Oldest Online Fansub Group?

[shinakuma31]

Originally Posted by genmac

devilray was hilarious. He, along with most of my old staff, was one of the few people involved in translating Japanese children's comics/shows that didn't take things way way too seriously.

edit: also, loae666 is a little pussy.

devilray was not hillarious. i had an argument w/ him and it ended up really heated, he made his own channel (just to flame me), got a group of people from the chan and spammed invites even after i already had left the channel. since i had autojoin on, it kept joining the chan and kept autokicking me until he let me back in for a sec to flame me even more along with his cronies and then repeated the same spam, when finally i joined the server's chan and got some help against him.

its been awhile but isnt loae666 part of RF or was he still a part of EF group that originally did HNG. all i know is i remember him doing HNG and had done great work throughout the whole series, never once did i have a problem with him.

in my experiences, Anime-Empire is the oldest fansub group ive known of. i remember a lot quality releases from them and one point they just split apart or something cause i havent seen them doing top shows in awhile.

[Access]

I think he migrated from e-f to r-f.
One person's definition of 'hilarious' doesn't necessarily match another's. All I can say is to keep things in their historical context. IRC has always been full of those types of schemes. Just turn autojoin off and don't let him get to your head.

[kvnphm1]

This topic is very interesting =p

[shinakuma31]

Originally Posted by Access

I think he migrated from e-f to r-f.
One person's definition of 'hilarious' doesn't necessarily match another's. All I can say is to keep things in their historical context. IRC has always been full of those types of schemes. Just turn autojoin off and don't let him get to your head.

yea but that kinda stuff just makes you wanna find a way to get them off thier high horse you know what i mean? theres always that one op or two that goes on a power trip.

anywho, i dont think people should put down loae666 for moving to RF or for any reason, i remember when all that happened it was a huge separation of EF and RF and at one point EF banned anybody talking about RF or even having RF files in thier Fserves. i think those members were right to move into thier own chan and group because HNG encodes were suffering and that was one of EF's biggest shows.

these people do too much for the scene and the only way id ever look down on these subbers/encoders is if theyd profit from it.

[kvnphm1]

Loae told me this when I stop by his irc channel after he broke off from E-F with jerf and some other member. I'll try to make this short =p

Loae wanted to try timing along with translation so E-F can releases faster. Devilray trashes his first attempt at timing without looking at it to the end. I'm pretty sure some other stuff happen before this but this was probably what made loae decide to break off from E-F.

I always like loae. He was always around the forum posting and helping out. Devilray rarely appear in his own forum and when he does he only post hentai.

[shinakuma31]

lol i guess devilrays scene presence just got worse and worse ever since the breakoff as EF became less and less popular and after that ive seen him wander trying to be a part of AE and other groups. now he's reduced to posting hentai.....

[Access]

IMO we should be thankful for the conflicts that existed. It kept people moving around, it gave people better ideas for how groups should be 'run' and structured, and the type of people best avoided in a group. I know there are many complaints about the 'way things are today' but if you compare what happens today with what happened back then, today is far better.

[shinakuma31]

yeah groups have come a long way from what it once was, one of the nicest additions being torrents, people can now download just as fast as anyone else w/out having to fish out fserves

[LordBrian]

I fail to see how BitTorrent has had any effect on the quality of fansub groups. Unless you're making the argument that the ease of access to a certain group's releases reflects that group's quality, in which case I would have to disagree.

[DaFool]

Originally Posted by shinakuma31

yeah groups have come a long way from what it once was, one of the nicest additions being torrents, people can now download just as fast as anyone else w/out having to fish out fserves

No, xdcc bots.

I'm surprised there seems to be a gap in people's awareness like before there were irc fserves, after there are torrents, forgetting there was xdcc in between.

[shinakuma31]

LordBrian:

wtf are you talking about, nobody was talking about quality i was talking about ADDITIONS to the fansub scene and any particular group in general. i think you just wanted to disagree on something so you made up your own argument, quote me if im wrong and that i talked about quality somewhere along the line

DaFool:

people are fully aware of xdcc's because nowadays you get banned for typing in Xdcc list. i didnt mention it because xdcc's were not and still not the main way to download (for anime i mean). still the best ones are limited and regular user's fserve dont hold a candle to a properly setup fserve.

on the other hand in other groups, xdcc IS the main way to download and you cant even talk in them. but dont assume that people arent aware (even back then) cause they are. its just in anime channels, it hasnt evolved to the level of warez xdcc chans as of yet (organized triggers) thats why i didnt bother to mention xdcc.

fyi though in the anime/fansub scene it went like this


http
ftp
fserve
xdcc
newsgroups
direct connect < bet you forgot that one eh?
bittorrents

back in the day, there were actually sites to download anime from on a daily/weekly basis. finding a good site was hard but once you found a good one you stuck to it. there were sites like sailorsenshi where you could download every single episode of Sailor Moon up until the last episode of Stars. and there was another place where you could download every single Dragonball episode along w/ description and episode titles. also http was how i got introduced into Hana Yori Dango, Ranma, Fushigi Yuugi and some others.

ftp was scarce but it was there.

