4/27/10

He said whaaat?

I'm sure by now the majority of anime fans have read Sherman's post on the demise of anime. He wagged his finger at illegal downloads which lead many to enter the age old debate on fansubs. In my opinion the argument detracts from the conclusion Sherman came to: Anime is going to die. What kind of over-blown, stupid, idiotic statement is that? It's just as dumb as when some stupid idiot over at Disney thought people didn't like hand drawn animation anymore. Such a big outlandish shocking statement does nothing to help his cause, especially when everyone knows it's untrue. Maybe dub anime will disappear. Such a possibility is plausible and having a honest open discussion about whether or not dubbed anime has a feasible future would be great. Such discussions don't grow from untruths or by pointing fingers.

1 comment:

Issendai said...

Spfff. Anime started as a fansubbed, bootlegged genre long before the Internet made it easy to find dealers. And yet it managed to become commercially viable in the U.S., then become one of the better-selling genres--despite advances in the Internet making it possible to get entire series for free. So if several companies went under last year, I'm more inclined to blame the recession than to blame pirates.

And if commercial anime does go under? That only means anime will get cheaper. Fansubbers won't touch series that have a license in their country, but if more and more good series aren't picked up, more and more fansubbers will grab them instead. The sub quality will be less even, and it sucks that the originating companies will lose out on a market. Lack of media exposure means anime won't be as popular as it was at the height of the boom. But there will still be plenty of anime out there.