The current attempt at a solution to the fansub/piracy problem is through the streaming with region-locking and paid subscriptions, i.e. Crunchyroll’s model. I’m not aiming to criticise what CR are doing here: they did great things in giving Eve no Jikan exposure, made last year’s Global Shinkai Day even more special and are so far the only independent site that has made a high-profile attempt to seek the middle ground.

BUT…not every English speaker lives in the US. Yes, there’s only 60 million of us on this damp little rock, but there are fans here. And elsewhere. Region locking is a pain, but unless the contracts between CR and the Japanese licence-holders change, I suppose that issue will stay with us for a while yet. They also dropped the DTO service for reasons that I sadly can’t recall, and don’t offer as much HD content as I’d like either.

Above all other points I make in this post, I firmly believe that the fansubs debate would move forward if the fans/fansubbers and the licence-holders/distributors talked more and eyed one another with suspicion less. Studios don’t want to deliberately piss their viewers off, and fans don’t want to see the film-makers and actors they admire out of work. There IS a compromise here somewhere – I’m strangely optimistic about that.

What would I ask for in an anime streaming/downloading site? If it’s a series or movie I really, really like I’d want a DVD/Blu-Ray so this post isn’t about DVD/BD piracy, or issues associated with packaged media and licencing/distribution thereof. For ‘casual’ viewing, I’d want to watch it like I’d watch an ordinary anime show: being able to see it subtitled every week.

Good sound and picture quality are desirable. Much of Youtube’s content has godawful pixellation and artefacting, which is an experience I find somewhere between staring at the sun and being stuck in a lift with Harriet Harman in terms of discomfort. Newer PCs can cope with 720p and even 1080p, and quite a lot of currently-airing anime is at least 720p, and it looks great.

Broadband speeds vary worldwide. The UK is pretty shabby in that regard but again, not every part of every country has the same speeds as urban areas of Japan and the US. Streaming can be a bit choppy in many places, which is even more infuriating than ropey video or poor resolution; downloading the episode then watching it off your hard drive solves this but (quite rightly really) the Industry types of wary of it. DTO makes it hard to stop piracy since it’s a system open to abuse from unscrupulous viewers who can all too easily ruin the fun for everyone else.

So, what would I do if I were a programming genius with execs from Shaft, KyoAni, Madhouse et al waving contracts at me? The criteria would need to be:

• Decent quality video and audio that can deliver 720p and at least 2.0 stereo, using formats that are compatible with current standards
• The option of live streaming for people with reliable, fast connections and DTO for those who haven’t
• region-locking that *works*…a bit of a bummer, but that’ll have to be thrashed out later
• The option of setting a limit to the timeframe in which the content can be downloaded and viewed
• a system that allows revenue to pay for new licences and site maintenance

The last point is an important one: my personal feeling is that good entertainment is worth paying for. Not necessarily the eye-watering prices those poor Japanese fans pay for their Blu-rays, but a subscription fee is fair enough; CR already uses this, and it’s not a bad idea. The other criteria might sound like a tall order but why do I think it’s possible, at least from a technological/software standpoint? Because the tech already exists, and has been used by millions for some time now.

The answer is obvious for UK residents, but for the rest of you it’s this: BBC iPlayer. To clarify, this is an online service that give access to a lot (not all, due to copyright reasons) of programmes broadcast on BBC TV and radio. After a show is aired it is available on iPlayer streamed, or to download if you prefer.

I personally think iPlayer is one of the best ideas the BBC has ever had. I don’t have a TV so don’t pay a licence fee, but there is some good quality stuff that’s worth watching; if iPlayer required a subscription fee, I’d rather pay it and watch the programmes I like via the internet. It’s a neat way of watching stuff without requiring the infamous TV licence; which is effectively a blanket tax for merely owning a TV set…a stupid idea in this day and age. But I digress.