then digisubs surfaced and groups started popping up. again A-E was the first ive seen, in the days of hajime no ippo, onegai teacher, star ocean EX, and seikai no senki. they might just be the oldest one out there. these groups gave rise to fserves and eventually xdcc's started popping up for special users.....

next, we have newsgroups. its always been the underdog but its always been there even in the days of http. even though we had primitive programs like Xnews (or possibly worse) if there was such a good program to download articles, this was the fastest way to get anything. when digisubs surfaced, so did the newsgroups as fansubs were posted fairly quickly and users got speeds that exceeded everything else. popular way to download if you have the setup.

along came direct connect, while i still dont think its an effective way to download, it was there and there are huge networks that have hundreds and thousands of files. its an alternative but i dont think its a good one.

and now we come to bittorrent. possibly the greatest P2P ever as people are forced to share (that means you get speed as long as somebody is on) and its most likely that your file will complete as long as there are 1 seed. speeds are really good for everyone including 56kers, some people cant use it at all but problems like that can always be fixed.

[LordBrian]

Originally Posted by shinakuma31

LordBrian:

wtf are you talking about, nobody was talking about quality

Perhaps I simply misread Access's post, but it sure seemed to me that he was making a comment on the general quality of fansub groups. Stuff along the lines of how to organize groups to keep things efficient and running smoothly. It's a comment that I agree with, since I've seen both very efficient groups and very inefficient groups.

However, regardless of how a group is organized, a group's distro methods is something I see as separate to the group itself. Most groups (that I've been a part of) have had their own distro channel for this very specific purpose; most of the people in the main group have little to nothing to do with the distro process, which is where my statement came in that BitTorrent (or, in a more general statement, any distro method) is unrelated to the quality of any particular group.

And just to be extra special clear again, I'm not talking about video/editing/whatever quality, I'm talking about the cohesiveness of the group itself.

[raikage]

Originally Posted by shinakuma31

fyi though in the anime/fansub scene it went like this


http
ftp
fserve
xdcc
newsgroups
direct connect < bet you forgot that one eh?
bittorrents

Does anyone remember the days of streamload?

[NoSanninWa]

Originally Posted by raikage

Does anyone remember the days of streamload?

I remember, but I didn't see why I should have to pay money for "free" fansubs so I just got it on irc instead.

[Iridium]

Originally Posted by shinakuma31

back in the day

Would back in the day when we had to call in to download scripts off one of the anime BBSes with a 4800 baud modem be considered digital distribution?

[NoSanninWa]

Originally Posted by Iridium

Would back in the day when we had to call in to download scripts off one of the anime BBSes with a 4800 baud modem be considered digital distribution?

Nope! That's back before the day! Impressive.

I remember when we downloaded synopses because there weren't any complete scripts to download. I watched most of Fushigi no Umi no Nadia in the original japanese with downloaded synopses for each episode to guide me through the series. Heh. That was just about when I was introduced to anime. Waaaaaaay back, before in the day.

These newbies with their newfangled "fansubbing" just don't know how lucky they are! Remember when all fansub groups had these elaborate 5 minute logo animations on their tapes? Until the first of them got sued for looking too professional, by a fledgling licensing company...

[Access]

Originally Posted by LordBrian

However, regardless of how a group is organized, a group's distro methods is something I see as separate to the group itself. Most groups (that I've been a part of) have had their own distro channel for this very specific purpose; most of the people in the main group have little to nothing to do with the distro process, which is where my statement came in that BitTorrent (or, in a more general statement, any distro method) is unrelated to the quality of any particular group.

And just to be extra special clear again, I'm not talking about video/editing/whatever quality, I'm talking about the cohesiveness of the group itself.

Only in that, back in the days, you needed good distro to get stuff 'out'. So you were dependent on the people that ran or controlled that distro (primarily xdcc, fserv, etc.) and often times this was something that was fought over. Distro inside the group would have lots of influence in the group (since the group dependent on them) and could hold the group hostage, at least until a good replacement could be found. Distro outside the group often became something to fight over if 2 groups were subbing the same series. These days, with BT, even a 1-man group with no dedicated distro whatsoever can get things out.

[LordBrian]

That said, I suppose the ease of distro today does, in fact, contribute in a sense to the overall quality of fansub groups, in a way I had not previously considered. I suppose that before, when distro was limited, those people willing to distro were more attracted to quality groups, or at the very least, groups that knew what they were doing (the same way a fansub group attracted anyone who was willing to work). Now, anyone can fansub, and anyone can distro, so the overall quality (in every sense of the word) of fansub groups has declined.

It's been a long day, I dunno if that previous paragraph makes sense. To summarize, easy distro = more groups = more crap.

[Access]

Originally Posted by LordBrian

It's been a long day, I dunno if that previous paragraph makes sense. To summarize, easy distro = more groups = more crap.

But with so much out there, you also have a greater chance of finding what you want. It used be only a popular shonen show (love hina, vandread, etc.) was subbed and the groups of the time would ignore everything else. Different groups even got partway through subbing something 'different' and then halted the project or distribution for fear their reputation might be damaged.

[howzitboy]

err, did anyone jot down all this interesting info and make a wilki page yet?

awesome stuff here bout the "history" of hmm what u guys are talking bout .