be licensed (this is the consensus of most fans and I pretty much agree with them). The art is old-school shojo, it is so damn looooooong, the confusion of what will happen to the series after volume 42….and so on.
b) English subs and scanlations can demonstrate to U.S. companies what unlicensed titles fans are interested in. In other words, by scanlating certain titles, fans can actively show U.S. companies that certain genres and / or specific titles are viable / worth licensing for the U.S. market. For instance, yaoi. While certain titles were probably always going to be licensed for the U.S. market (Naruto, Fruits Basket, Vampire Knight etc), once the U.S. (manga) market stabilized in certain ways (post-2003) it is possible that without the strong yaoi-fandom fostered by many fangroups translating and distributing yaoi titles, U.S. companies might not have realized the potential yaoi had in the market (a more realistic view – from a business perspective — of yaoi’s success in the U.S. may simply be that Tokyopop’s FAKE sold really well. You be the judge).
Related rationale: Fangroups are pre-advertising on behalf of U.S. companies! In other words, U.S. Company X recently announced license of title B! The fangroup that released two or three volumes of that title might encourage fans to download chapters of it for a limited amount of time (sometimes not even for an entire week) so that they can introduce fans to the title and encourage them to buy it once it is released in the U.S.
c) It’s not licensed yet so English-language fans are free to translate / distribute these objects. So. Yeah. This one’s probably self-explanatory. (I suppose this isn’t a rationale but it probably explains something like 70% of current fandom sub and scanlation practices — “we enjoy this practice, you enjoy this practice, so we’ll do it until we have a specific reason not to.”)
And, finally, the third perspective (and please remember I’m ventriloquizing fandom points-of-view here, NOT endorsing them):
3) It is okay to translate material licensed for the U.S. market.
Why?
a) “The U.S. company in question has bungled the translation, the release, the price, etc. of my favorite series!” Yes, sometimes U.S. companies make questionable decisions in their translation / distribution practices. Sometimes they nix honorifics (Viz), localize and place the worst and most painful American slang ever in the mouths of Japanese characters (also Viz), fail to translate sound effects (Tokyopop), fail to legally release their books (BeBeautiful), fail to release at all (ADV), sometimes even price their media according to their mood that day (DarkHorse), and, finally, the dub just sucks (Insert U.S. anime company of your choice here)!
Occasionally, but very rarely, a company screws up a title so badly that sales *will* be hurt (CMX with Tenjho Tenge edits, and 4-kids Entertainment with the One Piece anime, and the morons who originally changed “Cardcaptor Sakura” to “Cardcaptors” and edited the protagonist-heroine out of her own maho shojo anime). Usually such colossal misfires with such popular material will self-correct since there is money to be had in producing versions the fans judge to be more faithful to the original (although with the One Piece anime it took *years* for this to happen).
However, the majority of decisions made by a U.S. company are final as re-editing (re-printing, re-releasing) these objects is too costly a process and to be honest there are always reasons (usually cost related) why companies make certain translation decisions in the first place (i.e. the notion that nixing honorifics makes a work more accessible to an American audience is a smart business decision — and “right” or “wrong” U.S. companies usually have practical reasons for what they do even if the fans disagree with those reasons and their results). Fans who reject the validity of U.S. media editors’ decisions then justify the decision to scanlate and / or download these materials since they often claim that fan-made translations are closer to the “original intentions” of the creator. While I have some sympathy for fan frustration with certain decisions made by U.S. manga / anime companies (there is, after all, a reason I “named names” two paragraphs above) I’m pretty sure it was the original intention of the creators to *get paid*.
b) ”But I can’t wait 45 seconds!” (Quote courtesy of Homer Simpson). Okay, yes, it takes longer than 45 seconds for an anime series or a manga title to first be released in Japan, to build up some kind of reputation (either because of good sales in Japan or good “word of mouth” in fandom, perhaps due to popularity of early fan translations), to be licensed and then to finally be translated and released in the states. A few years can often take place between the debut of a series in Japan and its eventual sale in the U.S. — case in point, Funimation has licensed the Ouran High School Host Club anime (maybe a year ago?) and still hasn’t released any of it. The show originally aired in Japan from April to September of 2006. Two years now and the only excuse I can think of is that they’ve sold it to AdultSwim or something and are waiting to announce this wonderful development (because seriously, do you know how much money they’d make by releasing that gem? Well, c’est la vie, I suppose.)
