[livueta]

disclaimer: lapsed typesetter/scanlator/vn patcher

Your and the parent's statements are actually congruent: they're not saying ripsubs aren't shit, which they are, but that they're good enough to minimize the relevance of fansubbing to the mass market, which they are.

I mean, just look at the output of prolific fansubbing groups from ~2010 to ~2020. At the start of that window, groups like FFF/Underwater/gg/commie/Vivid (and many more I'm forgetting) would race to release subs for airing eps and would frequently have them out within a day or so of the rips. Now, like... maybe three, generously? shows a season get that treatment, and a lot of the people from the scene have moved on.

I believe fansubbing still has immense value, but effort is obviously shifting towards making really high quality releases of older stuff rather than racing to sub airing shows (not to imply that the former didn't happen beforehand; it did, but was a smaller slice of the overall scene). And even though I never worked on airing shows, I get it: why kill yourself to release a better version ASAP if 99% of schmucks will just grab Horrible instead?

e: s/high-tier/prolific before someone goes in on me for gg/commie

[plorkyeran]

Within a day is understating it a bit; in gg’s heyday we got some episodes out within hours of them airing and occasionally beat out the public raws.

I think for most of us fansubbing stopped being about the anime at some point along the way - I personally kept subbing for a few years after I last watched a show, and then continued to develop Aegisub for a few more years after that - but basically everyone got into it because we wanted to make it so that shows could be watched. The first few things I worked on would simply not have subs at all if I didn’t step up and do the work, and I can’t imagine I every would have gotten into subbing if that wasn’t the case.

There’s still room for better-than-the-official-release subs, but the simple fact is that most fansubs never were that, and most viewers never wanted that in the first place. There’s no longer a reason for kinda slow subs translated by a college student who’s taken a few years of Japanese classes to exist, and that’s what most of the scene was.

[jterrys]

>I get it: why kill yourself to release a better version ASAP if 99% of schmucks will just grab Horrible instead?

Yeah the racing was silly. The subs themselves weren't necessarily that much better either, which is why I think rips like Horriblesubs won out in the end for most people. I loved fansubs and the community around it (and the drama).

Though I think the scene dying is less of a mix of people moving on and more the internet changing (and the medium subjectively getting worse). There's more shows out now than ever before, but relatively less interest for most of them.