The Subcultural Logic of Anime Fansubs

• In Event: ICA Plenary Interactive Paper/Poster Session and Reception
  In Interactive Paper Session: Popular Communication Interactive Paper Session

Abstract

Anime fandom has been a fairly constant subject in fan scholarship, although only recently have conversations about fansubbing begun to circulate. Useful as those conversations are, none have directly dealt with the mechanisms of fansubbing as a practice or how these subs intersect with the flows of subcultural capital. This article broaches these subjects by tracing how fansubbing, both as a productive and consumptive practice, forms a small but influential part in subcultural capital and argues that engagement with media a compositional element of such capital in this community.

Author

• Douglas Schules, Rikkyo U