Related rationale: “U.S. company A releases its titles too slowly! I want my anime / manga now!”
c) It’s there. Pretty self-explanatory. (”I like this show / this manga and want to know what happens next!”)
4) Finally, there are also people who seem to feel differently about fansubs versus scanlations since these are very different media that we experience very differently. A digital copy of manga (i.e. a scan) is not quite the same thing as a digital copy of an animated show. Probably because comics have a materiality that anime does not there is the assumption that fansubbing is more hurtful to the U.S. anime industry than scanlation is to the U.S. manga industry (for the record, there is some evidence to back up this assumption, since anime sales are declining while manga sales are (still) rising in the U.S. — see basic data here). In other words, fans might not feel the need to have “hard copies” of anime if they have computer files they can burn to DVD, but will probably still want physical copies of manga even if they have scans on their computer hard-drive. But that is a big “probably” right there, isn’t it?
Now that we’ve gotten ALL THAT out of the way, I suppose it is time to go over what I actually think (and actually *practice*) in relation to these attitudes and perspectives.
1) I don’t download licensed anime. In fact I haven’t downloaded any kind of anime in a few years….the exception being the two series I started following this spring. Should those series ever become licensed I plan to buy them — considering the state of anime in the U.S. the only way I can morally justify watching any kind of fansub beyond an episode for “taste” is if I make the commitment to myself to buy if they ever become licensed in the states. (Of the two anime I’m following this year, one *might* be licensed, while it is doubtful the other ever would be. —-> If people want to have a little fun they might try guessing which titles I’m following. Or well. It would be fun for me!)
2) I rent instead of buy. I often feel anime is too expensive for me to buy outright (particularly in comparison to the cost of most U.S. shows / films on DVD), so I rent via netflix (which, happily is very legal in the U.S.). In other words, yes, I have a very familar fandom (perhaps even entitled?) attitude about anime released for the U.S. market, but I still use legal means if I’m interested in watching a (licensed) animated series. Now, I’d be happy to hear any objections to netflixing anime instead of buying it (I don’t know of any), but to be perfectly honest, manga is where it is at for me so that is where most of my entertainment budget goes.
3) I read scanlations. Of both licensed and unlicensed series. However, checking my conscience I can honestly say I do NOT read on-going scanlations of licensed series unless I’m actively buying that title. In other words, I’m completely caught up on the Japanese NANA chapters (they’re at volume 19 I believe) but I’m also completely caught up with buying Viz’s releases of the title as well (volume 10 released earlier this month).
I’m also an avid reader of scanlations of unlicensed titles. For instance, I read all 11 volumes of Love Mode before the BLU manga imprint even existed. YET, as of today I own all 9 volumes currently released by BLU in the U.S. (and plan to finish purchasing that series). I love manga enough so that if I have read more than a volume of something via scanlation that I *will* buy it if it ever is released in the U.S.
However, does this justify my reading scanlations? Eh, I honestly don’t know. For the record, there are a lot of titles out there I probably never would have bought if it weren’t for scanlations (for instance High School Debut) but intellectually I know that the “taste test” argument really doesn’t stand up…not everyone is willing to buy the manga they read scanlated or rent/buy the anime they download.
There is no doubt, though, that holding the manga in my hand? Very, very important to me. I care less and less for scanlation the longer I buy and read manga (I’m going on three years now since I became a fan of manga) and more and more I want to have these delightful books on my shelf. I’m not sure if most (on-line) fans feel like I do — this obsessive need to have the books in our hot little hands! — but probably quite a few do (it also should be noted most of the prominent manga bloggers I frequent don’t do scanlations and don’t want to).
4) I also think fangroups, in general, should be proud of their activity. When I think about the time and effort they devote to translating & distributing manga and anime out of love and devotion (and yes, sometimes a strong sense of ego or entitlement), I’m astounded by their energy. While I wouldn’t go so far to say that they “created the overseas manga industry,” as I’ve seen one scanlator claim, they certainly have fostered an active and engaged community of folks who take their interest in Japanese anime and manga very seriously. I know that there are certain individuals (official translators, editors, and taste-makers if you will) and corporations who can take a generous portion of credit for the U.S. market for manga and anime, but they’d be dead in the water without people willing to devote their time, energy and love to Japanese popular culture. And we probably shouldn’t forget that many of those “official folks” started out as fans in the first place, some even as scanlators / fansubbers.
