Year 1 Issue 1

Arcadia Dragnet, Year 1, Issue 1

January 1-7 2020

Let's begin with a mission statement:

Fansubs have been an integral part of English-speaking anime fandom for as long as there has been an English-speaking anime fandom. In this age of increasing access to anime via streaming, it's becoming easy to forget our roots and overlook the important fan-driven localization work still being done. Arcadia Dragnet seeks to preserve interest in anime fansub culture by cataloguing and showcasing all the newest English-speaking fansub projects.

Now for some personal details. Hi, I've been an anime fan for about 4 years and a participant in fansub culture for about 2. I've enjoyed fansubs, befriended many fansubbers, helped make fansubs. Most of my favourite anime would not have been available to me were it not for fans putting in many hours of thought and effort into creating fansubs for them. This small segment of anime fandom is very important to me, and I hope this blog serves to give back to the community in at least a small way.

Contemporary Anime

A new season has started, and with it many news shows, but for most fansubbers this week it was business as usual. Mezashite continues to release quality subs for Aikatsu on Parade while AnonimOT has admirably continued work on Star Twinkle Precure. MoyaiSubs (the source for the delightful screenshot above) have been valiantly attempting to keep up with Kiratto Pri-chan season 2, although at time of writing they are 15 episodes behind airing. BuriBuri, a Crayon Shin-chan focused fansub group, released the latest 2 episodes of Super Shiro, and JapariSub has continued to translate Chokotto Anime Kemono Friends 3. Tatsuki fans would probably be very interested in knowing that the new Hentatsu anime is being fansubbed by a group called LCE. Finally, the Tenka Hyakken English-speaking fan community completed their fansubs for Tenka Hyakken: Meiji-kan e Youkoso.

Now that most new popular anime get official subtitles, many fansub groups have stopped attempting to create fully-original subtitles for new shows. There are many groups that touch up official subtitles or re-time subtitles for Blu-Ray / DVD sources, but there are too many of these for Arcadia Dragnet to effectively cover them. GoodJobMedia (GJM) is one of the few exceptions to this new norm; last season they provided original translations for Ascendance of a Bookworm, and this season they will be working on Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken. This week GJM also released episode 7 of Fairy Gone, one of their ongoing backlog of projects. Doki Fansubs meanwhile has decided to fansub Magia Record, making this their first fansub project in over a year.

In terms of more finite projects, the Fate/strange Fake commercial was subtitled by Kaleido-subs and Butter Fansubs translated CoMix Wave Film's tourism commercial Attakai, Fuyu Canada. Two movies also got fansubbed: Some-Stuffs, a Pokemon-focused fansub group, provided subs for the 22nd Pokemon Movie, Mewtwo Strikes Back! Evolution (it's not a very good movie), while Jaon, a translator for the manga translation group Oniichanyamete, subbed the beautiful Science Saru movie Kimi to, Nami ni Noretara under the group name Yamenaideoneesama.

Classic Anime

OldCastle has had a commendably-consistent release schedule for the last 2 years, and this week they kept on course with 2 episodes of Saint Tail and 1 episode of Paris no Isabelle. Kiteseekers (source for the image above) and Licca Fansubs have continued their collaboration on Idol Densetsu Eriko, releasing 2 more episodes (only 2 more to go!). BuriBuri released episode 27 of Crayon Shin-chan, NoraInuG released episode 11 of Moeru! Oniisan, SquareSubs released episode 16 of Bakusou Kyoudai Let's & Go!! WGP, Elusive released episode 10 of KochiKame, and Rat Hat Subs released episode 89 of GeGeGe no Kitaro 2007.

In terms of more iterative work being done on classic anime, Inka-Subs completed their improved subtitles for Panzer World Galient, and ChimuwakuSubs and ZetaRebel collaborated to release an improved version of Sherlock Hound. TenshiSubs meanwhile have begun releasing improved versions of their Dragon Quest: Dai no Daibouken fansubs using a newer raw video source, the first 2 episodes released this week.

Donghua

As Chinese animation becomes more popular and more discussed in anime circles, I think it is important to recognize the work of the fansubbers who are helping English-speaking audiences enjoy these shows.

CrimsonSubs is a quite prolific group that recently completed their work on Spirit Sword Sovereign aka Ling Jian Zun. A group named sacredgold has been translating Soul Land aka Douluo Dalu, episode 85 released this week. HaxTalks released 6 episodes of the 3rd season of Way of Choices aka Ze Tian Ji. Finally, GuoManTeam has subbed the first 3 episodes of Zhen Hun Jie 2 aka Rakshasa Street 2 (poster featured above).

***

This week, approximately 10 hours of Japanese animation were given new fansubs by committed fans. In addition, 2 shows got touched-up releases. Fansubbing is certainly not dead