This is a repost from a Twitter thread I made back in September 2017.

So on a Slack I am on, I ended up talking about how fan-subtitled (fansub) anime distribution used to work in the 90s.

Anime would cost between $15 and $30 USD commercially depending if it was subbed or dubbed – $25-50 today.

However, LaserDiscs from Japan were super expensive. You’d have to order them via mail or phone and they’d be $300+ sometimes plus shipping.

In some cases, one LD collection would just have 4 episodes and cost that much. You’d be looking at $80-$100 an episode in mid-90s money. These discs would typically be not available to purchase until 8-12 months after the show had aired–unlike Crunchyroll’s 1-hour!

Fansubbers would buy these discs with their own money. Sometimes donations would be taken but typically it was out of pocket.

Typically the fansubbers would just stop distribution if the anime series was picked up by a distributor in the market they’re in.

Fansubbers would spend late nights–whole weekends too–just going over the show, watching it endlessly, translating and timing a script.

It was tireless work. I had friends at Arctic Animation who did all sorts of great shows like MKR and Akazukin Chacha to name a few

Once translated and timed, you’d eventually feed the script into a computer and then use some fancy hardware to overlay the subtitles. It was a 1:1 copy by the way. There was no way to speed up the process. Play from LD, record to VHS or SVHS. Found a mistake as you watched the subtitle? Welp you’re out of luck! You’re going to have to fix the script and then restart!

SVHS was used to keep the quality high but it only really benefited the subtitles, not the video since the LD was not able to output SVideo. You’d usually copy the SVHS “master” to other copies for use for distribution. I hate the term “master” and will only use it once.

Once you’ve gotten your copies, you’re able to distribute the tapes assuming that nobody bought the rights in the three months it took.

So now you want a copy of MKR? Well it is time to send a letter and a VHS tape or a few off to your favourite fansubber! You’d be waiting however long it would take to get your copy. Arctic was here in Vancouver so I’d just take a train to get my copies.

Some fansubbers went overboard with their methods. Here is how VKLL did theirs. I had these copies at one point.

VHS distribution died when it became effective using the Internet to distribute copies in DivX or even RealMedia format. It was around the time that anime got super popular and anime cons were just popping up everywhere.

I cannot remember Arctic’s last release, but it was definitely in the early 2000s.

Nonetheless, it was interesting to see the shift from VHS to digital distribution for fansubs and the rapid turnaround it got. You’d see fansub groups in the mid-2000s pumping out subtitled copies in a matter of hours after airtime. However, unlike when LDs were used, no money is going to the right holders in Japan for these shows.

These days fansubbing is a lot less prevalent. Crunchyroll has the market cornered with its 1-hour after broadcast release schedule.

But yeah! Subs not dubs.