Tuesday, 09-Feb-2010 16:21:55 CST
History
of Anime in the U.S.
Fans, Fansubs, and J.A.I.L.E.D.
Even before anime was becoming mainstream
in the early 1990's (yes, I know that's a bit of an overstatement),
small pockets of fans were beginning to form. As early as the mid
1970's, people were getting together with huge bulky video machines
and watching the stuff that was broadcast on Japanese TV. Eventually,
chapters of the first California-only organization (The Cartoon
Fantasy Organization ... most of us thought it was a terrible name
even then) started in other cities in the US (the first real one
was started in Philadelphia by Bill Thomas, with another chapter
forming shortly afterward in Chicago).
This organization exists today only as a single chapter, largely
due to political in-fighting (that's a whole different story ...
one that perhaps I'll write one day), and the same is true of the
other national clubs. After the dissolution of the club structure,
these pockets of fans were on their own. Since tape was something
generally pretty difficult to come by, it only made sense to pool
resources. When the scripts and the Amiga came along, some people
at least were able to watch (sometimes surprisingly professional)
"fansubs". These were generally pretty freely distributed within
the community, but the problems arose when you lived somewhere that
was more than about 50 miles from one of the trading repositories.
While there were (and still are) bigger groups who copied stuff
and mailed it out, for the most part people were reduced to dealing
with some occasionally unsavory people who set up at SF conventions
and charged around $15 for a tape.
 Many
people today felt that these people did nothing to help popularize
anime in the US, but those people ignore the facts: many of the
second and third wave fans got their first real taste of anime by
paying some money and picking up one of these fansub tapes. While
there's a lot less reason today to buy such tapes, some still do
(mostly on tv series that have not yet been picked up by a US distributor,
or on movies/OVAs which are very new). The US companies knew full
well that these people existed (some even had quite extensive databases
of them), but pretty much turned a blind eye toward them unless
they were selling an unlicensed copy of a licensed product. For
a long time, all they did was watch ... but that wasn't going to
last forever.
Fearing that a significant percentage of sales were being lost everyday
to these tape pirates, a consortium of US anime companies (lead
by CPM/USMC) created something which struck fear into the hearts
of tape traders and fans alike around the country: JAILED. This
(J)apanese (A)nimation (I)ndustry (L)egal (E)nforcement (D)ivision
consisted of a lawyer on retainer and a tipline with which people
could be anonymously reported. Whether this actually impacted tape
piracy is today a hotly debated issue, as is the actual amount of
sales lost to this practice: there were some people who were contacted
(no fans, though) and there was at least one seizure of pirated
videotape. VIZ, even though they were a member of JAILED, took tape
piracy and fansubbing very personally.
This eventually led to a kind of a backlash against their product
by some in the community, but the VIZ position was eventually softened
to embrace the less restrictive positions of the other US companies
(mostly this applied to conventions who wanted to show both VIZ
products and fansubs of other titles). Most US conventions have
since enforced De Facto bans on non licensed tapes in their dealers
rooms, so largely this issue is pretty much moot anyway. To be fair,
with acquisition costs soaring (particularly guaranteed minimums)
each of these titles represents a huge investment on a company's
part. By the time the US production work is completed most totals
reach far into the six figure range ... in fact, there is at least
one US property which has gone well into 7 digits. Several titles
with similar pricetags exist, but have not been picked up in the
US (for very good reason: those numbers almost certainly preclude
making any sort of profit). In this light, it's easy to see why
some of those "missing" titles have yet to be officially released
in this market!
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