So you live in the US and have heard of this thing called anime. Or, you like anime, but want to know what is out in Japan and current (i.e., not licensed 1+ years after it airs). Then fansubs are what you are looking for.

I love anime. Can’t get enough. How does one feed the habit? The fansubber to the rescue.

A fansubber is a person, or more likely a group of persons, who get a raw copy of an anime episode, OAV (only on video release, i.e., not a movie or televised) or a movie, usually from Japan. Then they get that raw media into an electronic format, create or get a copy of a translation of the Japanese into whatever language they desire, merge the translation into an electronic text file called a subtitle file, then merge the two together. It can be a complicated process and there are many permutations on the finished product (namely final file output, editing, muxing, etc.). See here for a good but simplistic rundown.

But is it legal? Well, yes and no. On the one hand, anime is copyrighted and copyrights are owned by the creators of it (that is, the companies that own the license; not usually the creative individuals that created it). They have the right to any distribution of any anime that they own. On the other hand, if I want a way to get the word out on a title that I own and someone wants to do all the work to get the raw media, translate it, encode it, time the fansubs, output the finished product, and distribute it for, roughly, cost, they just might let the process play itself out. That is where the state of fansubbing is today: most anime copyright owners see benefits of the fansubbing process and either decide to let it flourish to reap the benefits of an engaged anime fan base or decide that it is not worth defending their copyrights in the courts. It is an ethical dilemma, granted. My point is that creating fansubs and downloading them are technically violations of copyright law. However, copyrights are defended by companies or they’re not. The jury is out on whether the impact of fansubbing is large or not. See here for a rather in-depth reading of pertinent copyright law. See here for a guide on the ethical issues of fansubbing. Take these issues to heart: you can choose to follow the rest of this article, which will explain how to avail yourself of copyrighted material.

Ok. So you want to see what all the fuss is about and you want to watch all the anime you can get a hold of. Then, you need to enter the world of bittorrent downloads. Here is a good guide to what bittorrent is and how it works. Here is a list of applications you can use to download bit torrents. And here is the overlord of anime bittorrent sites, AnimeSuki. You can find hundreds of anime titles that are available for downloading. Also, if you see a title that you might want to see but are unsure what it is about or how good it might be, you can go here, the AnimeNewsNetwork’s Anime Encyclopedia. You can search for a title and it will give you a page that may have a synopsis and a poll system to rate how others liked the title. Or, you can browse AnimeSuki, find an anime you might have heard of, and download it and check it out.

In the future, I will post anime I would suggest checking out. The suggestion will encompass both licensed and unlicensed anime as well. I will indicate its status as licensed or unlicensed as well.

Happy anime hunting.