Forever Lost

Hahahahaha.... that's actually a great question. Well, I was in middle of a summer binge watching fest - anything anime I could get my hands on. I had recently discovered you could watch episodes online, and it was something my mom hadn't directly disapproved of (unlike Yu-Gi-Oh! and other things available on TV..). She had let me watch Sailor Moon with my sister when I was younger and they just re-ran the first two seasons over and over. (My sister had printed out the airing schedule and everything.. XD) So after previously running through all of Sailor Moon (Some things you should probably just leave unwatched..), all currently available Naruto (that's when Shippuden was fairly new.. >.>;; and I thiiink I gave up on One Piece because the story lost my interest. So I was no stranger to watching suuuper long series. I looked up popular and suggested anime and came across Detective Conan. Now with books I have a policy: give it three chapters. If it still sucks, I'll stop reading. I had developed a similar rule with anime (I had watched several muuuch smaller seasons of anime that were recent on certain sites) and decided that anime needed three episodes to determine if I would grace it with my viewership. As an author of tons of stories on Haibara Ai, I could say thank goodness that I gave it that chance. Taking the other point of view with the amount of time wasted purely on a show, maybe I shouldn't have.. XD; ANYWAY my reaction: I hated it. The first episode confused me a bit. But I could do nothing but cringe at the art. CRINGE. Taking on episode two, there was just more of this arrogant detective brat. He was inconsiderate and inappropriate, and if his head up Ran's skirt was going to be a sign of the 500ish episodes to come (oh how that number has grown), then I wanted no part in it. Gin. Gin literally saved Detective Conan from being on the "tried it and hate it" list when he wielded his bat and knocked that arrogant jerk to the ground. And then he was a kid. And then there was a plot. A story line. People I started to care about. And before I met Haibara, I was a ShinRan x.x. I sadly spoiled the fun of learning about Haibara through the episodes because there were pictures of her when you search "detective conan" on google pictures XD But she changed the whole dynamic and I love her to pieces. So in the end, I guess we can thank Gin for knocking Shinichi out so I wouldn't hate him anymore ... Best life lesson ever?

Dear Young People Sincerely, Me.

Yours was first. It's listed as posted a day before the other thread. (I just looked at the little bar that shows the latest new threads... in fact that's how I came across your thread to begin with ^^

I was sitting in a class at church.. after it had ended. And the teacher, someone very dear to me, looked me in the eyes and asked: "Do you know how to tell if someone loves you?" It was a question that dumbfounded me. I didn't. I really didn't. At the time, there were so many people who said they cared, but I couldn't believe anyone anymore because it felt like they all betrayed me. I've always been afraid of messing up. Because if I mess up, everyone will disappear. Without uttering a word of that, my teacher took my binder and turned to a blank notebook paper page. He then began to write something in his annoyingly-perfect cursive which contrasted starkly with my hurriedly scribbled notes he had flipped past. He pushed it over to me after he was done writing and, while pointing to the words he had written, he looked at me again and said: "You know someone loves you when they don't change after you make a mistake." His name is John H., for attribution purposes. To this day, I have that very sentence he wrote taped to my binder. It's okay to make mistakes. It's okay to mess up. Everyone won't leave. Because the people who love you... they don't change after you make a mistake.

Meh, online I've gotten a lot of random nicknames.. but I had to post because I think I just got my first real, legitimate, sense-making nickname from a group of people I'm kinda close to. It's not like "let's make up nicknames", it was just something that popped out of someone's mouth, and it kinda makes me happy. 'Garcia'. From Criminal Minds :3

