Looking for Anime Fansubbed VHS tapes

As a long time anime fan one thing that has always interested me is how people would get their anime before a series was licensed and started looking into old anime VHS fansubs, after getting some tapes from a user on another forum and watching them I started thinking that while these tapes aren't necessarily legal they're still a part of anime's history and I think such tapes should be preserved to prevent them from being lost forever because let's face it VHS tapes will lose their recorded video and audio information over time and once that information is gone it's gone and can't be recovered this is where you guys can help, if you or anyone you know has any fansubbed anime VHS tapes I would like for you to let me know as soon as you possibly can. Let's work together to preserve this piece of anime history for all future generations.

 

I still have about four series that are fansubbed, but the subtitle groups have already released (and in one case updated) the subtitles that were hardcoded on them as .srt files. Actually, one big problem is that none of them are all from one source, so ep 1-6 will be from one group, 7-11 a different one, 12 a third group, and 13+ from the first place.

 

During the VHS days it was pretty common for multiple groups to do some parts of a series but not others I have over 20 DBZ/GT tapes with episodes from different groups so it doesn't really surprise me are the series you have on VHS tapes or are they computer files?

 

LOL, a mate of mine had the complete Streetfighter V series on VHS, Hong Kong bootlegged versions!
It was quite funny to see the cacaphony of crooked and washed out printed covers next to one and other which made out the series' title...

 

VHS. Hameln no Violin, half of Eden's Bowy (up to the first robot episode), Gundam X, one of the Galaxy Express 999 movies, Macross: Do You Remember Love, a movie that was an attempt to spin off yet another Dragonball series but amazingly didn't, and I can't remember the name of the other series off the top of my head but do remember the subtitling group was from Kansas.

With the exception of one of those all the subtitles used on those tapes were released as .srt files though, so their original work isn't really lost.

 

That's interesting if you have any info about the series you can't remember the name of I might be able to figure out what it is but that's a nice little collection you have.

I've never heard of a fansub group doing that before I'm still interested in the tapes because there's always something about seeing hardcoded subs on original VHS footage have that can't be replicated.

 

Wow... weird thread.

I actually gave/sold (for the cost of tape) my collection of a few hundred SVHS tapes when I moved to Japan in 1998. Oh, the good old days. I was even a part of it when you would get 5th or 6th gen mono w/ no subtitles -- and you liked it!

 

Dang I wish I could've bought them a couple few hundred? That's incredible.

 

Yeah, there were tons. Took up a lot of space. Definitely kept me from getting laid in college. Fun hobby. I had an Amiga 1200 -- subbed a lot of them off of LD myself. I retimed the entire run of Maison Ikkoku, and for some reason am watching it now... no subs though. Funny show. Less real than most SciFi but still kind of funny.

 

Oh, those were the days. You'd get this grainy little tape in the mail, half the lines would be badly timed and it's always that one three-liner that just flicks by in a quarter second--long enough to see that there was something to miss but not long enough to make anything out. You felt privledged though.
Those horrible little subbing machines were so tedious to work with too. Can't name how many tapes have a little inserted segment outlining how happy they were to upgrade or get the thing working properly.

Had a roomie who was way into Maison Ikkoku. I've never seen it amazingly, mostly because he watched it at 2-4 in the morning and I, being mortal, require sleep.

The last one was the OVA Here is Greenwood, which I'm pretty sure was officially released even back then. I suppose I shouldn't really have kept it, but meh. Actually, that one I have on disk now.
Also, completely forgot I had a copy of Laputa. That's an interesting one, since the official Disney release was a great job except for the lines that were completely dead-screen omitted. I can certainly understand why the censors wouldn't appreciate a line like "They're falling out of the ship like garbage! Mwhahahaha!" The tape has to be at least 4th gen and cuts off part of the credits.

One rarity, captured off TV, was the Far Side Halloween special from the early 90's.

 

Since it was only recently that I got to experience my first VHS fansub tape I can't really say that it had as much of an impact on me when compared to people who got them when fansub tapes were a major fad but I can say that it was still an incredible experience nonetheless.

That's news to me because none of my current tapes have such a segment, now granted some did have segments but none of said segments ever said anything about how happy they were to upgrade or that they got the subbing machine working.

That's understandable I mean why did he watch Maison Ikkoku at 2-4 in the morning?

Personally I think you made a smart choice keeping said tape.

You've go quite a few interesting things in your collection .

 

This is a bit dismissive. They were actually an awesome technological feat. Dirt cheap, and you could subtitle your own videos. You couldn't do this with a Windows machine back then, and the Mac hardware was inferior in a lot of ways. I believe the hardware was way more expensive. However, they weren't that tedious once they worked, but timing a script well if you were a perfectionist like I was, took a while. At least 3 runs, usually 4.

Now, subtitling anime was and is, just like anything else. You can make it awesome, or you can make it passable. I strived for awesome, and I think my stuff was some of the sharpest timed out there. However, many would argue that back then, there was so much to be done, that they'd rather have seen "good" subtitles, and more of them. Shit, we rarely watched things twice, much less once.

And it's a 2:20 minute tape as well, right? Long movie.

 

Not necessarily it could be that the VHS was recorded in SP Mode: which gives the best quality at the cost of less recording time.

"Double Facepalm" Why would you do that? I mean granted Tapes are outdated by today's standards I admit but why not keep them in case someone comes along and might be interested in them? Out of curiosity do you have any fansub tapes that you didn't throw away ASSEMbler?

 

I remember now. According to IMDB, running time is 124 minutes. Most standard tapes actually gave about 123 and change in SP mode. LP/EP mode? True otaku would never record in these modes.

 

Well it really depends on what your personal preference is, if your a person who wants quality over quantity (my personal preference) then yeah you would record in SP mode, but if your wanting quantity over quality (a concept I don't fully agree with) then EP/LP would be the better options, on some of my DBZ fansub tapes, the person I bought them off of had recorded some GT episodes in either EP/LP mode and they look terrible compared to the original fansubs that were on the tape from the start, and now if I want to make a copy of those tapes for my viewing uses I'd have to record those GT episodes in EP/LP mode just to get them to fit on the same tape as the originally recorded episodes which would be in SP mode.

 

As someone active on the scene back then, EP/LP was always looked down on, unless it was just something of sheer volume that you wouldn't watch often. Long TV shows (DBZ) for example.

But before we go off on that tangent, I was only making a point. Laputa was known as a "problem" movie b/c the credits wouldn't fit on a standard tape in SP mode, and technically (or supposedly) the 160 minute SP tapes were inferior in quality.

 

Yeah I can kinda see why LP/EP were looked down upon and I wouldn't use them unless I absolutely had to (LP might not be too bad since it's not the longest record mode but i'd have to be pretty desperate to use EP mode) but on the other hand I can see why some people would use those modes, the main advantage those two modes have is it's more convienent to have more stuff on a single tape (not as many tape swapping's for example) as opposed to having less stuff on multiple tapes (having to swap more tapes)

I understand your point Laputa was a problem to record in its entirety in SP mode due to its total duration I get that but I was simply pointing out that if the tape would've been recorded in LP mode everything in Laputa would be there.

 

I think I had a TV series or two straight off of LD, recorded in EP. No subs though.