5) In the end, the practice of scanlations helped orient me to manga — I don’t think I would be so savvy about what I like and *might* like if fangroups hadn’t helped me sort a lot of things out.
On the other hand, I read my first chapter of NANA in Viz’s first release of its SHOJO BEAT magazine in the summer of 2005.
Which means I have both fans and U.S. media companies to thank for making me the fan I am today.
27 Comments
Brian Cronin
May 27, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Great piece, Danielle.
And I love how you felt like you had to justify writing it.
Danielle Leigh
May 27, 2008 at 1:18 pm
thanks, Brian!
I really wish each week’s column could be this in depth but I would run out of “significant” manga / anime issues to discuss very quickly!
(And oh yes, there is a LOT of justification going on this post, isn’t there? hee!)
Basara
May 27, 2008 at 7:00 pm
Then, of course, you have things like Macross Frontier, that will probably never be released in the US due to the whole Macross ownership in Japan SNAFU, and how the major US licensor of the earlier Macross series has been backing the other side (from the Point of View of the makers of Frontier), and has repeatedly quashed attempts, post Macross Plus, for other companies to market licensed items and material via licenses from the makers of Frontier.
There are thousands of people who’d buy Macross 7, Macross Zero and Macross Frontier in a heartbeat, if they were available in the US, but it will probably take the US licensor folding (their owner, IS, afterall, up on charges for shady financing in Italy and other places) and a new licensee coming in, to see them released.
thirstygirl
May 27, 2008 at 11:00 pm
*A-hem*, I consume both fan-subbed anime and scanlated manga, and this is an internal justification process I go through on a regular basis. For a lot of the manga, it is either not get licensed in the foreseeable future *or* I am sampling it before I buy because I have made some very expensive mistakes in the past.
I am also aware of a couple of scan groups who are doing such a professional job that the manga-ka has been in contact *and* given them doujinshi to translate for the English audience. I would never have known how fantastic Miyamoto Kano is as an writer and artist without scanlations and now that a few vols of her enormous body of work are finally getting licensed and published, I’m first in line with money in my hand. ditto Bride of the Water God, that doesn’t seemed to have stopped Dark Horse putting it on hiatus, which actually means I am going to go back to reading scans of it and occasionally pat the copies that I do own and hope that I will have the chance to have print copies of the rest one day.
But then I seem to fall in love with titles that are either wildly unpopular with the rest of the buying public [BotWG], or licensed by a publisher that is folding [Kizuna, Embracing Love, all the IceKunion titles] so scans may be the only way that I will get to Find Out What Happens.
Andrew Collins
May 28, 2008 at 12:56 am
I’m having flashbacks to when I used to order fansubs on VHS out of the back of anime magazines. At the time it was the only way I could get my hands on Ghibli’s output, plus shows like Fushigi Yugi and Ruin Explorers…oh those were the days…
I have no problems with fansubbing as long as the fansubbers stick to unlicensed shows. With the volume that is produced in Japan, there’s just no way all of it can be released here through the usual distribution methods. Plus, there are so many older and niche shows that companies here won’t take a chance on. I have been reluctant to download too many fansubs because the old fuddy-duddy in me hates watching things on his computer, but I have downloaded a couple things like Kindaichi Case Files and Yamamoto Yohko because there’s a snowball’s chance in hell of them ever being licensed here.
Sadly, whatever “ethics” were involved in fansubbing once before seems to be slowly eroding. I know people who still download Naruto episodes despite it being legally (and fairly cheaply) available in the US. People sometimes accuse fansubbers and downloaders as having a sense of “entitlement” about their anime, but I’m beginning to sense more “resentment” instead as fans grow increasingly frustrated with the R1 anime licensors as well as the Japanese companies. Frustration over pricing, release patterns, show availability, shows cancelled/left incomplete in R1, etc. It’s that element that is causing the licensing companies to point more of a finger at the fansubbers and put some of the blame on them for the declining R1 anime DVD sales…
Danielle Leigh
May 28, 2008 at 4:45 am
Basara — Hmmm….I had no idea about this situation –sound very unusual and quite insane.
