When the highly rated anime fantasy-adventure "Fullmetal Alchemist" debuted in the U.S. on Cartoon Network's "Adult Swim" last November, many American viewers had already seen all 51 episodes that premiered in Japan in 2003. Some of them owned the entire series before the first DVD appeared in February (the second arrives this month).
The version they're watching is known as a fansub, a subtitled version of the program done by amateur fans. At considerable cost -- and some legal risk -- fansubbers bring the hottest titles in Japanese animation or anime to eager audiences who can't wait for the American versions of those shows to air here.
Japanese animation or anime has become a big business in America, accounting for $500 million in video sales and about 10 times that in licensing, rights and related merchandise sales annually. Anime enjoys widespread popularity among adolescents, teens and twentysomethings, and fansubbers constitute one of the oddest subgroups within the larger culture.
Fansubbers begin by obtaining a copy of an episode of a Japanese TV show, either by buying it or downloading it. If they don't speak Japanese (and most don't), they have to find someone to prepare a line-by-line English translation. Each line then must be timed and digitally added to the correct scene. Endless technical glitches can occur during the subtitling process, and specialized websites offer step-by-step advice.
Fansubbing began in the 1980s, when few anime titles were available in the U.S. Because it's a legally gray area at best, people involved in fansubs use only their first names. Jeki, a 27-year-old fansubber, recalls, "I grew up watching 'Robotech' and the few other Japanese series that were on. I wanted to see more of that type of cartoon, but all Saturday morning offered was 'The Smurfs' and 'Alvin & the Chipmunks.'
"When I was 12 or 13, I met a couple of people on message boards who shared my interest, and we decided we could make fansubs as a group. We bought Japanese laser discs and copied them; some of us knew Japanese and could do the translations. We really, really liked these shows and were sure other people would too. But they just weren't out there in the marketplace, so how were people going to find them if we didn't sub them?"
Barry, a 34-year-old software engineer and anime fan, began watching fansubs in college. "One of the clubs on campus had a collection of videotapes that you couldn't get in stores, like 'Kimagure Orange Road,' " he says.
