Toei going after TV-Nihon with a C&D earlier this year was a dumbfuck idiot move on their part.
Like, who do they think gave the west broader access to Sentai and Kamen Rider? Who do you think helped push their toy sales to foreign markets? Like, that’s the whole point of modern Kamen Rider and Sentai (and likely has been since the late Showa era, tbh) - to tell stories, AND SELL TOYS.
Like, it ain’t hurtin’ your fucking profit margin when some gaijin downloads and watches an episode of OOO or Build in a way they can actually fucking understand. These series have run their course, and no longer have active toys in the market, y’all made your money off them, and now they’re relegated to third parties. Even for active series, like Saber, Zero-One, and Revice - westerners having access to these series have fucking boosted your toy sales, and you can’t sit with your thumb up your ass and pretend that it hasn’t.
That aside, Toei’s idiocy falls even further into the careening depths off the cliffs of dumbfuck when you consider the following:
>Toei plans releases of episodes from every Kamen Rider series on their official Tokusatsu youtube channel, with official sub-captions.
>Only 2 Episodes per series
>Subs are often inaccurate or broken on day 1-4 of an upload
>Uploads Heisei-era Movies
>Heisei movies uploaded only stay up for about a week before being removed
>No announcement whatsoever of official, physical series/movie releases in the west
They could literally set aside a team to go over every episode of every fucking past season, subtitle them, upload them, monetize them, and fucking PROFIT from it.
They could announce physical western releases of each series and make BANK from it.
But no. No sir. Can’t do that.
But they can go out of their way to kill off one of the better fansub groups (at least, for Sentai/Rider series...they still do other shows).
We’ve known that Toei can get a bit “Jewish” when it comes to copyright claims of their content on YouTube, but this seems to be a first. Just today, Takenoko of TV-Nihon received an email from someone claiming to be from the “Intellectual property rights department” at Toei asking them to take down their copyrighted materials. As such, TV-Nihon have taken down their Super Sentai and Kamen Rider torrents from their tracker for the time being.
Some people on Twitter have suspected that this is not a legitimate notice and I agree with them because I don’t think this email looks professional enough to be legitimate. If they knew how to file a DMCA, this would be different, but I digress. According to Over-Time on Twitter, New Wave and Perfect Zect (NewZect for short), a Brazilian toku fansubbing group, also received a similar email back in March. At the time of writing, their site is still up and they have deleted whatever notice they had about this, so I don’t know what’s happening on that front. Also, no other toku fansubbing group (English or otherwise) has received similar notices either.
It just seems too coincidental that this happened after Shirakura claimed that he wasn’t supposed to know how fans could watch Super Sentai and Kamen Rider internationally. As such, I’m seeing people putting blame on the person who tweeted at Shirakura, similarly to what happened during the Zi-O Trinity fiasco. Guys, I know the Shirakura paradox runs deep, but I don’t think the person is to blame. I’m pretty sure that Shirakura’s tweet was meant as a joke and honestly, Toei has known about the fansub market for like twenty years now, so it’s weird that they’re doing this now instead of very early on. Remember when Shirakura claimed that there was no Kamen Rider fanbase in the West and you went out of your way to make yourselves heard? This is someone who apparently thought the only toku Westerners liked was Power Rangers (because Shirakura was a producer on Zyuranger, the first Sentai that was adapted to the West). Also, the person didn’t even mention watching it outside of Japan, it was Shirakura who brought it up. They were just asking for more Super Sentai music on Spotify.
Anyway, as I said, I’m hoping that this copyright notice is fake (just as the next person), but in the event that this turns out to be real, I sincerely hope that TV-Nihon’s typesetters can hook us fans up with the lists of fonts that they use in their releases. Times have changed guys. Don’t leave us hanging.
This post will be updated as events progress.
UPDATE - 15 May 2021: Apparently, after comparing emails with TV-Nihon and KRDL (who also received one such email), Over-Time seems to be convinced that the emails are legit (note that they did not receive any such emails themselves), so they’ve decided to stop sharing raws and subs for Super Sentai and Kamen Rider (apparently they’re still going to sub shows, just not post about them on their site). Nobody has been served any legal letters and the emails don’t seem to be valid legal threats, but Over-Time are being cautious for the time being just like TV-Nihon are. I’m still of the opinion that these are not legitimate, particularly because no lawyer has had a hand in any of this (as far as I know) and the emails are purposely vague.
Regardless of whatever happens, please don’t blame twt_tokusatsu for tweeting at Shirakura, or even Shirakura himself for joking about it because he might not even know what is going on (and we don’t exactly know if he does either). If anything, Toei should be blamed for being “Jewish” with their copyrights.
