One of the creepier manifestations of his profound mental illness.

As is always the case, all publishers need to do is look at the scanlation community to see how things will or will not work, since the scanlators are already doing, for free, what the publishers hope to do for profit. Whatever problems exist and whatever solutions there are to those problems, the scanlators have already discovered.

And if they would only do that, they would discover, for instance, that MTL, presented as a finished product on its own, is so blatantly crappy that it's essentislly universally derided, with the only split being between the people who might grudgingly tolerate it in a specific case and the people who reject it outright.

There's no need for the JAT to argue that case when vivid proof that they're right already exists in virtually every comment section of every machine translated manga.

But instead, the publishers consistently make choices that any halfway decent scanlator could tell them are going to fail to appeal to the fans, which choices then - surprise surprise - fail to appeal to the fans.

Crunchyroll is never going to solve the problem because Crunchyroll is the problem.

Just to note....

There was just as much garbage anime in any given year in the past as there is now - it's just that current garbage anime is current and past garbage anime has been long since forgotten.

Ditto manga, music, movies books, television, whatever. The past generally looks better because it's only the best of it that's remembered.

I remain convinced that most of the problem with American distribution of anime is that the people in charge of it all too often know nothing about anime and have no interest in it.

I could never really get into Steins;Gate, mostly because pretty much every time the MC opened his mouth, I wanted to punch him.

I'd say that the greatest sci-fi anime, mecha or not, is Cowboy Bebop. A pretty mundane answer, but it just is what it is.

My personal favorite is probably Kaiba. I'm also especially partial to Trigun (including Stampede), Ergo Proxy and Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou. And I feel like I shouldn't let this go without mentioning Now and Then, Here and There, Casshern Sins, Darker Than Black and Aria. And a couple of cheesy gems that aren't even close to the greatest that I just happen to like - Estab-Life and Photon: The Idiot Adventures.

Obviously this is entirely up to the instance owner, but it seems to me that, if anything, all of this actually makes our position stronger.

Scanlation's always been a sort of gray area. It's technically piracy - that part's black and white - but the publishers have generally turned a blind eye to it, at least in cases in which there are and will be no licensed translations available. The publishers appeared to generally see it, and correctly, as free advertising (and in fact, scanlation is the ENTIRE reason that manga has gotten as popular as it has outside of Japan).

So the basic rule of thumb for more or less legitimate scanlation has always been that if the series isn't licensed, it's fair game, and if the publishers take exception anyway, all they have to do is say so and we'll immediately "cease and desist."

In one sense, this is just a massive version of what's happened to MD all along. They've gotten takedown requests from the start, and just immediately comply with them.

The things that are notable about this one are the scale of it, and the fact that many of the titles do not have and likely never will have official translations, so it seems to be entirely vindictive. The publishers aren't losing anything by allowing scanlations of titles that they'll never license anyway, so they're not protecting themselves from any nominal loss - they're just being dicks.

And that's undoubtedly what's rattled MD - it's not the fact of the takedowns, which have happened from the start but the seeming vindictiveness of them.

But their response has been to formally shift responsibility to the uploaders. They're saying not just tacitly but explicitly that anyone who uploads anything effectively claims to have the legal right to do so, so if they don't, that's their problem and not MD's.

Which actually removes us even further from any liability. From our position, the uploaders claimed to have the right to do so, and MD accepted their claim, and all we're doing is taking everyone else at their word.

For whatever that's worth.

Madoka.

Even after all these years and rewatches, it can still draw me in. And Magia still sends chills up my spine.

I don't watch dubs so can't know for certain, but I can't imagine newer ones are worse than the horrific cringe that made me decide to not watch dubs in the first place.

Single episodes:

Little Witch Academia - the original OVA. There isn't a single wasted frame - it's just 23 minutes of pure genius. (And as a matter of fact, I just rewatched it again last night).

Sword Art Online S01E04 - The Black Swordsman. The introduction of Silica and Pina and just a great, warm, funny, satisfying standalone episode, and particularly because it's sort of an antidote to S01E03, The Red-nosed Reindeer, which is arguably better, but so emotionally devastating.

YuruYuri S01E05 - When Akari and the Cicadas Cry. Kyouko drags Ayano to Comiket, Chitose discovers yuri doujins, and Chinatsu kisses Akari. Funny and cute even by YuruYuri's lofty standards.

86 Episode 23 - the last third of this episode is quite simply the most beautiful and touching thing I've ever seen, and it brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it.

