Something Nice – Treasure Hunting

As you can probably tell from the general lack of posts, it’s been a rough few weeks or so. Mental health has always been a struggle for me, and with the stress of the US elections (and aftermath), some long-term dental work (ugh), and various job-related stresses (I love my job, but it keeps me very busy and often leaves me mentally exhausted) I haven’t had much cranial strength left over to do any writing. I’ve actually avoided most corners of the internet aside from communicating directly with others; this is unusual for me, but sometimes I just need to stay away. There are also other factors that occasionally cause me to disengage with anime fandom more specifically for brief periods, though for right now I’m not interested in going into much detail about that for fear of harping on the same sorts of things too often. Needless to say, sometimes a break is in order (this is actually the first time I’ve sat down at my desktop computer at all in several days, though I’ve likely posted a thing or two now prior to this particular post being scheduled).

In addition to my general lack of internet presence, I’m still not particularly concerned with writing speed or volume anymore; as I told an audience at a recent convention, I may not be the fastest with my first impressions, but I am the slowest! Reviews will get done when they’re done, and I want them done to my specific standards. I’m more about maintaining an archive of reviews than I am being up-to-date anyway; friends of mine tell me that they appreciate being able to look up anime they’re interested in, and many of them aren’t weekly anime-watchers, so the relationship works well.

Rather than make excuses, though, I really wanted to pop in and write something “nice” – something pleasant to get a few words on the page. I’ve already written several posts on some of my favorites: favorite anime, favorite characters, even favorite “cozy” anime. These are all fun to talk about, but they’re also topical – focused on something in particular, with a thesis and purpose. I’m not always great at the whole “feel-good” thing, because I tend to talk a lot about my personal experience and while there’s been a lot of good there, there’s also been a lot of challenges and those events have done a lot to shape and cement my current worldview. But anime fandom has almost always been something of a guiding light in my life – something that brings me joy when I’m otherwise in poor spirits. So here’s something “nice” (maybe?) that I don’t often get to talk about.

I’m about to turn 37 (in a week!) so feel free to do the math – some of my first real, conscious anime memories were watching Sailor Moon on local TV early in the morning when I was in middle school. I started college in the Autumn of 2000, and after meeting like-minded fans in the college’s anime club my fandom really took off. It’s amazing what having friends and resources will do when you’re trying to get into something that’s really niche! That was also around the time when the fandom, hungry for quicker and more convenient means of trading unlicensed anime episodes, was transitioning from VHS fan-subs towards digital file-sharing. Same-day streaming was barely a twinkle in anyone’s eye at that time – video compression technology and internet speeds being what they were back then, it just wasn’t feasible yet. But IRC and BitTorrent started humming in fairly short order, and many of us little pirates-in-training began to use that as our method of sampling new anime.

I don’t necessarily want to romanticize what was essentially large-scale theft, but there was a certain frontier spirit to watching anime this way. It was like being seated at a feast and because of that my tastes at the time were really indiscriminate. I stumbled upon some truly great things – I first watched The Rose of Versailles via fan-subs – I never dreamed I’d someday be able to buy it on DVD; I also watched a lot of forgettable junk that’s not really worth mentioning here. After a while I amassed quite a collection of video files, organized alphabetically (of course), and retired to the great recycle bin in the sky once they were licensed for US distribution. For those who weren’t around at that time, there was absolutely a certain self-imposed code regarding fan-subbed anime that many anime fans and distribution groups followed; once a license was announced, the group would stop distributing the files (or VHS tapes) and people were encouraged to purchase the official release. That attitude definitely started to deteriorate after a certain point – I vaguely recall that the group subtitling the Ninja Scroll TV anime back in the early 2000s decided not to stop doing so when the license was announced (I believe the series was fairly close to the conclusion, which was their reasoning). This was hugely scandalous in the fandom community. A few years later, and that kind of behavior had become commonplace. I can’t necessarily say that I was innocently adhering to any higher standard by that point, either.