Also, I highly suggest that people refrain from tagging Shirakura on Twitter with their complaints or being paranoid and alarmist when someone does. Some people seem to think that the Western toku fanbase is on thin ice with Toei, but we don’t exactly know how thick the ice is. Yes, some scepticism and cautiousness is okay, but the more paranoid the fanbase gets, the more rumours and misinformation get spread around.
UPDATE - 19 May 2021: Takenoko has stated that he wants to continue translating the shows, so TV-Nihon have started releasing subtitle files for use with the raws. The subtitles are only in an .srt format with no fonts, styling or karaoke, which might be a bit disappointing, but still a good start for TV-Nihon, who have been hardsubbing their releases since the beginning. It would be nice, though, if they eventually released their full collection of subtitle files so that people who have the raws can use them themselves, plus it would save me from bugging TV-Nihon’s typesetters on my posts to release the fonts they use for their releases because they would all be in the files themselves.
Also, you didn’t hear this from me, but I’m starting to see TV-Nihon’s latest releases on a certain site that other sub groups use to post their release torrents.
Since it’s going to be about a week without anything else in the way of news, I’ll keep observing the situation for a couple more weeks and then write a post summarising the whole situation. Assuming that nothing much happens during that time, this will be the final update for this post.
The events of the past few weeks have taken the Western toku fanbase by storm. Amidst the shitstorm of spergs and a-logs who think they’re being rational but are really low-key spergs, unexpected turns in events are heralding the death knell for tokusatsu fansubs (that was going to be the name of this post initially). In addition, these events have also exposed the state of tokusatsu in the West in 2021, whether it be in regards to fansubs and streaming or Shirakura and the fanbase.
An update on the current situation
This is an update to the two posts I made in the past few weeks regarding the subject.
So some Indonesian wrote a Twitter thread about tokusatsu in general and in one of those tweets, he mentions Shirakura and the recent fansub scandal in a passing manner. Another Indonesian quote retweets him and tags Shirakura and this is what he got:
A few hours later, Shirakura wrote a few tweets about the situation (which are after the break):
(Tweets 1 and 3 translated by killadelfo, tweets 2, 4 and 5 translated by me because Shirakura and other a-logs won’t do it)
Some context:
Tweet 1 - 「雉も鳴かずば打たれまい」 directly translates to "If the pheasant didn't ring, then it wouldn't have been hit". At a stretch, it sounds like victim-blaming in rape culture. Also, the “semi-official streaming site” Shirakura is referring to is TokuHD, who are currently streaming Kamen Rider Agito and 555 with abysmal subtitle translation quality (Honshin and Olfenok) and were apparently licenced by an unknown third-party (if anyone knows, please tell me and I’ll update this).
Tweet 2 - The North Wind and the Sun, one of Aesop’s fables that teaches the superiority of persuasion over force. You can read the story here if you’re too infantile to read Wikipedia.
Later on, TV-Nihon officially announced that they have decided to stop subbing Saber and Zenkaiger, softsubs or hardsubs alike, with Takenoko stating that he doesn’t want to worry about legal trouble on their team. Whether or not they will sub future series is still unknown at the moment. Nothing has come back regarding the apparent C&D from Toei, particularly as NewZect and KRDL haven’t received anything else from them apart from one email (and KRDL received theirs in 2019 apparently).
Despite this, Shirakura has expressed his gratitude for fans across the world who watch Toei’s shows, no matter how they watch them. It’s a far cry from “I believe there’s no fanbase of Kamen Rider in the west practically.”
So now, let’s dissect the whole situation, from fansubbing, streaming and official releases to Shirakura and the Western fanbase.
Fansubbing, streaming and official releases: le Happy Merchant intensifies
There was a time when TV-Nihon held a monopoly in tokusatsu fansubbing, subbing series that other people normally wouldn’t have cared about, including the Chouseishin and Tomica Hero series. They were known for their mistakes in translation and extensive use of different fonts and effects, which led to groups like Over-Time springing up over the past decade in an effort to diversify the fansubbing scene and break up TV-Nihon’s monopoly. (It’s time to #ReleaseTheFonts, TV-Nihon. Get that hashtag trending.) Though TV-Nihon seem to have this unspoken rule to not mention other sub groups on their forums, the recent C&D debacle has resulted in a truce of sorts between them.
Many tokusatsu fans outside of Japan will have known of the genre through fansubs and I am no exception. It’s very likely that for a long time, Japanese executives thought the only toku Westerners liked was Power Rangers, but in recent years, the increasing popularity of tokusatsu in the West has led to companies like Toei and Tsuburaya drawing up plans to release their series in the West. Presumably due to the two companies’ different attitudes to copyright, their IPs are being treated differently, as I will detail.
Tsuburaya - Based and redpilled
For some reason, Ultraman is a franchise that very few fansub groups have cared about over the years, which makes Tsuburaya’s Western expansion that much more special.
