Gossameru Fansubs

This is my website dedicated to putting out information about the fansubbing I do. You can find how to access my fansubs on my fansubs page. I also post a lot of gifsets and such to my tumblr.

After watching the hazel video on indie tokusatsu fighting girls, I did what I’m sure everyone else also felt compelled to do: immediately started fansubbing the videos she referenced. In the process of doing so, I continually asked myself - who were these people making these low-budget, impassioned, and extremely otaku films? My usual areas of Japanese media knowledge - self-published comics/doujinshi and anime production - weren’t a lot of help in this Japanese indie film world, although given the otaku overlap in consumers I did make some useful connections between creators, conventions, and genres.

The deeper I dove into research on these indie production companies and watched their behind-the-scenes footage, the more I got a vision of what the network surrounding the very specific snapshot of time in this particular industry. For example, early Eiyu Club was a group of passionate people self-funding to make movies until they began to earn that money back to go onto bigger productions. The founder of Center Island, Hironobu Nakajima, self-funded many of the projects, even with the knowledge that they’d not make a profit. This sort of do-it-yourself, passion-fueled, community-minded mentality taps into my own roots in self-published comics, fanfic writing, and various other non-professional artistic pursuits.

After doing all of these fansubs and research, I feel something of a kinship with Eiyu Club, Center Island, and the other very indie production companies. Seeing a masked heroine do flip kicks above an ugly demon man wearing tights while homemade midi music blasts over their fight scene has started to feel… well, like seeing a friend. Watching the behind-the-scenes footage where the actors are sprinting around moving props and carrying pieces of a tokusatsu costume reminds me that every film, no matter how cheesy or poorly edited they can get, is a miracle. It reminds me of beta reading a friend’s fanfic for a fandom I don’t even know, or sitting in a recording studio while my friend belts out songs that I’ll later clumsily mix with karaoke backing instrumentals. Throw some passionate amateurs together and hey, magic happens.

So that’s why I focus on this genre, and have a soft spot for behind-the-scenes footage in particular. For a few minutes, I get to watch someone be absolutely exhausted and enormously excited about something they’re making, even if it won’t make a huge profit, or even be seen by a ton of people. I watch it and think, damn, you guys made a movie, and you’re still so excited to make another after.

And isn’t that pretty cool?