When I was your age, my fansubs were on VHS!

[aohige]

When I was your age, we recorded our BASIC programming on PC-8801 on TAPE DRIVES.

ppppeeeeeegggkkkktkAKTJKAJWER(@#)*DJFSELKJT....

And 5-inch floppies cost like 2000 yen.
But no problem, we didn't even have floppy drive on these ancient artifacts.

I'm sure Vexx will come to the thread and tell all the stories about tape rolls and punch cards if he hasn't yet.

But yeah, seriously, nth-generation VHS fansubs with noise littered all over the screen was the shiznit.

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by aohige

I'm sure Vexx will come to the thread and tell all the stories about tape rolls and punch cards if he hasn't yet.

No he won't. He will probably tell you about plasma inducers and quantum transmitters reversed-engineered from the stuff taken from Roswell. At most he would say that he worked with disposable vacuum tubes for a couple of months before being transferred to work in an underground laser lab researching the correct radio-wave frequency for MKULTRA's Satellite Moe Cannon.

Living through the 90s, VHS is a norm and I still remembered owning Tom and Jerry on it. The sound and graphics are still pretty good on the old CRT screens, but look totally like mosaic crap on today's LEDs.

[Ithekro]

Temporal distorion downloading of Haruhi into the 1960s, but no one wanted it for some reason.

That or the space episode inspired the PC revolution, and certain space opera anime.

[ogon_bat]

First they came for the direct downloads,
and I didn't speak out because bit-torrent existed.

Then they came for the bit-torrent,
and I didn't speak out because irc bots existed.

Then they came for the irc,
and I didn't speak out because I had the web cloud and the stash on my hard disk.

Then the electromagnetic pulse attack came
and there was no one left to speak with since there was no internet.

It is a bit decadent to think things will continue to get better no matter what, that is what many people in the so called first world though a generation ago only to see that their children will be the first generation not to do better than them economically speaking. The recent crack on m€g@µpl0@d and the recent ban on anime by governor Shintaro Ishihara makes me feel the future is not as bright as it was ten years ago, I see a posibility that there might come a time when the "good old days" indeed are better not just in our mind's eye.

[Vexx]

Originally Posted by Streetor

10 years ago I would have killed for a service such as crunchyroll

I think you created one of the funnier "cane waving" rant threads on the forum here

*cough* well, manga came on papyrus and it made even less sense then. But space aliens were directing the operation...

[gsilver]

10 years ago... The time of Streamload, 56K modems, CD trading, bilingual DVDs, and the start of quality Divx.
...It wasn't all bad.

[00Coyote]

This thread makes me feel old.

Now I'm gonna have to go dig out my stash of black plastic.

Somewhere in there is a 6th generation T-180 tape, recorded in EP, with Nausicaa, Akira, Grave of the Fireflies and Laputa. I'm going to dig out my VHS player, take S-video out (not that composite crap, s-video dammit!) and into a HDMI video converter, and watch it in all its crappy, upconverted splendor. The Whole Tape! Just to Show em.

Or if that doesn't work, I'll un-earth my old C64 monitor, and slum watching it via composite.

[Vanguard]

Let me add this to this funny topic when I was young and stupid and VHS was on it´s prime Europe had never heard not seen anime. When we did we got anime we got Cyborg 009 or Macross or Cobra and that was all if you wanted more you had to dream about it. Today anime is 100 times easier to get your hands on so thank you for technology.

[TurkeyPotPie]

Originally Posted by Kyuu

"What? You kids don't know what a rotary phone is?"

I still have a rotary phone. One of those old school black Model 500s. My parents had it in their house until 1997 and were still leasing it from the phone company. Anyway, I finally bought them a phone and kept the Model 500. It still works, god knows how old it is (they got the phone in the 70s). I got a good laugh on my oldest nephew when he first tried to use the phone. Had no idea how it worked.

[ogon_bat]

I would like to comment (it might be obvious for people my age and maybe for some tech savy people) that the fansub community has a debt of gratitude to the Commodore Amiga. Back then when VCRs were a common household item the only con$umer level equipment able to subtitle animes were usually an amiga 500 equipped with a genlock running jacosub, all that magic with a 7mhz procesor that had 1 or 2 megabytes of ram and no hard disk!

[sa547]

^
During that time, the first guy who did it (sadly he passed away, according to Sean Leonard, who researched the origins of fansubbing) was like he discovered fire, a great leap forward which freed the viewers from clutching episode guides with translations of dialog.

[00Coyote]

Originally Posted by sa547

During that time, the first guy who did it (sadly he passed away, according to Sean Leonard, who researched the origins of fansubbing) was like he discovered fire, a great leap forward which freed the viewers from clutching episode guides with translations of dialog.

NOW we're talking old school anime watching.

None of this fancy schmancy MKVing torrenting IRCing timing kareoking dialuping subbing fluff. You had your tape, you had your dot matrix printed episode guide (with the tractor feed still attached) and you watched your anime and read the dialog, and you liked it!

[ogon_bat]

One thing that I really miss from those days is that fansub had a good deal of liner notes, I learned a LOT about japanese culture that way, today with the pressure to speed sub none of the gropus (AFAIK) adds extra explanations and when a fansub is late it is never due to the fact that they have added liner notes -_- It would be nice (i.e. in shows with a TON of references like Haiyore! Nyaruko-san) to add another subtitle track with said explanations, it might fill the screen, well, it happened back in the day in the omoide poroporo fansub >_< You paused the screen, read all of it and kept going, some groups added notes before or after the anime but nowadays there is no "before" or "after".

[creb]

All this talk about VHS made me remember that I actually watched most of my anime in the 80s (and, I think the early 90s-though my memory is fuzzy on that), on laserdisc. Presumably, those were not fansubbed though.

Pioneer used to be a big name in my anime life.

VHS actually took up only a few years of my life: the mid-to late 90s

Edit: I totally agree with the post above mine. I actually hadn't realized how different fansubs are today, in that they are usually entirely lacking in that regard, and how I really miss all those notes.

[Sheba]

Originally Posted by Vanguard

Let me add this to this funny topic when I was young and stupid and VHS was on it´s prime Europe had never heard not seen anime.

What part of Europe do you mean? Italy, Spain, France, Belgium, UK and Germany had their fair share of anime since as early as the 1970s. Hell, I even chuckled in my first trip to USA in 1996, where they were just discovering Saint Seiya and Dragon Ball when it was old news for us frenchmen.

[Malkuth]

Originally Posted by gsilver

Fansubbing and the US anime industry has gone a long way. Just look at the pricing:
26 episodes of One Piece: $21 online
26 episodes at $6/tape (4-5 episodes per tape): $36 (through a VHS fansub distributor)

It costs less to buy legitimate releases now than it did to watch fansubs back in the day!

I also remember when Realplayer (lol) was a huge step up in quality...


Now, with all this 'day one high definition' stuff

It still costs a lot to buy something that is free

[mit7059]

This thread has got to have the largest group of pre-2005 shutdown accounts I've seen in a while. Oh you elders of the forums lucky enough to not have your accounts completely deleted. These kids today probably have no idea what I'm talking about. Whippersnappers!

[ogon_bat]

^ my account was created quite recently, albeit I knew about the site & the forum a long time ago, but I didn't had the itch to talk about my hobby with fellow internauts until vey recently.

[HeartlessEponine]

Ahh the VHS Days. Brings back memories. I remember original VHS anime tapes (with subs) can cost around 20-30 dollars each in our place no joke. They really take imported products too seriously. Serious business is serious

[Kyouka]

back in my days i was jumping on chairs pretending the floor was lava
now i have a computer!