Sunday, November 23rd, 2008...1:29 pm
For the anime fan in 2008, is it essential to watch online anime?
I’ll say at the start of this blog that I’m not the most knowledgeable anime fan around. I like what I like, but I don’t have an exhaustive knowledge of series, directors, studios, voice actors, and the industry as a whole. Nor am I the sort of person who has to watch things as soon as they come out – I’m happy to wait a while, and if there’s something I want, I know I’ll get it eventually. The good stuff will always filter through, given time. So this isn’t going to be an in-depth analysis of the anime industry - that’s beyond my knowledge at this stage.
I like buying anime and manga. I like the feeling of ‘owning’ something, of building up a little library of releases, however modest mine may be compared to others. I’m also in the lucky and privileged position of being a reviewer for AUKN, meaning I get review copies of DVDs and manga volumes. Aside from that, I always try to watch anime when it’s on television. I saw Cowboy Bebop for the first time on the ill-fated Anime Central channel. And this winter period, I’m looking forward to Channel 4/Film 4 hopefully showing some Studio Ghibli films, as they often do.
But there’s one medium that’s always escaped me. I have never got into watching anime online. I’ve been thinking about this lately. I think there’s a few reasons why this is.
{It’s worth pointing out at this stage that one of my reservations is NOT a legal/moral reservation. I don’t know the ins and outs of the legal issues, the pros and cons. On the one hand, I do feel it’s a shame if people are enjoying something and the creators aren’t getting any money from it. On the other hand, I can’t really take a moral high ground because I am not “whiter than white” when it comes to downloading things from the internet. Anyway as I said I can’t really comment on the legality of it and I will not be doing so on this blog at this stage. I just feel that I don’t know enough about the whole issue to pass judgement on it.}
Firstly, I have never got into watching anything on my computer and/or laptop. I know there’s a lot of stuff out there - not just anime but also American films, TV shows, comedies, all sorts. I spend a lot of time on the internet, and I do have access to a decent broadband connection, so I do have the capacity for it. But when I’m on the internet, I feel that I want to be doing something, interacting in some way. I want to be chatting to friends, receiving and sending e-mails, browsing forums. I watch quite a few videos on Youtube and the like, but only short clips. I feel that if I am sat in front of my laptop watching a 22 minute episode, I’ll get fidgety, I’ll want to be flicking over to other internet pages. But if I watch a DVD my attention span is not an issue. I suppose it’s all about how I percieve my computer, compared to how I percieve my DVD player. If I watch a DVD I know I’m using it for it’s primary function, but somehow watching something on my computer just doesn’t feel right. Is this just me, maybe it’s just something I could get used to after watching a few episodes?
My personality and watching habits might be factor as well. As I said before, I don’t feel the need to watch shows as soon as they are released. I don’t know much about the latest Japanese releases. I think that for some other anime fans, they enjoy keeping right up to date with the latest releases, and so the best way they can do that is online. I’m not judging here, I’m not saying one type of fan is better than another. I’m just saying that I’m pretty patient about when I watch something, and some other fans aren’t. Actually, now that I’ve written this down, it seems like a “chicken-and-egg” thing. Do I not watch online BECAUSE I don’t follow the latest Japanese releases? Or, do I not know about Japanese releases BECAUSE I don’t watch them online?
And also as I mentioned before, I do like buying and owning things. It’s not just anime - I’m like that with everything. Books, cds, other DVDs, videogames - I like being in possesion of them, even if they sit in a cupboard for months, years, without me touching them. And I’m a sucker for special editions, packed full of extras which I’m determined to watch but I never get around to it. I honestly like opening my cupboard sometimes, and just having a little look in there, and feeling a little sense of pride. Yup, I really do that. This is surely a feeling that you just cannot get from watching something online. However, I’ve said this as a negative against watching online, but to be fair, the same applies to televised anime, doesn’t it? There’s no sense of ownership with televised anime, either, and yet I’m happy to watch that. So again, I think it goes back to the problem of perception.
Another reservation I have is with the so-called ‘fansubs.’ Just how accurate are they? I assume it varies from person to person, group to group. I like to know that I’m getting a really good translation, in order to enjoy something fully. I do think it’s pretty impressive what these ‘fansubbers’ do, though, it can’t be easy and I’m sure they do the best they can. But there must be a host of mistakes. A friend told me that she was watching a fansub where a girl was supposed to tell her boyfriend “I want to be with you” but the fansubber had translated it as “That hurts.” That’s a pretty big difference! I know if I was the boyfriend, I’d be a bit gutted if I expected to hear the former, but instead heard the latter! This will always be at the back on my mind, I’ll be thinking “How accurate is this?”. Of course there’s another side to that coin. DVD releases are known to have mistakes, or even have the dreaded “dubtitles”, so I can’t pretend that DVD releases are always superior. And not all online anime is fansubbed, increasingly these days many series are being legally streamed.