Thirstygirl — I agree on the whole “internal justification” thing, after all entire post is practically all justification in a way. I do have good news though, in case you didn’t know, Yen Press has started to release the Ice Kunion titles this summer! (I’m a big dork and am looking forward to Chocolat the most, but a lot of great titles are coming back).
MangaBlog » Blog Archive » Quick link roundup
May 28, 2008 at 5:01 am
[…] Leigh writes about fansubbing and scanlations in this week’s Manga Before Flowers column at CBR. It’s a good overview of all the arguments and justifications from scanlators […]
Dryope
May 28, 2008 at 6:14 am
I think I must be the only person who really, really hates it when publishers do literal translations and leave in the honorifics. It just seems so sloppy, like they didn’t actually bother to finish their translation. =/ But I’m a dork and generally only buy the Japanese unless I’m buying for friends, and none of my friends are too picky about translation style as long as they have a copy they can read so I guess it doesn’t matter much what I think. =p (Okay, sometimes I buy the English version if a. I really want the manga badly and I can’t find the Japanese in stock anywhere or b. it’s an author I really, really, REALLY like and I have some money to burn but for the most part I have a hard time justifying owning two copies of the same title, even if they are in different languages.)
As for scanlations, I don’t usually like them much. o_o; I generally only read them if the manga I just bought has no furigana (oh, I am too reliant on furigana for comprehension! T_T) or I there’s a one-shot story by an author I like that I can’t find anywhere. But in the end I’d rather have the hard-copy so I can lovingly peruse it anywhere I desire.
On the other hand I won’t condem people who read scanlations as I know alot of them are high school students with no income or broke college students paying for their rent….jut because *I* can afford to buy manga doesn’t mean it isn’t a luxury item. ^_^; There should be more manga in libraries! And more manga coffee shops and such.
Yup, yup. Manga! It is awesome. I support the buying of manga. =p I don’t think there was a point to my reply other than “YEAH, MANGA!! WOOHOO!” but ummm that’s a good point, right? XD;;
For realz « Precocious Curmudgeon
May 28, 2008 at 6:24 am
[…] the subject of creators’ rights and ethical dilemmas, I’ll point to Danielle Leigh’s latest Manga Before Flowers column at Comics Should Be Good, which takes a frank and comprehensive look at unauthorized, fan-created […]
Danielle Leigh
May 28, 2008 at 6:48 am
hi Dryope — about honorifics, I’ve seen people make a few different arguments about them:
1) They should be left in because the reveal information about characters’ relationships to each other (use of “chan” versus “kun” versus “san” and so on).
2) Japanese society doesn’t really rely on honorifics (as much) anymore or they don’t mean as much so there is no point to translating them.
3) We don’t have honorifics in American society so they shouldn’t be translated for the U.S. market.
I will say I kind of miss reading Yasu call Hachi “Nana-chan” at times in the official version of Ai Yazawa’s NANA and so I kind of dig honorifics when the reveal those sorts of interpersonal dynamics (here a kind of big-brother / little-sister vibe between the two characters.)
Danielle Leigh
May 28, 2008 at 6:52 am
Thanks for commenting, Andrew!
Frustration over pricing, release patterns, show availability, shows cancelled/left incomplete in R1, etc. It’s that element that is causing the licensing companies to point more of a finger at the fansubbers and put some of the blame on them for the declining R1 anime DVD sales…
This starts to become a chicken-and-the-egg argument at some point for me — do we blame the U.S. media companies for being inconsistent and pissing off fans or do we blame fans for fansubbing the licensed stuff? Either way, both have negative impacts on how fans and companies relate to each other and I think the manga / anime market really depends on those groups working together at some level (now the fansubbers and R1 companies really appear to be at cross-purposes which is why the market here in the U.S. really stinks right now.)
Comics Should Be Good! » Manga Before Flowers — Creator Rights & Fan Responsibility
May 28, 2008 at 10:18 am
[…] the record, in my original discussion of fan translations I tended to be fairly positive about both the role of fans *and* U.S. media […]
thirstygirl
May 28, 2008 at 12:48 pm
[Yes, I am counting down the days till the Yen Press editions come out- I will finally own You’re So Cool!]
I think that with anime some of the main complaints around time and cost are generated by the dubbing requirements. Why not have two releases? One with subs, that you could watch online or download for a nominal cost, and then a full release with both in nice box-sets and extras etc? I am never going to listen to the dubbed version- I am not from the States so the voice actors grate no matter how good a job they do, especially when my ear is expecting the tones and intonations of the Japanese voices.
