Yes, you read that right: Saizen is officially 20 years old! We don’t usually mark anniversaries, but we figured the big ol’ two-zero was one that merited at least a newspost (I had planned to release some things, but uh, circumstance conspired against me. On the plus side, watch out for some actual releases in the next few weeks because we have a few things ready to go and more stuff in the works!).
10 years ago, we marked our anniversary by going on a release spree culminating in the completion of a major long-term project, but 10 years later, this was never going to be a possibility. Unfortunately, time has thinned our numbers and drained our motivation for fansubbing to the point where nearly everyone in the group is either retired, semi-retired, or about to retire (or in my case, just far too busy to actually do any subbing). It’s a little depressing, I’ll admit, but such is life. We all have different priorities as we grow older. But while our output has noticeably declined over the years, rest assured that we still remain determined to finish the projects we’ve started (and perhaps a few more besides that). It just might take us a little longer than it would have previously.
If you are still with us on our fansubbing journey, thanks for sticking around. And while I’m less optimistic about Saizen being around for another 10 years than Juggen was in those heady mid-2010 days when we turned 10, I hope we’ll be around for some time to come in order to finish up some of the stuff we’ve committed to.
On this day back in 2004, Saizen Fansubs announced itself on the fansubbing scene for the first time with a mission statement to translate anime series into English that wouldn’t otherwise see the light of day (because, let’s face it, anime licensing was a crap-shoot back in those days and a lot of shows were overlooked by American and European distributors). Of course, the landscape has changed a whole lot in the years since our inception; the popularity of anime has skyrocketed in the West in a way that I doubt any of us envisioned when we first got into fansubbing, with legal streaming services that simulcast anime titles within an hour of airing in Japan, and Western distributors even getting involved in funding and green-lighting shows themselves. But even after all this time, we’re still going strong as a group, having released hundreds if not thousands of episodes and movies.
It’s hard to adequately condense the last 15 years into a couple of paragraphs and to do so wouldn’t really do justice to the long and varied history of the group, but a crystal anniversary is a good opportunity to reflect on where we’ve come from and where we’re heading. Over the years, we’ve subbed all sorts: sports shows (Kuroko’s Basketball, Ashita no Joe, Captain Tsubasa, Hajime no Ippo), unsubbed classics (Kyou Kara Ore Wa, Yawara, Laughing Salesman, Igano Kabamaru), random new OVAs and movies (Lupin III, Gakuen Babysitters, Space Brothers, Attack on Titan), and… others (looking at you, Koe de Oshigoto). But just because we’ve turned 15 and can now go watch movies with nudity and the odd f-bomb doesn’t mean we’re hanging up our keyboards and riding off into the sunset. Perish the thought!
We have plenty on our plate that’s keeping us busy right now, and crazy mofos like me are always suggesting new titles for us to look at and potentially sub. And while this anniversary doesn’t have a marquee release like we did on our 10th anniversary with the final episodes of Ashita no Joe, we still hope to release a healthy number of episodes of your favorite series in the next 24 hours in celebration of our big day. So watch out for releases flying your way throughout the day ^__^
Last but not least, thank you to everyone who has made Saizen what it is over the last 15 years. There have been too many contributors both past and present to list them all here, and with my terrible memory, I’m not even going to try. But as with anything that lasts this long, especially in a hobby community like fansubbing where there’s usually a high turnover of staff due to how time-intensive it can be, a lot of people have worked very hard to get these releases out into the world. Without their significant contribution, Saizen wouldn’t be what it is today and would’ve gone the way of other big groups who have faded into obscurity. Oh, and a big thank you to all the groups who we’ve jointed with in the last decade and a half; a lot of our projects wouldn’t have made it off the ground without external help.
Now, grab a piece of birthday cake and tuck in, everyone!
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Imagine waking up to a new episode of Yawara, or Laughing Salesman, and your day will light up like a Christmas tree! ?
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Xmas and New year are around the corner so we thought to give a refreshed look to our website.
Like always, we decided to keep orange as our main color (because it used to be Saizen’s color back in forum days and the first anime we subbed was a basketball show) ??????
The website is now waaaaay more faster and fully responsive;
The fonts are now bigger and darker which makes them more readable (Now you can finally read the rules!);
Fonts respond to font size changes in browser settings and mobile OS (so the site wont mess up);
We organized the categories into Ongoing, Finished, Dropped, so you can find the show you’re following more easily;
Comments are now more organized as replied messages tend to group in a single thread;
The theme is now more emoji friendly;
Instead of a new sticky post, we have a new call to action section so you’ll press that “join” button even more.
More small changes are coming along the way, but for now, enjoy our new look. ? comments welcome ?
As many of you may know, three years ago today, Saizen (and the fansubbing community in general) lost a very dear friend. We’ve marked the anniversary of ConsiderPhlebas’s (CP) passing for the last few years, but this year, we decided to do something a little different. We cannot understate how much passion CP had for anime, so we thought: “What could be better than releasing a few episodes of stuff as a way to celebrate his life and the anime that was so dear to him?”
So today is ConsiderPhlebas Memorial Day. We intend this to be the start of a new tradition in Saizen, honoring the memory of a friend who helped us so much over the years to produce English-subtitled anime for the wider world. You may ask why we’ve chosen today to pay homage to him instead of his birthday, and it’s a good question, but we felt it was more appropriate to mark his “meinichi”: the day to celebrate CP’s legacy and share fond memories of him. It’s the norm in Japanese culture, so we figured CP would have loved it, considering how much he reveled in learning little cultural details like that.
For our first release of the day, we have Yawara, a show that’s synonymous with CP because he was a large part of the reason for us even picking it up. Stay tuned for more Saizen releases throughout the day.