The clever bit of the iPlayer service is that, if your connection speed can’t reliably support streaming, you can download the programme and watch it later. There’s a timebomb-like feature built in that automatically deletes the file from your machine after a given period, and there’s even a security measure that somehow prevents you taking screencaps (I don’t know how that works, but it does. I tried it). There are even some programmes in high definition, that match the standards of picture of the BBC HD channels.

The iPlayer Desktop application uses on Adobe Air, and can run on Windows or a Mac. Long story short, it works, and fits all the criteria listed above apart from the payment system. So then, the technology exists for viewers to watch their favourite shows but it also has security features built in to allow the site’s webmasters to control who can access the content, and for how long.

I’m suspect there are a lot of other, legal rather than practical, reasons why Crunchyroll’s site and terms of service aren’t ideal and why the fansub/piracy debate rages on. I must confess I’m ignorant to many of them, because right now I’m thinking “what’s stopping it?” If it’s physically getting it to work, there are real-life examples of film and television that is viewable publicly and legally. It works for the viewers AND keeps those corporate folks happy.

The bottom line is that there needs to be freer dialogue between the people who make the shows and the people who watch/buy them. The physical act of getting the content available online however is the easy part…if the rest of the obstacles are insurmountable that’s fair enough, but how cool would it be if the fandom could pull something like this off?

yes, I’m an idiot. I get it

Any minute now, someone’s going to make a point that will make me feel incredibly dumb. I’ve already braced myself for a facepalm that it’ll give my unborn grandkids nosebleeds, so fire away and stop me daydreaming like this. But I at least wanted to try and make a constructive suggestion, because the *real* stupid questions are the ones you don’t ask.

What do you mean “the first season was better…”?!

Haruhi Suzumiya is a texbook example of how these things happen although I’m a bit spoilt for choice of other examples. Naruto is an obvious one although it’s the stereotypical Narutard that upsets most people, probably even more so than the filler episodes. To a lesser degree you get a mirror image of this carry-on with notoriously bad shows but the general pattern is the same: a wave of opinion for A New Thing creates a reflex reaction in the opposite direction, forming another retort of the initial enthusiasm and so on. Like the old fave “Toilet Tennis: look left” and “Toilet Tennis: look right” scrawled on the opposite walls of a toilet cubicle, this is Backlash Tennis.

In the same way that The New Season Sucks and similar nonsense pans out, the Backlash Tennis thing is pretty darned obvious when you watch it from a distance. It’s old, too: ever since a monkey pooped into its hand and threw the stuff at another monkey, I reckon chucking crap at each other has always held plenty of entertainment value. The nature of the anime fandumb is familiar enough for me to assume the causes go without saying: the cosy and interactive nature of blogs, Twitter and the like means the shit flies faster and all that. Suffice to say Backlash Tennis is particularly obvious to me because the anime fan community is one I spend a lot of free time in and yes, the nature of the community provides the ideal conditions for breeding this sort of thing.

Fans are passionate and have very strong opinions so in the anime fan community the exchange of this passion and opinion is as rapid as those discussing the latest Harry Potter movie or whatever. I’m currently really enjoying K-On! for instance, until the WS releases shuddered to a halt and left me behind the times. Considering how the series doesn’t really draw attention to itself – a relatively quiet-spoken individual in a room full of louder voices -  it took a lot of flak. The show itself has its lovers and haters as they all do; the KyoAni connection however amplified the gulf between the two camps, which resulted in the Newton’s Third Law-style opposing reaction which was just as vehement as its fans.

This is to be expected, not least because the Moe Issue was also drawn into the fray. KyoAni, again, got fans riled over Haruhi Suzumiya: many loved it, some hated it but you can’t deny its overall popularity. In the three or so years that I’ve been blogging I’ve seen the tide as favourable, with a few dissenting voices in the meantime, but I’m seeing the Endless Eight test the enthusiasm of even the most loyal fans.