And this doesn’t paint me in a good light but I think it illustrates the feeling of resentment pretty much perfectly- I am hooked on Bleach. When I started reading them, Viz was releasing books every two months, which is fine. Then they went on their Naruto blitz and started releasing Bleach every four months. So far I have managed to resist the urge to read the scanlations but honestly, it’s getting harder every week. I am 140+ chapters behind the current story and falling behind further all the time.
So then I started watching the anime, only the legal releases of that also ran out very quickly. So now I am watching the fan-sub versions and am almost past the point where vol 22 finishes. I am frustrated because I really really want to give Viz my money but they seem to want to produce every sort of Bleach-based item except for the actual books. I’m not going to buy special Bleach pencil cases and shoes! Less paraphenalia, more books please!
And now I have worked myself up into a big fit of frustrated fan-dom, at the start of my work-day.
John Thomas
May 28, 2008 at 1:27 pm
In terms of honorifics, I don’t believe they mean any less now than they did in the past. Listen to young people talk, and they still use ~san and ~chan when talking to classmates. When honoroifics are removed a hint to relationships is also removed. This is Japanese material we are reading, and the Japanese culture in imbedded in the language. People nowdays understand what the honorifics mean, and so why not keep things as accurate…and comprehensible…as possible?
Andrew Collins
May 28, 2008 at 2:56 pm
I agree with the chicken and the egg sentiments, Danielle. That’s what is most unfortunate about the fansubbing issue- it’s become a vicious cycle. Recent turns of events in the R1 market, such as Geneon’s closure, ADV’s financial woes, and Viz’s cancelling several series (Prince Of Tennis, Full Moon, etc.) seems to have only created more bad feelings and emboldened the fansubbing crowd even further. I frequent the message boards over at AnimeOnDVD.com and I see less excitement and spectacle about companies and particular titles, and instead see a lot of cynicism and negativity creeping in. And it is resulting in people spending less on anime and then complaining about the shrinking marketplace and cancelled titles. Solutions can vary depending on how the R1 companies wnat to address the issue but I know I personally would like to see more series released in affordable box sets/collections up front (much like what Funimation is doing with many of their upcoming new licenses) and I would also like to see more transparency/communication between companies and fans (see ADV’s recent silence over their situations, which led to weeks of bad press and speculation over the company’s future…)
Oh, and the Macross thing. Yeah, it’s pretty ugly and kind of confusing when you get down to the details of the situation. What basically happened was that a dispute arose in Japan between the two companies who financed the show and the animation studio, Studio Nue, who created the show. They argued over who owned what- characters, designs, merchandising rights, video rights, etc. While all that was going on, one of the financers licensed the rights to the “Macross” name to an American company, Harmony Gold. HG have militantly maintained their strangehold on the license, suing any company that released anything with the “Macross” label on it without consulting them first, even if it fell out of the realm of things they had any say over. What further confuses the situation is that it turns out the Japanese company HG licensed Macross from had no right to do so. The Japanese courts ruled against that company’s claims on the property. So, basically HG have been enforcing a license they don’t technically own, but which nobody feels like challenging.
And THEN, on top of that, you have music rights issues. The second series, Macross Seven, is basically one long musical, as it deals with music being used to combat the invading aliens. Their are a ton of songs in the show and the word from the R1 companies for years has been that the music rights are SOOO expensive, there’s no way an R1 company could turn anything near a profit on the show’s release here.
Danielle Leigh
May 28, 2008 at 4:16 pm
thirstygirl — sorry to get you so worked up over this, but I think resentment over one title’s release schedule is really a minimal complaint when we consider the fact certain companies can’t even get releases out at all (the good thing about Viz is that if they have a title it is almost always (stress on “almost”) going to be published in its entirety (obviously there are major exceptions but Viz is generally steady about certain aspects of publishing that many other companies completely fail at). And certainly a popular title like Bleach will get better treatment than others — the delay, I assume, is due to the fact they’ve started running Bleach in Shonen Jump, which means it takes longer to get to the point an entire volume has been run in the magazine.)