Before 2018, Crunchyroll streamed Leo, 80, Gaia, Nexus, Max, Mebius, Ginga (S), X, Orb and Geed, but they have now been removed from the platform as Mill Creek Blu-rays, TokuHD, TokuSHOUTsu and Tsuburaya’s YouTube channel became more prolific.
Tsuburaya has been streaming the newest episodes of Ultraman weekly on their YouTube channel since 2012, presumably because their coverage on TV Tokyo and their affiliates don’t cover all of Japan. They have added Chinese subtitles to their episodes since either Geed or R/B and even though their translations of some names can be a bit autistic, they have added English subtitles to their episodes since Z following the release of Ultra Galaxy Fight: New Generation Heroes with dual audio and multi-language subtitles (including English). Alongside reruns of older series, Tsuburaya releases episodes on YouTube every week, which are then available for two weeks. In addition, they also have separate channels where they publish dubs for Ultraman episodes in Mandarin, Korean and even Cantonese (official TVB Tiga-Mebius dub release when), which is pretty based if you ask me.
Tsuburaya doesn’t seem to do takedowns of their materials on YouTube, though they do claim ownership of the material posted by other channels so that ad revenue goes to them. It’s the reason why whole series of Ultraman and various compilations using footage from various episodes are still surviving on YouTube today. Cynically though, I suspect that the main reason they don’t do takedowns is because they can’t afford to following years of financial problems and their decades-long conflict with Chaiyo Productions. They probably thought that it wouldn’t be worth it.
Toei - Cringe and bluepilled
Is it any wonder that the one company with the more popular series amongst a niche fanbase would be so Jewish with their copyrights? While entire series and various compilations have been taken down by Toei over the years (which they technically have the right to do), they don’t give fans (particularly outside of the US) a lot of options to support them officially, so they only dug this hole for themselves. It’s also very naive of people to presume that Toei doesn’t know about fansubs; it would be fair to say that it’s an open secret that neither Toei nor fansub groups can acknowledge for fear of legal retribution.
From 2015 to 2019, Shout! Factory have released Super Sentai series from Jetman (the first pre-Mighty Morphin series to be released in the West) to Hurricaneger, but since Power Rangers was sold from Saban to Hasbro, Shout! Factory have not regained the rights to distribute any further series and Toei hasn’t done much lobbying in that regard. However, Shout! Factory have begun streaming some Kamen Rider series from 2020 on TokuSHOUTsu (Shout! Factory TV) and Tubi (in addition to the Super Sentai series they had already licenced), namely the original series, Kuuga, Ryuki, Zero-One and the Heisei Generations FOREVER movie. Agito and 555 are streaming on TokuHD (as I mentioned before) and Amazons is streaming on Amazon Prime.
While Toei does have an official tokusatsu YouTube channel, where they stream their library of series similar to how Tsuburaya does with their YouTube channel, it is only available in Japan. In April 2020, Toei began uploading their series on Toei Tokusatsu World, a separate YouTube channel created specifically for their Western fans that immediately got taken down by copyright strikes on their own content. Aside from streaming Metal Hero series and other toku series nobody cares about, they’ve only bothered to upload the first two episodes of every Kamen Rider series on there, with no plans to follow through with the rest of the episodes (Super Sentai is only available in Asia because of the last paragraph). Apparently, the official subtitled release of the first two Kamen Rider episodes was funded by the J-LOD scheme (Japan Content LOcalisation and Distribution) established by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and that they hope that fans would provide subtitles for the rest of the episodes. The only problem is that YouTube discontinued its community captions feature last year and I have been unable to find any evidence of Toei suggesting such a thing from their fans, so I can only assume that they either weren’t transparent about it or had no intention of doing so at all. You can see why I prefer Tsuburaya’s approach better. Frankly, I think Toei should have just uploaded TV-Nihon’s releases and called it a day.
There’s a Europoor sperg on Twitter (and the TV-Nihon forums) by the name of HowlingSnail who always complains about tokusatsu series only being licensed in the US. Like him or not, you’ve got to admit that he does have a point. Even in the age of VPNs and multi-region DVD players, the entire world has to be considered when it comes to international licencing and expansion because believe it or not, the “West” isn’t made up of just the US alone. Things shouldn’t have to be like this, and yet, things are the way they are.
Around the time that TV-Nihon (apparently) got C&D’d, Western fans were pissed that The Tokusatsu Network posted news of Toei streaming Kamen Rider Drive on their Japanese-exclusive channel, rubbing salt into their wounds, while also not saying anything about the current situation with fansubs. In TokuNet’s defence, I can understand why they wouldn’t do that; on top of being based in Japan, they’ve done interviews with various actors and producers on their YouTube channel, plus their senior editor, Tom Constantine, has made cameo appearances on a few episodes and movies. So if anything, TokuNet are closer to Toei than any other news site covering tokusatsu.