While it’s always been less than a sure thing that new anime would eventually get picked up for a physical release, it was even less likely back then, especially after the big “bubble collapse” that occurred in the industry in the late 2000’s. Fan-subs were really the only true “try-before-you-buy” option and weren’t exactly user-friendly, collected in one place, or easily-viewed without fiddling with video codecs. Companies fought with one-another just to pay exorbitant series licensing fees, and there were simply too many series being produced for many of them to gain a financial foothold.  That doesn’t even take into account the cost of the disc releases that did materialize (does anyone remember the 2-episode-per-disc release of FLCL, where each disc cost $40 dollars? My wallet still aches.). There were some great anime being made at the time, but they sometimes became buried under the sheer volume of all the other anime. It was a very complicated time to be an anime fan, especially if you wanted to do what you could to provide financial support to the industry.

The fandom landscape has changed so much since that time. I’m happily in a position where I can stream almost every anime as it’s broadcast (aside from the occasional Macross incarnation or other series with specific localization challenges), choose my favorites, and wait around for disc releases for ones that I want to add to my collection. There are multiple places I can buy official merchandise, online and in-person. I have a backlog a mile long. And the best part of all is that, even for a lot of the niche shows that I tend to like, there are people like me watching them week-to-week who want to talk about them and enjoy them with others. There’s been a distinct reduction in my own fandom loneliness thanks to the transformations in anime consumption brought about by technology and the internet in general.

That said, there are still a small sub-set of “forgotten anime” from around the 2006-2012 time period that went mostly without viewership or accolade; pre-streaming, poor timing, lost in a saturated market. Series just as good as many of the great things being produced currently, but which have yet to see the light of day in any broader sense. Tucked away on an external hard drive in a sub-folder is my personal little treasure-trove of anime that has never been licensed. I presented a panel one time called “unlicensed gems” where I talked through some of my favorites, but for the most part they’re the type of series that some niche bloggers might uncover every once-in-a-while when looking for under-the-radar classics, but which many fans will never get the chance to see if they even had the desire to in the first place.

Every once-in-a-while a series will be plucked off this list and given an official chance via streaming or disc; each time it’s a welcome and pleasant surprise to me. I get a minor rush that comes from being acknowledged in some small way by “higher-ups” in the anime industry. There’s a certain joy in being able to own something in physical form, not having to rely on a downloaded file that could become corrupted or fall victim to some computer problem or accidental deletion. Doubly-so if it’s something that you know must have very dubious sales potential in the first place. I try never to take these situations for granted and hoard each and every one of my anime treasures where I’ll be able to enjoy and share them.

Still, though it continues to dwindle, my wish-list of unlicensed and unavailable anime still exists. I try not to think that there are some series which might never make some official appearance in my corner of the world, but I have my doubts about some; with the way some religious folks behave in the United States, can you imagine something like Saint Young Men ever finding an official release? Part of me almost doesn’t want to deal with the fallout if it were to happen. Almost. Or how about Mouryou no Hako? Would people ever have the interest in a deeply philosophical, supernatural body-horror anime, dense with obtuse conversations between characters? I’d like to think that they would, but I can’t see it ever being successful with enough people to justify an actual release (or even a streaming one). Having seen it, I can guess that even finding a translator able to convey its complicated nuances would be a real challenge.

There’s a certain amount of guilt associated with holding onto pirated media; I always encourage people to support official releases, and I personally subscribe to several different streaming services – possibly as a form of atonement in addition to providing a means to actually watch all the simulcast anime I want to. We certainly shouldn’t feel entitled to media we don’t have, when there’s more than enough that we do. I’m certainly not hurting for things to watch, and wouldn’t be even if I were to wipe my hard drive clean right now. But I also can’t deny the fact that, in those free-form days before the laws of the land solidified, I watched so many things that left their mark on me and helped form my love of anime. Once Pandora’s box had been opened – once I caught a glimpse of these unsung gems – there was no putting the lid back on. Sometimes being a pirate isn’t for the purpose of cheating the system – sometimes pirates are just in search of treasure, whatever form it takes.