Hm... I don't know. Clearly, they're very discontented with China's actions.. but it would be arrogant in my opinion to think that they 'can't touch' America. America is just now seeing how much of a market there is for this stuff. Companies that have contracts with the original rights-holders in Japan would benefit from this, too. I say this because it would possibly eliminate the go-arounds many of the people in the anime community use. And I get it - as long as it's embedded from some other place, that particular site isn't held responsible. So all they have to do is take the host site down. A lot of the places that aren't touched -so far- with copyright takedown notices are because they are not based in America. So Japan going after foreign groups is actually something I think subbers should be relatively alarmed about. Quite honestly, companies don't give a dang if us poor illiterate Americans can understand their content. It's in their interest if there's people who can't understand who want to - that means they have a huge opportunity to make money with any group over here interested in making it openly available for us here. Now, usually foreign content isn't targeted that hasn't been licensed in the U.S. But now Japan is coming after that very 'out' that has given so many of us an opportunity to experience the shows and whatnot that we have. Upon a brief overview of the DMCA, I don't see where it clearly states that it's 'okay' to subtitle and allow for download. They allow for testing and research.. and perhaps if for you, personally, that subtitling and translating was a kind of research then, maaaybe it'd be legally protected. But allowing people to download it starts crossing the line because that means that their copyrighted content (whether or not you add text to the top of it) is actively being disbursed without their permission. Yes, I get it 1000%. In my personal opinion, if it's not licensed in a country, we should be able to subtitle it. On the flip side, if it's not licensed and is available online through illegal means in the first place (like from China), then it's not really fair for the original owners, either. It's a strange thing we've come across now. It would seem that prohibiting shows and content from being available in other countries would do no good (there's the age-old fanbase argument), but people see money flying out the door on things they've worked hard on. I personally have enjoyed the ability to have a greater knowledge of Japan and its customs and language through the people who have subtitled shows and anime. But the truth remains that it's a business for a lot of people, and we're considered a threat. I just think we shouldn't be so arrogant just because we have the internet and we can just regroup and go elsewhere (like with the DC manga translations). If these people start getting more serious (which it appears they have..), then people who continue to ignore the warnings can get into serious trouble. This group of internet-savvy people seem to think that they can do whatever they want on the internet and escape the consequences. The thing I worry about for this new group of manga translators is that they clearly know that they are not supposed to be doing what they are doing. The government is very tech-savvy as well, and probably would love to take multiple offenders to court to prove a point to the rest of us. Just saying.

Dear Anonymous, Don't ask me to show my feelings, and in the next breath tell me to hide them. Don't pretend that you are the only one with the right to be angry. I've noticed you've found it acceptable to just be nice after you've done something and not apologize. I don't find that okay. I just want a sincere apology. So please, don't ask me to trust you while you treat me like this. I love you. Sincerely, Me.

DCTP takes yet another hit :/ At least they're still translating that game... even though I don't think I'll ever get to play it XD; Here's the thing about why Detective Conan has been such a battle in the States... Detective Conan is HUGE in Japan. So here, they had to pay BIG BUCKS in order to have rights over here to it. Somewhere I read that Case Closed was the name change required by trademark and copyright issues, I don't know. Now I don't know when they got these rights, but they had to put themselves out there to do it. If so many of you were kids when you first saw it, I wouldn't be too surprised if it was very close (in years) to the time that it was first being produced in Japan. Someone told me the reason that it sucked so bad was that they had practically depleted their budget in purchasing the rights, but wanted to be able to immediately produce in America what was doing so well in Japan. I don't know if that's true, but it would make sense for some of the, quite frankly, sloppy work on FUNimation's part. Someone thought that English names would work better than Japanese for the market (come on now, when you were a kid, did you find Shinichi and Ran (especially for a girl!) to be normal names? Nooo~) and thus killed it for people like us who now have this unexpected access to find out about the original which is still doing amazing in Japan. So they had to cancel the show pretty early on. But now look at it! There's American viewers from everywhere super into this franchise which FUNimation and Viz have rights to! Why the heck would they, after realizing that there is actually a huge market still out there for something they spent so much friggen money on, let someone put it all out there for free?! I have a hunch that they're trying to clear the board so when they actually put all the money into producing this stuff that we'll buy theirs because it'll be the only thing available. I haven't visited FUNimation's site in forever, but a lonngg time ago they started putting up their subbed (not dubbed!) episodes on their site. I don't know what was free to view, though. I would give them a standing ovation if they would just stop with jacking up the storyline and dump the project and restart. Then they would probably have a huuuuge boost in sales. The story and characters is what makes this thing so great, in my opinion. And for some unknown reason, they've jacked up both. Let's hope this only means that they're about to put the funds behind this thing and get it moving in the right direction. Who knows? Maybe they could actually salvage this mess... Says the person who hates English dubbing and names >3>

Dear step-niece, FOR THE LOVE OF SANITY, you should know how to CORRECTLY spell 'secret' as in "A secret makes a woman, woman." First of all, you are SEVENTEEN. This is not a difficult word. You do not have any disabilities. Your brain works fine. You just refuse to SPELL CORRECTLY. And I swear if I see one more "My mcm/mcw is still a secrete" I'm going to slap you over the internet. 'Secrete' is actually more commonly used as a verb and that's not at all what you intend to say. Since you're so concerned about making everyone wonder about your 'man crush' every freakin' day (WHY do you think it's okay to mention your 'man crush' on both Monday and Wednesday?? WHO FRIGGEN CARES. I don't understand these crush day crap things but at least let monday = man and wednesday = woman.) MAYBE you should learn from the past four times I pointed out that you spelled secret with an extra e just for ticking me off. *deep breaths* ... Sincerely, Me.

*waves* Welcome Thanks for being a part of subbing groups.. it makes my life a little easier ^^;; (Or it did.. idkanymore) Nice intro I'll be 20 in October o.o''' hand-drawing is the bane of my existance