John — thanks for stopping by! I hope it is clear I am totally on the side of including honorifics! (Like I mentioned with an example from NANA above I think something is definitely lost, certain inter-personal dynamics between characters for instance, when they are left out. However, I do think there are some arguments that make sense — from a business & cultural perspective — why they might not always be needed (in spite of the fact I personally like them!)
Danielle Leigh
May 28, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Andrew –
and I would also like to see more transparency/communication between companies and fans (see ADV’s recent silence over their situations, which led to weeks of bad press and speculation over the company’s future…)
This remains my biggest beef with most of the U.S. companies. It takes SO LITTLE effort to tell the consumer what is happening and can often buy a great deal of good will just putting forth that minimal amount of effort. I’m right there with you on this *sigh*
thanks for the clarification on the Macross issue — being a mana person first and anime fan second, I tend to not have very little knowledge of the historical dust-ups / points of tension between R1 companies and the Japanese copyright owners.
thirstygirl
May 28, 2008 at 6:11 pm
resentment over one title’s release schedule is really a minimal complaint when we consider the fact certain companies can’t even get releases out at all
Oh yes- I am fully aware of what a privileged position I am in and what a sense of entitlement I am displaying, so I think I am trying to say that even when you are aware of the reality of a situation, the voice of common sense can still gets drowned by the howling of the monkey on one’s back.
Moving to a [hopefully] less contentious issue, honorifics- I like them and what they reveal about the relationship between people. I don’t think they are a real barrier to readers/watchers as you can work out what they mean quite quickly and then it adds something to the experience.
Dryope
May 28, 2008 at 6:22 pm
XD; Yeah, like I said, I know I’m the only person who hates the honorifics thing. Not because I don’t appreciate the added meaning but because of my personal viewpoints on translations and adaptations. ^_^; Even in non-manga terms I hate literal translations and I hate it when translators assume we should know phrases or terms in the language they are being paid to translate from, even when I do happen to know.
That being said I rather like translator notes and think what honorifics people use should be included in those, along with speech habits like how people refer to themselves (ie do they use boku or atashi or ore?) and if they have any other tics like Chichiri’s “no da” , things like that.
Still, it seems that honorifics are demanded by the English-speaking manga community at large and so, translation preferences aside, from that perspective I think they should be left in.
…….Err, uhhh, wait, was this topic about scanlations and fansubs? Oh, yeahhhh…..
Hmmm, I’ve watched many fansubs but all the ones that have been licensed I have happily bought. =p I’ve bought the licensed version of most of the terrible, awful Chinese bootlegs I’ve seen, too. I mean, the translations of the bootlegs are usually pretty hilarious but the licensed versions are much better quality and usually are more fun to share with others (with the exception of those few people who completely understand the joy that is stumbling through awful translations.)
Now if only someone would license Mahoujin Guruguru….
Danielle Leigh
May 28, 2008 at 6:53 pm
thirstygirl — well, in the interest of fairness, the following howling monkeys are currently driving me up a friggin’ wall (also I displayed a lot of common sense elsewhere today so I’m going to let it slip for a little while and just bitch like the fan I actually am):
-The slang in NANA. Why does everyone, including the punk rockers, sound like a Valley Girl? Please, god, just make it stop.
-The lack of honorifics in Skip Beat! Sigh, just once I’d like to hear someone call “Kyoko,” “Kyoko-chan.” Also how people refer to each other is actually quite important to certain (romance)-plot developments. Leaving out the honorifics hurts some comphrehension of the story.
-ADV. Just in general. Because god, what a stupid way to run a *business* which really needs fans to support it. JUST EXPLAIN YOURSELF ONCE IN A WHILE AND MAYBE PEOPLE WOULDN’T KEEP POSTING ABOUT THE DEATH OF ADV.
-DramaQueen. Oh dear, I want to give these nice ladies money, but until they figure out how to function as a *business* I can’t. I just hope they get their ducks in a row before the summer ends otherwise things are getting a little nasty out there in fandom.
-Tokyopop — why does every title you put out (save Fruits Basket) have such shitty print quality? I mean, I can *guess* why but man does it annoy.
-Viz. Would it kill you to put in a color page on a regular release once in a while? If Tokyopop can manage it, you probably could as well.
Yup, this is currently what is making me so cranky about the manga industry about the moment.
In spite of the fact I buy books from all those people and will continue to do so (although I’m seriously rethinking my commitment to Tokyopop releases thanks to recent to developments. sigh).