Even bigger, more enduring and more controversial than even Haruhi is of course Evangelion, which has been the subject of a Backlash Tennis for nearly a decade and a half. Although it’s always enjoyed a high profile the Rebuild movies have rekindled some old passions and opened old wounds; the funny thing is, you could look back in blog and forum archives from five or even ten years ago and still find the same arguments dragged out as if people have forgotten they, or fans who came before them, split the same hairs before. Look left, look right. Look left, look right…

My affection for the show has settled down into a quiet respect for what it achieved and what it aspired to but I hope I can at least see its flaws as well as its strengths. I did however see red when I read a review of the second instalment of the Rebuild series, You May (not) Advance on Colony Drop, which is a prime example of how the ridiculous Backlash Tennis game continues to rage on.

For certain people getting what they wish for is not necessarily a good thing

I’m not going to form an opinion on a movie that I haven’t yet seen, of course. Nor am I going to speak at length at the MO of CD in general, which is rarely as clever as it thinks it is; quite frankly even linking to the post in question is giving it more attention than it deserves. This attention-seeking is often the cause of the bitching but the other significant factor is the extra stuff that accompanies something that’s popular. The term ‘franchise’ rears its head again here and so does the ominous ‘phenomenon’; you aren’t merely going into a film or TV show as dive into something much bigger.

The arguments and divisions of opinion seem to spill over from discussing the product itself and pick up the myriad of associated factors that come with it as ammunition to pan it: merchandise, unecessary sequels/prequels and spin-offs or over-zealous marketing can all harm the enjoyment and reputation of something that, in of itself, isn’t all that bad. The reasoning behind CD’s assessment of YM(n)A is quite frankly idiotic to my mind because it isn’t so much their view of the film itself – which may or may not deserve the mauling it’s given – as a show of their displeasure of the marketing machine that runs off it. As a review of the film rather than the franchise it makes no sense whatsoever.

Needless to say the Rebuild movies are hardly the reinvention of the automatic bread slicer in the first place but it’s important to avoid jumping on any bandwagon: you might think you’re being clever and avoiding falling in with the sheeple by blurting out the opposite of the popular views but ultimately you aren’t. Merely reacting to a reaction is part of the problem rather than part of a solution of enlightened understanding, which might actually get us somewhere for a change.

Source: xkcd.xom, a site I love

It started with this unfortunate incident that’s an example of (on this blog at least) a mercifully rare side-effect of the user-comment feature: the Annoying Unconstructive Comment. The anime blogging community is a pretty closed one but every now and then, alongside the usual discussion with your blog’s regulars, you get a comment from a stranger who in all probability is ‘just passing through’. I try to reply to these but when it’s a one-line or incomprehensible comment I don’t normally bother – they’ll probably never read my reply anyway. This time I took the bait and was, well, a bit abrupt; in retrospect I was in the wrong but that’s beside the point. Nor am I taking back what I said. Here’s why.

It depends on your own writing style but I’m not one of those gifted few who can kick out a long, complex article in one sitting on a regular basis*: agonising over screencaps (now made slightly less tedious thanks to this plugin), turns of phrase and even punctuation frequently lead to a cycle of Post Draft Hell. It takes me a long time and a lot of effort to get one blog post online, which is why I don’t post with as much frequency and as a result every one is a big deal. If I waited until I was certain it was perfect in every aspect I’d never publish anything.

Blogging is fun but I still have a constant fear that I might make flawed arguments, unseen typos and other errors that go unnoticed until it’s too late. I go to a lot of trouble to weed these out but the thick skin that comes with writing publicly-viewable articles is something I’m still in the process of acquiring; there’s always that nagging feeling that after clicking the Publish button everything I say is going to be ripped to shreds or ignored entirely (or, worse, have the important points ignored while the trivial ones get all the attention). It appears some people actually enjoy nitpicking but after going to all the extra hassle to remove mistakes and give those people less cause for complaint it makes it all the more irritating when it happens anyway.