Akudama Drive Episode 12 - It seems like it should be tragic, but it just kicks so much ass. " Serves you right."

Non Non Biyori S01E10 - We Watched the First Sunrise of the Year - I just love the dynamic between Kaede and Renge

Movies:

Spirited Away Duh. How could I not?

Ghost in the Shell (1995) Still the most concise visit to that universe. I like much of the rest of the franchise too, but that movie stands above them all.

The Disappearance of Suzumiya Haruhi Just a great movie from start to finish. "John... Smith!"

Redline Buried under the stylish carnage and sensory overload is a satisfying tale of honor and redemption, and a surprisingly cute love story.

Series:

Puella Magi Madoka Magica Even after all these years and all these rewatches, it just grabs me by the throat and drags me along.

Kemurikusa - Low budget done right. Great mysterious setting, good characters and satisfying story.

FLCL - I especially like episode 1 and episide 3, but it's short enough and there are enough other good moments that I figure I might as well watch it all, so I do.

And a couple of recent additions: Eizouken ni wa Te wo Dasu na! and Make Heroine ga Oosugiru! Eizouken is an unabashed love letter to anime with wonderful characters, and Makeine is a great multi-genre whatever-it-is, and Anna in particular is a terrific character.

Enshittification isn't just a problem for social media.

And not only that, but the boring cardboard elf chick he claims to love explicitly asked him to do exactly and only one thing - to stay at home and not butt into things in the city - so what does he do? He rushes off to butt into things in the city, and fucks up literally everything for literally everyone.

Sorry - that whole thing just ended up roo rant-y for my tastes, so I deleted it.

Broadly, for those coming into the thread, it was about the asshole translators and their asshole employers who insist on "localizing" literally everything, including culture-specific things like honorifics that cannot ever actually be "localized."

And yes - eliminating lgbt issues is another problem. That one particularly irritates me because it's an issue regarding which the Japanese, traditionalists though they might be, are very open and tolerant - there have been lgbt characters in anime and manga, entirely non-contoversially, for as long as the mediums have existed. Then along come the Americans, who get all twisted out of shape over it.

Frieren's an odd thing.

I had put it off for a while, and finally watched it all the way through about 7 or 8 months ago. And while it's not my favorite anime (I don't think it's even in my top 5), I'd say it's definitely the best anime I've ever seen.

Others generally stand out, if they do, for some specific things — great characters or a great story or great art or whatever. Frieren isn't like that though. The characters and the story are notably good, but they don't really stand out that much in and of themselves, like they might in orher animes, because the real strength of Frieren is that every single aspect of it is top quality. There's nothing you have to overlook - nothing that's only so-so but that's okay because something else makes up for it. Whether you're talking about the plot or the pacing or the characters or the drama or the humor or the art or the music or the voice acting or... anything really, it's all excellent. And that's pretty damned impressive.

My approach to the matter has been very simple and straightforward - I have nothing at all to do with any of the .ml communities. I never even set foot in any of them. And I heartily recommend that others do the same - just pretend that the .ml communities don't exist and focus entirely on this instance and its vastly superior communities.

Time is on our side. These communities are simply better, in all possible ways, so all we really have to do is keep doing what we do here, completely ignore .ml, and be patient.

Am I the only one who thinks that Steins;Gate is overrated?

Maybe it's because I grew up reading science fiction and it's always been my favorite genre, and time travel one of my favorite sub-genres, but I just found it to be sort of shallow and tedious. That and something that is unfortunately all too common in anime, unnecessarily bogged down with an intensely irritating MMC. I'll give it credit for an interesting climax, but to me, it was too little too late.

...to streamline thier efforts.

That's the key. MTL can absolutely serve as part of the process, but it needs a significant amount of human editing to end up with a good translation.

And if history is anything to go by, the publishers aren't going to be willing to invest the necessary time and resources to do it right, and instead they'll just half-ass it, and it'll entirely justifiably fail.

Very much.

And for what it's worth I didn't have a lot of hope for it initially. I read the manga and really liked it, and I figured there was no way the adaptation would do it justice. But it was very good, with all of the same charm as the manga plus very good animation, music and voice acting.

I definitely recommend it.

The internet might be the new god, and Lain might be its messiah.

SAO was excellent here and there (Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, The Black Swordsman, Mother's Rosario) and was at least decent all the way through.

It was just one of those series that became so commonly loved by normies that advertising one's hatred of it became an easy way to gain instant edgelord cred.