Nostalgia

Today, I ran across a site that sells fansubs through the mail. I was a little surprised at this, I didn’t think anyone still did it. Of course, it’s not quite like back when I was getting those Sailormoon subs on VHS from VKLL (remember them?) This person is selling on DVD, pulled from R2 DVD source. I’m sure the quality trounces even a first gen VHS fansub, at least par with the average digisub. They have the whole series of Kamen Rider Agito, which I may have to pick up…

I did find the whole experience rather nostalgic. It reminded me of a time when fansubbing really was done as a service to the fan community. In those VHS days, being a fansubber was a bitch. It was expensive, it was time consuming. I had extreme respect for those folks. These days you can pull it off using raws you got off WinNY and some free/bootlegged software. Anyone with passable Japanese ability (or access to someone who has it) can put out a fansub, and they do.  There are some I still respect, but there are a lot who seem to do it for no other reason than to draw traffic to their crappy IRC channel and feel important.

Oh well, the upside is that we get sometimes 24-hour turnaround on episodes and don’t have to pay anything. You win some, you lose some. I just wish the anime fansub community could be more collaborative and less competitive, like the JDrama subbing community seems to be.

And now, the only VHS fansubs I still have in my current possession, the SuperS Specials and Sailor Stars. Everything else is at my dad’s… somewhere. I kept these because I was afraid I’d never get a better copy of them: