The History of Scanslations

[Doppleganger]

Comp's dead. Meanwhile,

http://www.insidescanlation.com/index.html

Interesting read. I was a part of this somewhat, as several of the people interviewed I know - Protected heads NULL, Spaceman-Spiff, barbapapa, and ocean (used to) work with me at AP. Nothing in there contradicts what I already know, so it's a good piece to fill in the gaps.

That site's argument is that scanslation popularity experienced a non-sustaining feedback loop, where online scanslations jump-started the R1 industry, introducing far too many fans to manga who then swarmed the online communities in such numbers they couldn't be contained by pre-existing fan culture, leading to a saturation of shounen manga and an obnoxiously exposed scanslation industry. Not unlike what happened to a lot of websites following the social networking torrent in 2005.

Is this good? Is this bad?

Both?

What do you think?

[Talon87]

That's an exhaustive read, especially for one with no vested interest in manga scanlations, so I'm going to have to take your word for it and reply to your own summary of the term paper they wrote. (I did read the first two sections, "Introduction" and "The Land Before Time", though.)

I think in general it's fair to say that companies who have mistaken fan demand for free goods for fan demand for paid goods have been rudely awakened time and time again. As for the huge amount of shounen manga on the market, I think that has less to do with scanlations and more to do with who pays for manga. Whether we like to admit it or not, I think most children have their parents buy them manga from the bookstore whereas most teenagers or young adults learn about manga scanlations and, being the natural economists they are, decide to have Mom and Dad put their gift money towards other treasures instead. Physical things, unpiratable things. Things like computers or home video centers or televisions or bikes or cars, things like that. So, whether it's in Japan or whether it's in the USA, I think kids will naturally constitute a major market force simply because of their naivety/innocence. And in America especially, where you don't have the loyal paying otaku fanbase nor the loyal salaryman fanbase who buoy up seinen series like Monster or Kaiji, you're going to get only the teenage and the child fare. And since the teenage fare that excludes little kids (comedy romance smut, in most cases) is the sort of thing the teens are picking up off the Internet these days anyway, even the Love Hinas and the Negimas are less likely to come over nowadays and instead all you're going to get is more Fairy Tail, One Piece, and Naruto.

But is this even true? :?: I'm just responding to what you said as though it were true. The last time I was at the bookstore just a couple of months ago, I saw as many shoujo manga series (magical girls, yaoi, strong female leads) as I did shounen manga series. To me, this suggests that your "saturation of shounen manga" claim may not be quite right. Unless ...

... unless I'm coming at it wrong, and when you said "saturation," what you meant by that wasn't percent market share (i.e. "oh man, 90% of manga in the U.S. is shounen!") but instead was that shounen titles themselves are crowding each other out (i.e. maybe only 40% of the market is shounen titles but there's like twenty of them and they're all selling rather poorly ... and it's because twenty shounen titles splits the paying fanbase up too much). So like ... you can't expect people to pay for Fairy Tail and One Piece and Naruto and Bleach and Rurouni Kenshin and [...], and so even if you think you're doing the fans a favor (and you are!) by bringing over more stories for them to pick from, you aren't doing yourself any favors, Mr. Publishing House, because you've done all that extra work but you're not going to see extra profits come out of it. If the fans spent $10,000,000 on ten shounen series in 2009, you can't expect them to pay $20,000,000 on twenty shounen series in 2011. It just doesn't work that way. Even with market growth, you can only hope for an extra $500,000 to $1,000,000 per year tops, so, maybe $12,000,000 in 2011, but certainly not $20,000,000. And if you're living on a razor's edge as a manga licensing firm in the United States (because of the exorbitant prices the Japanese demand for their properties), then this miscalculation can be the difference between a modest profit where you get to take home $55,000/yr in salary and bankrupty for the company and unemployment for you. If this is what you meant when you said "saturation of shounen manga," then I'd be inclined to say that it makes a lot of sense but that without knowing the actual numbers (revenue, net income, etc) I'd be loathe to declare "it's the truth!"

