How Vtuber Fansubs Made Their Own International Communication

For the past year and a half, I’ve been living in what some netizens describe as a rabbit hole. That is to say, like so many other people, I’ve been watching Vtubers on YouTube.

There’s a lot of reasons behind their massive surge in popularity- for one, people are locked indoors and the YouTube algorithm seems pretty adept at recommending them these clips as part of a standard YouTube binge. Secondly, there’s the fantasy of it- unlike the performers behind them, Vtubers are largely free of real world issues, offering a nice chill space for fans to lavish 2d anime girls with praise and money without worrying about things like the ocean being on fire or a deadly lung virus.

One thing I really like about the Vtuber boom though, is a return to something it almost feels like we were about to lose since the rise of services like Crunchyroll and Netflix started giving us professional subtitles- the fansub community.

Localizing Vs Translating As-Is

Now, for context: There’s really two parts to translating an anime- namely physically translating it as well as localizing it. If you’re talking about culturally relevant things, it helps to frame it in a way other cultures can help when you export it to other countries (Jelly Donuts comes to mind as the peak example of this).

However, back in the day of fansubbed anime, that wasn’t really the case. A lot of fansub communities rarely localized content, instead adding annotated translator’s notes that required you to pause videos to read at all. While it was tedious and awkward and very prone to pretentious overdefense (TL Note: Keikaku means plan), it did have a great side effect- the hybridization of Japanese and English.

 

For the most part, a lot of popular Vtuber translators seem to get this- it’s how you see words like seiso (pure) or yabai (dangerous, bad) entering the common lexicon for Vtuber fans. Heck, it’s how English Vtuber fans started using the Japanese kanji for Grass as a sit-in for lol, something Japanese communities had been doing for years prior.

Some Vtuber streamers even do have the appended T/L notes, considering how many Vtuber talents will use Japanese slang, or things that just simply can’t be translated. Basically, while it makes enjoying it a bit more work, there’s a lot to gain via this community method- you create your own language in the Vtuber fan community, as well as maybe brushing up on your knowledge of other cultures.

Are Unlocalized Subs Bad For New Viewers?

While yes, there’s the argument that the person who’s just tuning in would be lost. At the end of the day, localization is about giving context, and if it’s not localized enough you run the worry of everything becoming one massive in-joke- it just becomes harder for anyone to break into the community without piecing together context from 500 YouTube clips at once.

But that’s the other great thing, is that the Vtuber experience extends a lot further than just watching the streams or clippers- there’s resources like r/Hololive, the Hololive subreddit, where what can only be described as grassroots-level memery takes place as a lot of jokes from there actually find their way to the talents themselves. Even if you don’t get something, the subreddit’s always open enough that they’ll explain stuff to you if you don’t get it, sometimes even being nice enough to get you links to where most of that content comes from.

The point I’m getting at is that like it or not, the experience has moved beyond just being a “watch the funny clip and go home” experience. Even if you’re not interacting with the talents directly, interacting with fellow denizens of the rabbit hole creates a new experience, potentially filling any gaps from a watch-and-done setting.

The Closing Thoughts on Localization

At the end of the day, I’m not trying to argue that localization is bad, or anything. Like I said, there’s plenty of reasons why it’s become the norm like it has.

But there is definitely an added bonus to not being in a rush to localize every Japan-ism out there, and that’s the birth of a new cross-cultural experience. While Hololive didn’t invent things like Japanglish (arigathanks, etc) I think the fact it’s a shared joke between Japanese and English viewers is definitely an argument for the merits of just letting cross-cultural pollination happen, and not being worried about new viewers getting lost.

Is English-speaking people injecting random Japanese into their sentences cringe? Kinda. Who cares? No one, the ocean is on fire.

Before anime was the big global boom it is now it was a niche thing, kept alive overseas only by passionate fans who could translate to let newer ones in. Considering how much content the Hololive talents put out in a week, it’s great to see that spirit carried forward here, too.

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