'Nabeshin' shares his feelings on anime fansubs

Shinichi Watanabe (also known as Nabeshin), director of comedy anime Excel Saga and Nerima Daikon Brothers, was at a convention in the US last week. There was a panel in particular about Anime Bootlegging that he requested to contribute to and share his opinions on.

You can watch video clips of the panel at this site.

If you've ever seen Excel Saga or Nerima Daikon brothers, or even the first few seconds of the first video on that site, you can get a good idea of his wacky personality. Throughout the videos, you can see he is very serious about what he's talking about. He also goes a little into what the collective Japanese creators feel about international piracy of their works.

While he doesn't outright condemn fansubs, he stresses that it is important to buy anime that you like when it is available. If you don't buy stuff, the international companies won't license more stuff. If the int'l companies don't license stuff, that does affect the Japanese companies who may not be able to sufficiently fund new creations. If the Japanese companies don't get proper funding, it can adversely effect both the quality and quantity of anime that is available. And if Japan starts to eke out unappealing shows, even fansubbers may be turned off. And anime will die.

Certainly there are more important things in life than anime, but I also feel that it's important to support the business. It's no different in principle than the music and film industries where there's a big hubbub over piracy. Ultimately, people do these things for a living. If you appreciate their work, they should be supported.

I didn't watch them all.

Anyway, it's the same as with all other media. Anime isn't any different. My economy doesn't allow me to buy every anime I see just because i saw one interesting 2 minute clip. That would be like buying a house after seeing an image of just one of the rooms :). Of course, a house is a much bigger investment than a DVD box set, but the point remains. I've bought lots DVDs even though I've already seen them already, maybe even have them on my PC.