The Japanese anime industry is gearing up to take down the multi-headed vicious death beast of death that is internet fansubbing.

I’ve spoken before on how I personally feel towards fansubs and my status as an anime fan, and I just have to wonder how much the anime industry expects to save by stopping fansubs and demonizing them.

Legality aside, fansubbing is basically free advertisement for a show, and despite my general optimism towards shows I must say that not every show is a keeper or is going to be one that people at large will want to archive for generations. I’m not sure what they’re trying to accomplish, as it seems awfully near-sighted, but I can just picture myself (and most likely others) simply not buying a show AT ALL because I never had the chance to fall in love with it.

Over the past 12 months or so, I can probably count on two hands the number of manga titles I’ve bought in English: 3 volumes of To Terra, Sexy Voice and Robo, and hell I forget the rest, but the point is that I’ve read far many more manga and I didn’t even do it with scanlations. I utilized the dastardly method of Reading Them In the Bookstore. And these aren’t even throwaway titles but legitimately good ones. Why? Because 1) these things tend to be incomplete prior to reading them and 2) I do not have limitless pockets. Why did I buy To Terra without sampling it? Because I’ve been wanting to read it since I found out about it Manga! Manga! and since I downloaded a Japanese raw of the Toward the Terra movie from WinMX freshman year of college.

New shows won’t have that luxury.