dosius's Journal: The Subber Wars

I started work on my fansub projects back in 1999, when VHS was still the order of the day for most fansubbers. A lot of my earlier work was never really released because I just didn't have the means to finalize my subs back then. All I had was a 486 and a TV, and no way to get images from one to the other. So I just put the subs on one screen and the video on the other.

Then 2003 rolled around and I finally had the capability of creating fansubs. The Celeron/700 was a piece of junk then, and it's a piece of junk now, but it was up to the task. I churned out a few test subs in VCD format, and eventually released one of them, the first version of my Sailor Moon R 67.

Later, I decided to make use of what I had learned over these many years, when a group released a sub of the new live-action Sailor Moon that had a few questionable lines inserted into it. I started my work on it, and soon, another group came out with a "clean" sub of their own.

When the parody sub source dried up, after the third episode, I said I had intentions to continue my project, and that I would use whatever source I had available to guide me along that path, and I specifically mentioned this group that was still subbing. They got mad; I backed off. A friend of mine supplied me with a translation of his own and I edited and released that instead. However, to this day, the other fansub group still rants and raves, claiming I stole their scripts. That other group is TV-Nihon.

My question is, when did subbing stop being about providing a service for the fans, and start being a popularity contest, or - worse - a turf war? When did it stop being normal and accepted for one fansubber to correct another's flaws, and release a superior product with due credit? When did fansub groups become monstrous entities run by people who couldn't care less about the FANS?

I come from the old school of fansubbing, and merely use digisubbing methods because they are more convenient and accessible to me and to my fellow fans. I don't care about being the 1337est fansubber on the block, I just want to please the fans. And most of them are quite easy to please. Really, the only exceptions are those who seem to be mind-controlled by rival fansubbers. (TV-Nihon certainly seems to have a cult of personality revolving around their bossman KingRanger.)

I have gone out of the way to pacify KingRanger of TV-Nihon but he seems to want no less than my head on a platter, or at the very least, my complete departure from fansubbing, which I refuse to give him, so the war continues, and I am fighting defensively. It is a war I do not wish to fight but that I must not give up.