I’m, like, sooo tsundere for the Internet

We’re only human after all, so with the best will in the world (accompanied by Wikipedia and the MS Word spellchecker prior to C/Ping) there’s no cast-iron guarantee that what you write is 100% correct and meets the approval of everyone. Nobody likes being wrong; constructive criticism is good but there’s a difference between ‘constructive criticism’ and ‘splitting hairs’. Genuine trolls usually go by the username Anonymous so I’m giving this random passer-by the benefit of the doubt and assume it’s a misguided attempt at being helpful. So…

Writing intelligent blog posts is a time-consuming and labour-intensive process and inevitably, despite my best efforts, errors will occur. I have a contact form for private correspondance but a petty, single-line comment that ignores the main point to concentrate on trivialities will achieve nothing more than pissing me off.

This is why I won’t take back my annoyed reply; an explanation as to why I was annoyed in the first place is much more meaningful, right?

I don’t like to fall back on the excuse that this site is maintained in my own spare time and at my own expense in justifying this sort of thing; “this is my blog so I can say what I like,” is fair enough up to a point but it’s the start of a slippery slope. As much as posts that are inaccurate, offensive or just plain dumb can discredit me as an individual, there’s a limit to how much damage can be done. Multi-author blogs on the other hand are risky business because individual contributors’ writing, and quality thereof, reflects on the venture as a whole.

Which leads me onto the issues some of us are having with ANN’s current roster of reviewers. The article on Shigurui interested me in particular because it’s a title I know of by reputation but have yet to watch: I read ANN’s review with interest but was disappointed with the quality of writing, to put it mildly.

You know a reviewer has failed when the discussion that follows is more insightful and helpful than the article they’re discussing. As in, the commenters got a better gist of the subject matter than the reviewer did. In the case of bloggers who start being jaded and cynical towards the stuff they’re covering, it’s a sign of burn-out; Hiatus Disease follows and they take a much-needed break, end of story. In the case of a high-profile, multi-author venture such as ANN, the stakes are higher: the writers are presumably working to deadlines and have an incentive (financial or otherwise) to keep going. Remember Zac’s relief when he relinquished the reins of Hey, Answerman! to let a new writer step into his shoes? Zac’s a good writer I’m sure, but that was burn-out on an epic scale.

I think I know what to suggest to ANN, although implementing it is difficult, I’ll admit. The task of reviewing for their site, catering for casual visitors and dedicated fans alike, requires a clear, objective mindset. Getting the balance between giving fanboys/fangirls and haters certain titles to review is tricky when, say, moe shows aren’t popular amongst the current roster so the ‘right’ person for a given title may not be available. Apparently they have a shortage of good reviewers…but then, I saw some very articulate and entertaining writing in the comments forum thread that followed…

There’s also the problem of a Serious Misunderstanding again: a favourite site of mine once received a lot of flak for publishing a review on Grave of the Fireflies, for example. The admin decided to keep the review, which basically panned the movie, online; not because they agreed with the reviewer’s opinions but because the said opinions are representative of a portion of the potential audience, however minor that portion may be. I don’t agree with that review either, but I know the site well and don’t think any less of it for that; casual just-passing-through visitors on the other hand might not know this and as a result could make a Serious Misunderstanding…which may be the problem I recently experienced.

Perhaps ANN need to do a serious recruitment programme in order to top up their staff with some fresh, intelligent and articulate editorial talent to breathe life into a site that’s becoming increasingly distanced from the fanbase. They need to ask themselves a lot of questions: Are we honest and impartial? Are we in touch with the people we are writing for? Who are we writing for in the first place?

There’s a big jump between writing for your own satisfaction and getting some aggro from one or two visitors, and writing for a world-famous online site with the potential for getting A LOT of aggro from many visitors; but some rules still hold true in either case. Good writing still matters but honest mistakes still happen. Honest misunderstandings still happen too. What’s important is to do the best you can, which ought to mean an apology shouldn’t be necessary.

*This post was written with as much honesty, clarity and accuracy as I could scrape together, as always. It was also written in one sitting with no use of a spell-checker, so if that gives you cause for complaint it just proves my secondary point. It should also go without saying that I won’t change anything I’ve written, and won’t apologise for anything either.