Subs killing the anime Industry?

[Jechtsphere]

What is your take on subs I've seen people critical of subs, company's say it hurts the industry as if they are subbed and people are able to download them for free it hurts anime sales and one day will kill it altogether.

This month's issue of the British anime and manga magazine NEO reports on ADV Films' recent closure of its London branch and its new partnership with Lace Digital Media Sales, a local distributor. The magazine contacted ADV Films CEO John Ledford, and quoted Ledford on the following statements:

Perhaps if so many fans weren't getting their anime from illegal file sharing sites or unlicensed streaming sites, we might have expanded our UK catalogue more quickly. As it stands now, however, we have a better shot at growing our business with Lace than maintaining an overseas branch.

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/new...says-uk-issues-may-be-due-to-illegal-releases

My take is that without subs no one would know about such shows like Naruto and Bleach, the American companies who licensed those animes saw how popular it already was with Americans because of the very subs they bash.

In my mind subs overall help get the word out on anime which otherwise would be unknown and the anime industry should be thankful.

Among anime fans you will always have the people who will buy and those who won't buy no matter what.

Anyway to me subs are saving anime and making those companies more money. :megane:

 

[Shinji Ikari]

This is really a double edged sword. Lets look at it this way, i'm guessing that if you took all of the members in this forum ATM, around 200..

200

and say on the average, each person has about 50 titles they downloaded

200 x 50 = 10,000

and each title usually averages 6 dvd's.. 4 - 5 eps per dvd....

10,000 x 6 = 60,000

and i pay an average of $21.00 usd for each volume i've bought.....

60,000 x 21.00 = $1,260,000.00 for just 200 people.


one million two hundred sixty thousand dollars... JUST IN DOWNLOADED ANIME ON THIS FORUM.


do that math in another anime forum...!! like i said, these are all averages, and rough guestimates, but they add up to realistic numbers.

Now on the other hand, a lot of fansub groups blame youtube, and other sites like that that use their fansubs without permission. These fansub groups work hard and wanna release their fansubs in a controlled manner.... And some large anime companies are for it. Some are not.

But i also agree a lot of anime would never be seen if not for fansubs (though maybe there would be a lot more cons , then, eh?)
Personally, i d/load some stuff, if i like it, i buy it when i can.

In closing, when you see companies as big as Geneon folding due to lack of sales....maybe the subs do hurt.....

 

[tyron256]

i wouldnt be surprised if the existence of subs lowers the sales of the DVDs but at the same time its true that things become popular through the release of the subs themselves. guess its a little give and take, i mean people buy hard drives and DVDs to store their anime so i guess someone benefits from the subs eh?

 

[B StAR]

without subs for me, I wouldn't be able to discover new anime I KNOW I am going to buy. I used to be one of those freeloaders, but now I support the industry

 

[amanda]

EH i love subs... makes the anime so much better.. Sometimes dubs are so freaking horrible that I have to run back to the orginal subs but eh that's just me.

 

[Serph]

yea i agree with amanda am so use to subs so its a thing now for me haha

 

[Rei Ayanami]

Well, I don't think the problems are the subs, more like piracy, since dubs are distributed on the Internet too.

 

[Ray]

well doesn't matter as long as anime is here fine with me

 

[Kyo]

I think about it this way. Sure I am holding money back from the anime companies. But I am giving money to the hard drive companies....You can thank me later Western Digital and Fantom Drive

 

[Ground]

don't get me wrong but I hate when they dubb Animes, look what happen to Naruto, but their where a few that where alright like Bleach and so on...

 

[y0l3itches]

yea subs are def a plus for anime, most people won't understand what they characters are talkin about so its hard to understand and expand without subs. Thats why there are free subs and they do take licensing very seriously for the united states...

 

[Haibara]

I usually prefer subs cause not all animes have decent dubbs and also the DVDs are really expensive.

 

[Goose]

I think it's just like music piracy or any other media piracy, and it has its pros and cons.

Obviously these companies aren't getting paid and are losing profits, so that hurts the industry and kills projects that don't get enough revenue to get by.

On the other hand, pirating helps get the word out and exposes fans to tons of material they would never be exposed to if they had to pay for it.
This would in theory make the industry better, since fans would know what's good and what sucks, so cash from fans who do spend money on anime they like would be redirected to quality anime and away from crappy anime, which would hopefully mean that eventually crappy anime would go away forever. I say in theory, because obviously that's never happening.

Not even piracy can kill crappy anime.

 

[templeofanubis]

granted some people just get the subs that people distribute and don't then go out and buy the DVDs which can hurt companies, but I know a lot of people who go out after they watch even part of an anime that they like a lot and buy the DVDs. Without anime being subbed, a lot of anime would probably never be watched by a fair amount of people of outside of Japan because they can't understand it otherwise so they could be put off. As for ADV though, whenever they license an anime, a lot of them tend to disappear from the web from what I've seen.

To sum it up, I think it tends to help the industry a hell of a lot more than it hurts as a whole. It's more likely bad dubbing that turns some people off.

 

[Gnome]

Sorry to ruin some of your arguments but 95% of all anime distributes release duel audio DVDs. Meaning you don't have to watch the crappy dubs, you can watch it in with the original Japanese and official subtitles. So not liking dubs isn't a very good excuse too not buy DVDs.


As for me, I also think fansubing has it's pros and cons.

I wouldn't even be watching anime, let alone buying DVDs today if it wasn't for fansubs. And if they ever crack down on fansubs I know lot of people, including my self, that would just go a find a new hobby. Of course, I'd finish buying all the shows that I liked but there is honestly no way I'm going to keep watching anime as much as I do if I have to spend so much money on stuff I can't at least preview beforehand.

I admit, that does sound a bit greedy and selfish on my part but really, spending tons of money on shitty anime that "looked" like it'd be good from the plot synopsis or wiki page doesn't sound very appealing to be honest. And unless a couple more "respectable" anime channels with Japanese Audio and subs were available I can easily see my self just finding a new hobby instead of trying to stay a anime fan.

And what about all those insanely under-rated shows like Baccano!, Toward the Terra, and Mononoke? Which were all overlooked by american distributors because of the seemingly low level of appeal to English audiences. But thanks to fan-subers people are able to view these great shows that would otherwise never even hear the name of.


Well I'm starting to rant now so I guess I'll stop here. And to summarize my TL;DR for those of us who have short attention spans: I believe that fansubs are both good and bad. But I think they do a lot more good for the anime industry than lots of the distributors give them credit for.

And sorry for all the typos/grammar mistakes, it's past 12am and I'm really tired.