I do see the appeal of online, in some ways. I think of the biggest benefits it has is that the consumer can try something out before they spend their cash. I think it’s a good situation if we can watch an episode or 2 online, and then go out and get the official release.
But the biggest thing that keeps pushing me back to my web browser is I have this constant nagging feeling that if I don’t watch online, I’m really missing out on an awful lot. I’m not up on all the obscure series out there but I heard about a show called “Mahō Tsukai ni Taisetsu na Koto: Natsu no Sora”. It sounds really good and right up my street, but if I’m waiting for it to be released here, I think I’ll have a long (e.g. indefinite) wait. So, if I want to see it, I’m just going to have to get over my reservations and inhibitions.
After thinking about this issue, and kinda going around in circles, I arrived at the following question: For the anime fan in 2008, is it essential to watch online anime? Can a person consider themselves a true fan if they stick only to UK releases, as I do?
I suppose there’s no right or wrong answer. I think it might depend on a lot of factors. Like a lot of things in life, perhaps the key is finding that healthy balance. I think the most important conclusion that I have arrived on is that if I continue to ignore the online scene, I’m just missing out on so much. Looking at the bigger picture, it’s all tied into that large question - What’s the future of the anime industry? Anime online is here to stay, it seems. So maybe myself, and the industry, needs to adapt to it, or face getting left behind.
12 Comments
November 23rd, 2008 at 2:27 pm
Good piece.
Though I’ve no knowledge of Japanese, most fansubs I’ve seen have seemed to be high quality. The bigger shows tend to produce the best subs though.
I know a guy who has tried and moved away from online viewing for similar reasons to the ones you cite. It’s not essential to watch online though he gets exposed to fansubs via screenings at an anime society). However, I do think it offers a fairly unique experience (the week to week release, the sense of unfolding story) which suits some shows very well indeed.
November 23rd, 2008 at 3:39 pm
I look at it as television, and that is growing to be a prevailing sentiment today among broadcasters at least. Why else would the major channels in the UK be offering free catch-up services for their shows? Why would the BBC be streaming its channels live on the Internet?
It’s an analogous model to the licence fee as well. We pay a hundred odd quid a year for the right to watch television, and with it we get the BBC channels, the commercial channels, and anything else our receivers can pick up. We don’t watch it all, and we certainly don’t agree with it all.
We also pay a couple hundred a year to ISPs for the right to access the Internet and all that comes with it. It gets shadier here as the questions of copyrights and legality have more of an impact. It is a medium where we can all be broadcasters as well as consumers after all. But the onus is on the broadcasters and owners of content to police their own material, not on us to regulate our consumption. And the Internet broadcast model is becoming much more sophisticated. Broadcasters and producers are finally coming around to the idea that rather than being a pirate infested sea, it is an ocean open to legal shipping, and if that shipping is adequately protected, then eventually all will benefit. A negative move I feel, but one that was inevitable given the archaic and complex licences still in place, is the regionality of the Internet. Companies can now put up legal streams and downloads of their output for their own Internet market. Far more promising is the near simultaneous legal streaming of new shows, days, if not hours after release in Japan. The announcement that Dattebayo will cease to fansub Naruto when it begins to be released online by the broadcaster is surely a sign of things to come. Pretty soon all anime will debut online, legally and available to all, accompanied by a couple of adverts of course, and the fansub community will diminish back to pre Internet levels, more concerned with keeping old shows alive than competing for the latest releases.
In the UK where anime just doesn’t have a traditional TV footprint, this becomes a lifeline. Believe it or not, I didn’t have a broadband connection last year. But I did get one as the legal online revolution was beginning. This year I have watched The Tower Of Druaga, and Blassreiter. I could have watched Strike Witches. I’ve seen episodes of Time Of Eve, Linebarrels of Iron, Shikabane Hime, I’ve seen the Catblue Dynamite OVA, and all of them legally. I’ve been able to sample episodes of Baccano, Darker Than Black, Negima ?!, all courtesy of Funimation, who have also put a lot of their back catalogue onto Youtube. Again, all legally! Their really is no need for a moral quandary if you know where to source your anime, and there are hundreds of hours of the stuff at your fingertips.
