The Age of Fansubbers and Money
There’s been a lot of hubbub lately about scanlating and moneymaking. Here’s a post from us regarding the other side of the anime/manga fandom.
Now before continuing, here’s a disclaimer. Is this post going to be biased?
Oh hell yes.
Here’s the thing;
Watermarks are retarded
Does Commie use watermarks? No. Not even a logo of the group plastered all over the title scene, which some notable groups love to do.
Do you see this shit? Do you know how fucking annoying that is?
Why do scanlation groups do retarded things like the above? The answer is Money, which will be covered a bit later. For now, more ranting about how incredibly retarded watermarks are.
The argument scanlators have is that they want people who read manga online to know where it came from. Does it fucking matter? You’re a fucking pirate, get over yourselves.
You hear a lot about how Mangafox “steals” their work, and in response scanlators have resorted to watermarking a perfectly good release to shit.
Guess what? Anime streaming sites exist too. There are a fucking ton of them, and we at Commie don’t give a single shit about our “work” being “stolen”. We don’t even use logos. If you were to stream our release on a random site, unless the upload has [Commie] in the title, you would have no fucking idea it was from us. (Unless, of course, you recognize LT Finnegan, but that’s a separate story)
There also exists a “good” manga reading site, Batoto. Batoto actually allows scanlators to be paid for their work through ad revenue. Look around on this site. Do you see ads? No. Do you think any of the 50 million anime streaming sites listed on Google pays us? No, no they don’t.
So how does fansubbing remain alive? What motivates people to do it, if it isn’t money?
Donations. Commie has subsisted entirely on donations and Fileserve money. Now Fileserve is dead, and we will have to do with only donations just like Wikipedia. We have zero ad revenue, no other sites paying us, and absolutely no watermarks.
Now scanlators might argue:
The amount of work put into scanlating is greater than that of fansubbing.
Bullshit.
The average team of people that sees an episode from start to finish consists of at least five people, each putting in a couple of hours. That’s one episode. We do (or at least try to do) seventeen episodes a week. How, you may ask? Sheer willpower and manpower. Commie has a staff of over twenty active members, and we hope to at least double that. None of them are paid. None of them ask to be paid. They do this for the pride, for the enjoyment, and honestly, for the friends you can make while subbing cartoons. Proof? Over 70 people have applied for intern positions in the last two months. These people want to “give back” to the community, and some of them will go on to do exactly that.
A server for providing manga is more expensive than a fansubbing server.
Again, bullshit. If the guys running those things had any idea of efficient coding, a 100mbps server with a decent quad core CPU could provide for everything. Such servers are cheap, $100 at most. Incidentally, encoding the average 720p anime episode would take at least four hours on said server. Bandwidth? What about bandwidth? Commie’s server dishes out 3TB a month, and our XDCC puts out another TB on top of that. Even if you stored your goddamn pictures in uncompressed PNG at full resolution, they would each be about 2MB. You could fit 150 of those pictures in one anime episode (100 for 10bit).
In conclusion? There is no conclusion. There are “good” scanlators out there who don’t watermark their releases, but their number has been consistently dwindling. Get over yourselves.
You are complaining about people stealing your already stolen work.
Woxxy:
Compared to the [author]’s work, ours is a shitstain, only worth minor credit and a read.
If scanlating completely dies due to people protesting over not being paid for a hobby, then we fansubbers will be laughing at you (not that we’re not already). While you wage war with Mangafox we at Commie will continue providing as many series as humanly possible while training an entire generation of interns.
Long live fansubbing
Posted by RHExcelion under I'm not being sarcastic why would you think I'm being sarcastic, International Politics, Red Army Parades | Permalink
+1
Articles like these are what makes Commie the best.
Rants are good for burning up time waiting for the next episode to be posted.
Good Rant – More Please!
FOR THE MOTHERLAND!!
LOL, YES this is awesome
Well it’s japanfuck, they’re known for having 12 yo mentality or are physically one.
MARIA HOLIC FUCKING WHERE?
Cool post by the way.
FUCK YEAH COMMIE!!!!!
Regarding the watermarks. The image only looks like that to online reading sites that convert the images to jpg, as the file is originally a gif with the first frame being a watermarked one and the main frame being the unwatermaked one (When I see it like that, I think it’s passable to an extent).
Either way, the groups causing all the watermark shitstorm are Japanzai and A-Team. Fuck them.
+1
u guys keep up the good work
and Thank You
Don’t use the “C” word bro… “Cartoons” just makes us sound like children.
But keep up the good work
Are you implying that Commie doesn’t sub Chinese cartoons?
Chinese?
Chinese, with C.
Oh, you’re one of those people, aren’t you?