[Doppleganger]

By saturation I didn't mean published R1 manga, but here online in the form of scanslations. In the section "Jump Generation" it talks about how shounen, especially Jump, no matter how terrible it might be, utterly dominated the scanslation scene. In the past, when there were fewer groups, content/taste was more firmly controlled. AK_of_Troy hates One Piece, for example, so he never scanslated it. Dattebayo Fansubs likewise hated One Piece and subbed everything but. Combined with the bad 4Kids dub, OP was practically obscure until 2006/2007, when the manga boom lead to an interest in all shounen manga, and the terrible quality of Bleach/Naruto couldn't counteract the rising interest in OP.

Back in 2005, I used to laud the OP fanbase for being a fun and interesting place, but now it's as generic, obnoxiously loud and retarded as any other rabid fanbase. I liken the phenomenon to the Protestant Reformation...Arlong Park is the Catholic Church, and as tons of new people became Christians, they moved away from the RCC's dominions and formed their own congregations for like-minded people. They didn't want to be told how to behave or how to think.

Anyway, I think this is pretty interesting because manga is huge online. It's football to anime's baseball. Internationally its popularity is ridiculous especially due to bandwidth limitations and greater focus abroad on a "reading" culture versus "visual" one in R1. Not exactly my cup of tea anymore since I can't stand generic shounen but they are a force.

[Doppleganger]

More history is made (http://foolrulez.org/blog/2012/01/the-age-of-scanlators-and-money/).

Annnnd Commie responds (http://commiesubs.com/the-age-of-fansubbers-and-money/).

I tell people all the time anime fansubbing != manga scanslating, the industries and attitudes are completely different. I feel the technological barrier is a big reason - a 14 year old can form his own manga group, but likely doesn't have the resources or cooperation to pull off anime, and because of the methods for distro (torrents vs. ddl/add-supported portals), they can't make money off of anime either.

I should say that I have a few videos on YouTube and YT has invited me into the revenue-sharing program, but I don't do it because I'm not a retard who tries to make money off of copyrighted material. Though I also don't live in New Zealand and my last name isn't "Dotnet".

[Talon87]

More history is made (http://foolrulez.org/blog/2012/01/the-age-of-scanlators-and-money/).

Annnnd Commie responds (http://commiesubs.com/the-age-of-fansubbers-and-money/).

I tell people all the time anime fansubbing != manga scanslating, the industries and attitudes are completely different. I feel the technological barrier is a big reason - a 14 year old can form his own manga group, but likely doesn't have the resources or cooperation to pull off anime, and because of the methods for distro (torrents vs. ddl/add-supported portals), they can't make money off of anime either.
Took you a while to write this post up ;-), but while you were writing it, coincidentally I checked in on Commie and I saw that very essay you just linked. Came back here and voilà: you'd finally posted.

I 100% agree with Commie's "stfu hypocrites" response to the whining scanlators. This same argument comes up every so often in the hentai community as well. People will complain about their works (be they English-language original or English-language translation) being pirated and passed around on the very portal or community where they themselves come weekly (if not daily) to partake in the pirated fruits of Japan's collective labor. It's ridiculous. (1) You don't have the legal right to complain that somebody "pirated" your English-language translation when you yourself never had the author's permission to translate it and release your translation in the first place. (2) You don't have the common sense or ethical right to complain about piracy of your works when you yourself pirate works of the very same kind.

I should say that I have a few videos on YouTube and YT has invited me into the revenue-sharing program, but I don't do it because I'm not a retard who tries to make money off of copyrighted material. Though I also don't live in New Zealand and my last name isn't "Dotnet".
Of course; and same. Several years back, Youtube e-mailed me about enrolling the Karei Naru Ichizoku theme song edit into their ad revenue program. I politely said "No." Then a few months back they did the same thing with the "Misty does NOT hint at marriage!" video. Once again, I said "Thanks but no thanks."