I’m not whiter than white I must admit, and I have been tempted by the odd fansub here and there. And I’ll tell you something. I have a couple of DVD boxsets on my shelf now that I wouldn’t have had if I hadn’t succumbed to temptation. Now back in the dark ages, when all I had was an analogue TV and a VHS, I used to watch a lot of broadcast television. 95% of what I watched, I didn’t bother with again. It was ephemeral, forgettable broadcast. Of the remaining 5 or so percent, if I loved it, I’d go out the next chance to a video shop and buy the thing. I’ve still got a couple of old retail VHS tapes from that time. You’d get stuff like a pretty case, an absence of commercial breaks, and maybe widescreen instead of pan and scan. But you know, a lot of the stuff that I liked, I taped. It was a thing you could do, it was legal-ish back then. You could buy a blank tape and put copyrighted material broadcast through the airwaves onto it, and you wouldn’t get into trouble.
The sooner people start seeing the Internet in the same way, the better.
November 23rd, 2008 at 3:58 pm
“Can a person consider themselves a true fan if they stick only to UK releases, as I do?”
For what it’s worth, if you are blind and don’t watch anything you still can be a true fan of anime. It’s such a subjective measure.
The reality of it all is that fansubs provide people with a crutch to understand stuff they don’t understand. But you know, I know people who started to study Japanese as a result of their fandom. Could they say they are “true fans” and you are not? /shrug
It’s a crutch. Just like the internet & illegal file sharing for helping people not living in (certain parts of) Japan. But that’s got nothing to do with who’s a true fan or not.
November 23rd, 2008 at 4:23 pm
“Pretty soon all anime will debut online, legally and available to all” - yeah, right. As much as I like the idea of ad-supported broadcast, there are a few problems… For one, as of now most of the legal anime online is only available in the US/North America (or Japan). Yes, even the Funimation Youtube vids (at least they’re not available where I live). If you live anywhere else you can’t watch them, period. Two, many of the legally avalable shows are dubbed in English. Dub vs sub argument aside, not everyone in the world knows English well enough to understand a dub - subtitles are usually much easier to follow for ESL (”ETL”, etc.) people. Three, I can’t really see the Japanese doing what they do with Naruto with other shows (aside of really, really popular ones like One Piece… maybe). Naruto is popular enough to be worth experimenting with, but I bet that most other anime, especially the more obscure ones are simply not worth the money and the trouble for the companies.
Ad-supported streams are a great idea, but only if they’re available worldwide, with subs, and if the companies understand the habits of the audience they’re trying to reach. Otherwise fansubs will continue to be in great demand.
November 23rd, 2008 at 4:25 pm
Re: Japanese companies, I (again) forgot about Gonzo who are actively trying to reach a foreign audience… but still, they seem to be the exception, not the rule.
November 23rd, 2008 at 5:00 pm
I prefer to be more optimistic about these things. Especially when you hear news like Osamu Tezuka’s pre-2000 catalogue to be put online for his anniversary, with Korean and English versions in the pipeline, I certainly get the feeling that the Japanese companies are, if belatedly getting onto the online bandwagon.
After all, there are two ways of dealing with fansubs, play the equivalent of whack-a-mole with injunctions and cease and desists, which will have little over-all effect, or simply make fansubbers unnecessary by beating them at their own game.
Licences and regionality is a sticking point, and when ADV put a lot of their catalogue onto CR, I was disappointed that I just got to watch one episode of Angelic Layer before the region lock came down. But companies do know that this is ultimately self-defeating, and we are slowly moving forward to a more inclusive internet experience. It’s a matter of time. Gonzo have been the trend-setters here, but with TV Tokyo and their Naruto deal, it shouldn’t be forgotten that they are bringing another 4 series to online distribution come January. Perhaps the most trivial indicator, but in someways the most promising of all is Hulu.com. It’s a site that we in the UK cannot access legitimately, but try and stream a show from there and a questionnaire pops up asking your location. It’s no secret that they are working to licence their content for the UK and Canadian audiences as well as the US, and that’s the logical first step to a more global outlook. It’s only a matter of time.
November 23rd, 2008 at 5:08 pm
I used to be the same way about watching video on my computer however nowadays I do all my entertainment and PC stuff on my computer. I watch TV, DVDs, play video games, listen to music, etc.
I also love to actually own stuff: DVDs, manga, etc. It’s just nice to see shelves filled with anime and manga.