<3, brilliant :P
HELL FUCKING YES!!! ALL HAIL OUR GRACIOUS COMMIE ANIMU OVERLORDS!!!
I’m pretty sure they watermark because it’s easier to watermark manga than it is anime.
Also, does anyone really say those things? I’m pretty sure scanlating is really easy.
>implying we have 20 active members
Shut up herkz
brb doing everything
You’re not me, herkz. Go back to being useless.
okay ( ´_ゝ｀)ﾌｰﾝ
So they’re getting their panties in a twist because someone is “stealing” what they’ve already stolen?
*facepalm*
Scanlator here.
Scanlating is an absolute joke compared to fansubbing.
Agreed
*Also a scanlator*
I put like 9 hours in each chapter and I’m just an editor. I do it cuz I love it, not for cash. I donate to my own group when times are rough…
I agree Commie. Watermarks are cancer.
HERE! HERE!
Way to represent!
OH YEAH!
(he mad)
You know what’s more anoying than a watermark?
A continous blackout.
Well said.
Long live the communist pirate!
Bravo! I would ask for an encore, but that would be just copy and paste
I knew a girl who watermarked every picture of her because of being afraid that it’ll be stolen. Dumbass 15yo girls.
HELL YEAH I LOVE THIS
thank you so much and keep it up Commie *hugs*
spoken like a boss, cheers to you commie
Amazing ass post! Commie is my hero.
+1
Totally agree. A lot of scanlators nowadays do it for their ego, that’s why they waged war with online reader sites like mangafox.
+1
Win!
Bullshit you don’t have any logos. I saw your Nisemonogatari 2.
Shhh
YEAH f those capitalists!!! always about money …COMMIE hail COMMIE!!!
Y U WATERMARK WHOLE JAPANESE CARTOON RUINED> [Show][Hide]
http://puu.sh/eCG3
Shhh
You forget that with softsubs, they can be turned off.
LT Finnegan ROCKs!!! XD
Shhh
stop posting BS like this
where is my CHIHAYAFUUUUUUUUUru
If you hadn’t read what probably spawned this article: http://foolrulez.org/blog/2012/01/the-age-of-scanlators-and-money/
Where the FUCK is Last Exile 14? 15 is gonna air at this rate.
But 15 is already out.
Countdown says it’s still a day until it airs.
But did you guys drop LE or what? Should I just go with SFWhine?
We don’t drop anything.
C3 – Cube x Curse x Curious says hi.
It’s coming.
What about R-15 ( ≖‿≖)
YOU SHUT YOUR DIRTY MOUTH
I believe this requires another reply since the background is not pure white yet.
You guys are BOSS! I will forever follow you!
Commie forever! Watermarks are dumb. I mean, I can understand if they have a watermark on the corner of the cover page or the index page so its not blocking anything, but on every page? Its not that serious.
I’m with you guys, but Anime is not Cartoons.
Anime is from Japan who wanna take over our hearts and brains.
Cartoons is from Americans who wanna take over the Internet.
“You’re a fucking pirate, get over yourselves.”
“You are complaining about people stealing your already stolen work.”
The fansubbing group I respect most has once said the exact same thing.
And now I respect you guys as well.
ALL HAIL CHINESE CARTOONS!
You guys and gals… are totally bros.
Not to mention the GIANT COCK to the OCULAR. If I ever create something that others find entertaining (will not happen, sit down) and some assjack claiming to be fan were to ejaculate all over it….FUCK his reasons. The disrespected author and/or artist should post a bounty for any provable bodily harm inflicted on the bitch.
ummmmm haganai ( ≖‿≖)
I wouldn’t slap on a logo too if I produced shit quality work…
While I agree with you… Can I know where Rinne no Lagrange is? I’m practically begging you here…
Guys .. your website layout is just confusing..
1) The blue on blue.
2) No pictures with releases.
3) The “look at me , look how clever I am” descriptions..
With all this , half the time I miss episodes not knowing if I downloaded them or not.
Clear and well defined dividers between releases and keeping anime names as they are would be a nice start.
A concerned fan.
1) Change the theme then.
2) Why would you spoil a scene from an episode to people wanting to download it?
3) What?
First and foremost, this is a blog. Secondly, just use an RSS for the torrents page.
ha, you think that’s bad?
take a look at this shit
http://www.batoto.net/read/_/67140/love-so-life_v6_ch32_by_japanzai/5
FFFFUUUUU
best thing is the guy doing this said
>there’s nothing influencing my reading pleasure
really? text getting unreadable because the watermark covers it sure does influence mine
Look harder. See that giant face in the example I provided? That’s part of the watermark.
This. I like.
Commie, i really love your works. I love you guys as well.
I only want to say though, that don’t overwork yourselves…
you seem to sub too much anime that some releases gets delayed.