[Apterous]

So this is the official "origins" thread? "Sailor Spork Productions" actually started out with just me, making AMV's back in the stone age in 2001. One day I came across Komugi Daisakusen raws (The SoulTaker omake), and since Nurse Witch Komugi-chan was popular, I spent weeks locked in my room with a dictionary translating it. Once it was done I had it spot checked with a Japanese girl I know, and went to work out the more technical aspects of fansubbing, including substation alpha and vdub and all that. Eventually I found a translator interested in Pugyuru, and another interested in the oldschool Cutie Honey, and our ragtag fansubbing group with its credo of "nothing is too unpopular to fansub" was born.

What really, really gets me is that around the time we started switching from AMVs to fansubbing, another utensil themed fansub group popped up to bootleg a ridiculously popular show after it had been licensed. We had been around awhile, but since they were more popular people keep asking me why we had to be assholes and spoof their name. Apparently this was sentiment spread by actual members of that fansub group, as I found out later when I was soliciting one of them to help with a project. I had to ask him to elaborate on what he meant by "I would, but, you know, the whole Spork/XXXXX thing..." Is this something that everyone knew about but us?

The whole ego thing is one reason why Spork doesn't have much of an IRC presence. We're around because we enjoy fansubbing anime that no one else will touch, and occasionally do joint with other people to fansub bigger animes that no one else will touch because that's fun too. The angst and drama can be avoided in the quieter groups. But the whole backstabbing & namecalling thing that pushes skilled people away is harder to avoid the bigger you become, and the more competitive the project you work on becomes.