November 24th, 2008 at 12:15 am
Excellent post. Many online fans seem to watch more fansubbed stuff than licenced shows these days (or perhaps that’s just the bloggers I talk to) so this is a refreshing change in point of view. I used to be a DVD-only watcher once upon a time, until I had the means and determination to make time for downloaded episodes.
I still prefer a legit, packaged media version though - there’s something about having a hard copy in your hands. Apart from the moral side of things (i.e. actually paying for the thing), the worst thing that happens if my shelving unit goes down is a few broken DVD cases!
November 24th, 2008 at 1:32 am
Great read there. Personally i agree in that there is something about owning and watching a DVD version of the series to that of the versions you tend to see online. Despite that though, i have found watching various things online or getting stuff from the internet can be just as enjoyable, the main problem is it takes time to go from one episode to the next, say you where streaming, you’d need to open the next episode up or perhaps download the next one, with DVD’s there is always enough episodes per disc to keep you, or at least me entertained for a long while.
You could always go into the argument of the overall quality of it, for example as you said fansubs, since unless you can really understand japanese, you can never be 100% sure that what your reading on the subtitles is whats actually being said, even with the official translations. Still, at least from my personal opinion, you can usually tell when a group is fairly bad or not by how fast they are. There are a few groups which do take their time, and they tend to be the ones which are most accurate.
Probably easy to tell i do watch a fair bit of stuff online, but it doesn’t really put me off getting the DVD’s when they are released into english, far from it, if the series has kept me hooked throughout i’d buy it when first chance i got, so in a way, i always deem watching the shows online as a kind of way to see if its worth looking into. Of course i’ll still go and buy shows blindly, as in the cover or synopsis looks interesting and watch that, since its all fine and dandy buying shows you’ve already watched, but again, you would want to buy shows which you’ve never seen before as well.
November 24th, 2008 at 7:41 am
I understand the pull of the internet and its invitation for you to do stuff rather than sit there and watch. It’s not really just the internet, but the fact that it’s the computer where you sometimes actually DO stuff. I can see how this can be tricky, because to view anime, or any audiovisual art form, you need to sit back and watch. You need to accept the fact that for the next 25 minutes you will be watching, not doing. It means making a mental note to yourself: “I will be viewing now.” When people go to movie theatres they’re there to sit back and watch. Getting restless because you’re one click away from your email or Twitter won’t work.
But if you can put yourself in that state where you can immerse yourself in the show, even though it’s your computer, you enjoy the anime closer to the way it’s meant to be enjoyed.
Theatrical works (I include bittorrented anime from my own computer in this) come with rituals to set the mood, depending on the nature of the work. At a movie or a play they lower the lights. Okay, I’m not that formal when I sit down at my computer to watch something. At a certain point in the evening I decide it’s “Anime time!” From then on I am a viewer, not a participant beyond what goes through my head as I watch.
I don’t think about it much, but guess I make a decision to become a viewer.
I watch a couple episodes of bittorrented new stuff. Then I switch to my TV and watch DVDs. I have to turn up the sound, I have to go through the menus so that the subtitles are on, etc, which has become a preshow ritual in itself.
November 30th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
I watch anime online quite a lot (though I read manga more often than not), and, although it’s not strictly “legal”, when i first started waaaaay back in 2002, it was because it was my only lifeline to anime. I lived in a country (not the UK) where anime was played on toonami and the ilk…. in Spanish. Now, this would not have been a problem, except that my country (myself included, of course) spoke primarily English and French. We only got Spanish-dubbed anime because it was the cheaper alternative to getting it from the US. What was more, anime was not sold in stores. In fact, they only began the distribution of anime and mangas in my country last year! So, it was either the internet or forking out huge amounts of money in my currency to Amazon, and wait for weeks for one over-priced dvd. You can tell which one I chose.
My point is this; watching anime online, just like anime itself, is an individual decision, stemming from many factors. My (and my friends, except for one who could afford to buy dvds and boxsets) decision was based on finances. However, since moving to London, the amount of time I spend watching anime online has decreased. The library has enough manga to keep me going, and shipping is so much less when ordering online. Plus, there’s TokyoToys, conventions, and more anime fans (I was in the minority in my last residence).
Maybe in a year’s time I’ll be in your place, questioning the necessity of watching anime online. But for now, it’s the cheaper way to go.
December 4th, 2008 at 10:39 am
Thanks for the comments, I enjoyed reading them all.
People’s comments have made me realise that there are a lot more aspects to this, which I had forgotten or just was not aware of. So I think it’s likely that I’ll revisit this topic again in the future. Thanks for reading.
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