Anime News Network has very good coverage of a recent proposal to work with fansubbers made by Pokemon Executive Producer Masakazu Kubo. It’s an interesting idea, but is it enough to solve the rampant piracy issues that the anime industry is facing?

The Japanese government’s Task Force on Media Content Business and Japanese Brands (I didn’t even know there was such a thing) recently held a session to discuss many issues facing the Japanese media industry, including piracy. Tokyo Anime Center and Pokemon executive producer Masakazu Kubo wrote a thorough proposal on the topic, stating that the “6 million copies of illegal, English-subtitled Japanese animated videos are said to be downloaded from BitTorrent each week” has drastically hurt the anime industry in the US.

Kubo offered an interesting solution to the problem:

“About 10 fans (whose translation abilities are high compared to professionals!) (*3) are said to put animated videos with foreign-language subtitles on YouTube, BitTorrent, and other file-sharing sites. If our country is to formally deal with YouTube and other services, it will be necessary to have some sort of approach to dealing with these individuals. Personally, I hope to resolve this by officially making use of their abilities.”

Making the fansubbers “official” might help, but I personally think that the only way the producers in Japan are going to solve this problem is simultaneous releases of anime in Japanese and English. The fans wouldn’t pirate if the shows they love were easily accessible. It might not be feasible to get them on US TV networks immediately, but with the plethora of online video streaming options available there has to be a way for the studios to make their work quickly available for fans worldwide.

Read the Anime News Network post here

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