Dryope
May 28, 2008 at 7:23 pm
Hmmm, I have had a change of heart about honorifics and I should probably attribute that in part to this blog and commenting. =o I know, it is a miracle! It just occured to me (yes, just this very instant. Hey, I am slow!!) that it doesn’t bother me in translations from Spanish if people use “Senor” or in translations from German if people use “Fraulein” so it is hypocritical of me to dislike it when translations from Japanese retain “-tan”
I still think translators should include notes on who uses atashi/watakushi etc, though. I think that’s almost as important to characterization as honorifics but it is much harder to leave that in. XD;;
thirstygirl
May 28, 2008 at 8:36 pm
I hear you about DramaQueen- it’s almost enough to make me cry when I hear that they have licensed YET ANOTHER awesome title that I am really looking forward to, simply because I know that it is now unlikely to ever see the light of day…on the plus side when they do get around to printing things, the quality is superb.
[I am now in a cheerful mood because I am now holding my copy of the first Miyamoto Kano book published in English. That love was going to go to DramaQueen but now Deux Press is the recipient of my gratitude. My monkey has been placated.]
word art download
May 29, 2008 at 5:55 am
[…] title might encourage fans to download chapters of it for a limited amount of time sometimes not …http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2008/05/27/manga-before-flowers-fanworks-and-how-the-fanwor…Police Search for Suspect in Connection with Two Robberies WIBW TopekaJunction City Police are […]
john
June 1, 2008 at 3:49 am
I read scanlations of One Piece which I support by buying the books that Viz releases. Yeah I’m one of those impatient types that want their Manga now, but when I see a 30 volume gap between America and Japan that continues to grow with no signs of ever shrinking I don’t see what’s so wrong in wanting to read a story without waiting three or four months.
Julia
June 3, 2008 at 5:32 pm
I write for the website Wordcandy.net (which has official relationships with manga publishers like VIZ and Yen Press), and I do some proofreading for the scanlation group Korean-Manhwa. I don’t feel any particular conflict between my two roles.
Being a manga fan can be really frustrating, and trying to direct people towards new manga can be even MORE frustrating. Manga reading is a seriously expensive hobby, and I feel terrible when I encourage Wordcandy readers (many of whom are young and strapped for cash) to spend their hard-earned allowances on promising titles that turn out to be dead ends.
Frankly, the odds are not good for new series. As part of K-M, I worked on volume eight of the popular manhwa ‘Goong’. K-M dropped the series when we discovered it had been licensed, and I went ahead and began promoting the licensed version on Wordcandy—and watched as the official publisher (ICE Kunion) only produced one volume before falling off the face of the planet. I’ve done my best to encourage our readers to buy the licensed volumes of Kiyohiko Azuma’s ‘Yotsuba&!’, and now ADV has put the series on ANOTHER lengthy and unexplained hiatus. As part of Wordcandy, I dutifully reviewed the first volume of Eric Wight’s ‘My Dead Girlfriend’, and it was never heard from again.
It’s possible this is just a problem for the series I read (maybe I’m jinxed?), but I doubt it. The manga industry is disorganized and financially shaky, and scanlators provide several valuable services: they introduce readers to new titles, they build buzz, and they finish series left hanging (this last is particularly important to me, because I’m more likely to buy and/or review a series if I’m confident that somebody, somewhere, will finish it). I certainly don’t want to be taking food from manga artists’ mouths or undercutting the work of the English-language publishing companies that produce consistent results, but I honestly think scanlators do more good than harm. Their work benefits both readers and English-language publishers, and that means more money (eventually) for the creators of the original works.
download all naruto episode free
June 7, 2008 at 1:52 pm
[…] Viz has clearly cornered the market on everything even vaguely related to that franchise in …http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2008/05/27/manga-before-flowers-fanworks-and-how-the-fanwor…Watch Naruto Shippuden 5 for free onlineWatch naruto Shippuden 5 for free online Posted in […]
free online naruto manga
June 7, 2008 at 5:05 pm
[…] licensed for the US market Naruto, Fruits Basket, Vampire Knight etc, once the US manga market …http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2008/05/27/manga-before-flowers-fanworks-and-how-the-fanwor…east coast fun fun The following is just useless junk This video does not contain: xxx tits babes […]