In summary, Toei are complicit in enabling this shitstorm that could have been preventable if they weren’t so incompetent and out-of-touch with their Western fanbase. If more scrutiny was exercised during the negotiation of Western licencing, we probably wouldn’t have had the TokuHD disaster. If Toei were more transparent with their intentions for streaming their toku series in the West, fansub groups would be more than happy to contribute to the official subtitles and/or take their (unofficial) releases down (though I don’t necessarily agree with this practice entirely). Or maybe if Toei actually made a media release saying that it was actually them who sent the C&D’s to KRDL, NewZect and TV-Nihon, we wouldn’t have had this debacle and this post would just be me talking about the death knell for tokusatsu fansubs (which would probably be just this section of the post).
In the lack of free and easily accessible means to access media protected behind paywalls and geoblocks, people will always turn to things like “illegal” streaming sites and torrenting, particularly when they believe that multi-million dollar companies don’t deserve their hard-earned money just because they keep bugging everyone to give it all to them.
(Also, I know someone called me out in one of my linked posts where I described Toei’s attitude to copyright as “Jewish”, but fuck you, my stance doesn’t change just because a few people got their fee-fees hurt from poking their noses into other people’s business. If Toei changes their attitude and gives us a plan for international distribution, then I might soften my stance.)
Shirakura and the Western fanbase: lolcows in their own right
So it’s been established that it’s a bad idea to tag Shirakura or anyone affiliated with Toei regarding this situation with the TV-Nihon C&D (or fansubs or leaks or whatever in general) because we don’t have the full details and they probably have no idea of what’s going on. Look, I know Shirakura is worthy of criticism for some things, but this is not one of them because he is the director of planning and production at Toei - he’s not responsible for international distribution or copyright takedowns. All that these spergs on TokuTwitter have done is prove that Shirakura has no idea what is going on and made Japanese fans aware (to some extent) that spergs like them exist. The irony behind Shirakura’s actions as the producer of some Kamen Rider series and his interactions with Western fans is the reason why I lovingly coin “The Shirakura Paradox” as a phrase to describe it.
I’ve noticed that a lot of people on TokuTwitter are very paranoid and reactionary. They believe in conspiracy theories like “TV-Nihon actually got C&D’d” and “Over-Time got C&D’d as well” when 1) the notice they got wasn’t a C&D per se or even a DMCA and 2) Over-Time never got C&D’d, though they did help TV-Nihon analyse the email and decided to stop posting about their releases when they were convinced that the email was somewhat legit (because a Toei email can’t be faked due to the Sender Policy Framework, or SPF).
With regards to the “reactionary” part, the main example relating to this is twt_tokusatsu, who has been blamed for causing this debacle with fansubs because Shirakura replied to her tweets (that did NOT mention fansubs) with a joke. However, another big example is WeiWenn and Ichi of the Castranger podcast. “What?”, I hear you ask in a surprised tone, “What do they have to do with all this?” If you want to know the story behind them, take a look at my Shirakura Paradox post under “You are supposed not to know about Trinity”.
I know this debacle was two years ago and that Ichi has deserved enough blame (and apologised) for posting scans from a toy catalog targeted at distributors and not consumers, but why the hell is WeiWenn being blamed when he only mentioned “Trinity” (in verbatim) possibly referring to Agito Trinity and not Zi-O Trinity? WeiWenn has been sent death threats because entitled manbabies with gunts can never read the latest leaks about new toys. As a result, WeiWenn has deleted his Twitter account, claiming that Shirakura’s joke was the last straw (Ichi has also deleted his Twitter account as well). Anyone who blames WeiWenn (or Ichi) for somehow causing the TV-Nihon C&D’s is just as retarded, if not more, than the people who still blame twt_tokusatsu, especially when the damage has already been done and the debacle is already two years old. As such, I stand behind #RespectWeiWenn and #RespectIchi. For more information, check out this Twitter thread and the below video.
Things like this are the reason why the tokusatsu fanbase in the West is seemingly on thin ice with Toei. If you ask me, TokuTwitter as a whole deserves to be discussed and mocked on sites like 4chan and Kiwi Farms, because some individuals seem to act in a manner resembling lolcows. On top of that, I wish that tokusatsu fans in Japan would talk more about this retardation and join in the circlejerking with their Western counterparts who are more sophisticated and logical.
In conclusion, the whole debacle with Toei and TV-Nihon has been a ticking time bomb fuelled by Toei’s incompetence and lack of awareness of their Western fanbase, who are no saints either with their lolcow attitudes. Tsuburaya is pretty based with their international distribution and TV-Nihon’s typesetters should #ReleaseTheFonts.
