Category — Fansubs

Dattebayo recently started fansubbing Denno Coil. The same 26-episode Denno Coil from 2007 that has already been completely subtitled to a high-standard by Ureshii. Don’t get me wrong, with their massive popularity amongst the shonen lovers, anything Dattebayo decide to subtitle will benefit from a higher profile than usual, and the thoroughly excellent Denno Coil certainly deserves that attention, but even still, I find their decision to work on it a bit puzzling. Aren’t they just seriously wasting effort, especially when there is still so much anime out there that remains completely untouched? As for myself, I wouldn’t mind seeing something like Genius Party fansubbed at some point.

The impetus for this post was that, lately, I’ve noticed a lot of people talking about Kaiba. Or rather, a lot more people than expected. Just looking through the Anime Nano archives, I’m really pleased to see that, in little more than two months, Kaiba has already well surpassed the total level of attention (in terms of blogging, at least) Yuasa’s previous anime, Kemonozume, collected during a period of two whole years (it aired in 2006). I think that’s great, if just because it (supposedly) suggests that today’s anime fan has slightly better taste now than in 2006. Evolution in action, I guess?

With this in mind and using the hard facts provided by fansub trackers, I did a bit of research into how Kaiba’s popularity compares to some other spring anime; my findings are listed above. I used the third episode of each series because by that point most fans know which series they want to watch. Also, the download numbers come from the first fansub group to release that specific third episode (i.e. they don’t combine the popularity of every fansub ever released for that one specific episode in the series).

Kanokon being above Kaiba bothers me, but then, porn has always been popular amongst anime fans. Still, I wish its popularity was a little bit higher. Also, I’m shocked at how little interest Toshokan Sensou has attracted, given it’s a Production I.G. series and actually quite good. If you’re watching both Kaiba and Toshokan Sensou; good on you and keep spreading the word. I mean, if you’re in a position to recommend anime, just take a moment and think about it; you can bet that 100,00 other otaku are screaming about Code Geass R2, so add your voice to that white noise if you must, but just keep in mind, every recommendation for Kaiba and Toshokan Sensou is that much more important and if we don’t speak up for them, no-one will.