Hi there. Fomalhaut here, GJM editor and sometimes lay-about jerk.
As some of you are aware, GJM’s primary mode of fansub delivery, Nyaa, was shut down two days ago.
This has dealt a blow to fansubs as a whole, but there was a time before Nyaa and there will be a time after. After all, fansubbing as a hobby and profession began simply. Back in the early 90s, well before MKV files were readily available on the internet, fansubbing involved rendering the subs onto VHS tapes, which were then mailed to others and copied.
We’ve come a long way since then.
GJM’s current short-term plans are to adjust all torrent links to magnet links. Peer-to-peer file sharing means that even without a tracker, these files are still accessible if you do your part and make them accessible to others. Please be sure to seed files that you leech.
Remember that the fansub community wouldn’t survive without you, the viewers. You congregate on message boards and IRC and Discord. You point out when we make mistakes. You get excited when we pick up your favorite show. That kind of involvement is paramount to seeing this community continue.
GJM will continue to do what we do. Please be patient while we make our adjustments and look forward to more episodes.
More news will come in the near future, as we continue to hold meetings and make longer-term plans for the future health of our organization.
Thank you for reading.
Thank you for the update. I highly appreciate both all the group has done and continues to do even when a project doesn’t interest me. The value of what groups like this bring to the community cannot be understated.
I’ll be making more of an effort to be a more supportive leecher. While leaving a rude comment is one thing, taking and saying nothing at all (the vast majority of leechers) isn’t much better. It doesn’t provide the positive reinforcement work like this deserves.
Fomal stinx
You’re not wrong.
Why dont u guys use Anidex?
We’re discussing options going forward, this may be one of them. We aren’t ready to commit to anything as of yet.
Because anidex is DOKI and DOKI is DOUBLEPLUSUNGOOD
Doki owns FansubDB and the other sites associated with Anidex too? lol
Yeah, they’re pretty big. After being banned from Nyaa, they started expanding. They’ve done well for themselves.
no love for xdcc bot :< glad to see you guys still hanging around though. ganbattene
The XDCC bot will still be in use, don’t worry.
Thanks for your kind words, too.
Hi there, been a while since I last commented here.
Wishing you good luck for your future endeavours.
I do have one small suggestion: whatever you end up doing, I hope it will involve more than one website/tracker. Centralisation is definitely convenient (which is why Nyaa got as big as it did in the first place), but for illegal sharing of copyrighted content, it’s not really wise (well, not really saying that to you specifically, more the community as a whole). That way, even if one website is down (either temporarily or permanently), there’s a “back up” option.
I have to admit, seeing some groups releasing their stuff on minglong is giving me some serious 2005 vibes, ha ha.
Again, good luck for your future endeavours. Looking forward to the next releases! (Hope that post didn’t come off as patronising or anything).
thanks for having an rss feed, at least i’ll still get automatically informed when new releases arrive. nyaa going down is a pain in the ass, just rebuilding it won’t be a long term substitute either.
decentralising the torrent listings themselves would be a smarter choice.
for example groups could start to share releases via magnet rss feeds, with deticated sites which combine the feeds and offer a search function, so that you can’t just take down a torrent tracker to kill the whole infrastructure.
Did Nyaa shut down forever ?! I thought this was just temporary !
It’s permanent.
I was hoping they’d find a way (like kyoani) to put it back up under a different name but seeing the news was a hard hit. Thank god magnets exist, and I do agree with XDCC and RSS feeds suggestions.
Here’s to hoping you guys keep going.
Always seeding at least the more recent releases (before I clean up like every 6 months or something).
Trying to do a bit of my part despite lacking great internet. Current season stuff is at around 2.5 – 7.0 rates.
The disappearance of nyaa is kinda sad. It’s not like I won’t know where to get my anime from, but there were some individuals who only posted there. It’ll take a while for a new to-go site to establish where virtually everyone will dump their stuff.
Thanks for the release and keep up the good… job!
Whoa, a Fomal post.
Whoa, a Pikminiman comment.
Holy shit, Formal. I feel like I’m witnessing history.
Oh, you will be. :^)
Can’t top a Formal post, Fyurie :^)
Fomal*
No thanks.
Thank you for the announcement, honestly I’m glad to hear that deliberation is taking place so as to weigh multiple options as opposed to a simple, knee-jerk reaction. To me the value in Nyaa was also always its weakness, as touched on by others, its size. It was just so convenient to have easy access to so many different things in one place. I remember always checking BakaUpdates (which went away last year) to see which group had released something that day, then going to their IRC channel and grabbing it from a bot. I still mostly get releases from XDCC but now just more or less stick to #news, so Nyaa was always nice for things that didn’t get announced there or releases that didn’t seem to make it onto a bot, but in the end people will find a way.
Thank you to the GJM team for committing to continue the exceptional work.
Many tracker sites and sharing sites in my country are all dead long time ago because of the reason like this.
It is a little bit sad, but we have to embrace it and move on anyway. Even we are such a small community on the earth. :<
Woah. It scared me at first reading the first few paragraphs that it sounded like GJM was retiring…
They say good editors tell good stories. ;)
well like GJM said time to step up and support each other going to get some seeds going soon to help out so bear with while I sort my shite out >.<
When I started watching fansubbed anime, file sizes were around 175MB, 233MB or 350MB, I assume so you could fit 4, 3, or 2 on a CD with little space wasted.
Love you guys. Probably my favourite subbing group since UTW closed up shop. Keep up the good work!
Means, life without nyaa is progress?
commenting to show support, GJM is pretty great. Also, Anidex has been showing a lot of improvement over the week, Holo is putting in work to improve the place for the new influx.
We’ll likely be using Anidex as one of a number of trackers for releases.
We want to make sure we’re set on a number of them before we start uploads of our entire library, as it’d be really inefficient to need to take stuff down to fix trackers afterward.
“Back in the early 90s, well before MKV files were readily available on the internet, fansubbing involved rendering the subs onto VHS tapes, which were then mailed to others and copied.”
Thanks Fomalhaut. I remember this sometimes fondly, usually nostalgically.
It is a shame that nyaa is no more. But like you said, fansubs existed before nyaa, and fansubs will exist after nyaa. Magnet links, XDCC, Usenet, other trackers… there will always be a way to distribute. The loss of nyaa takes away some of the convenience and ease, but it does not make it impossible — just a bit more difficult. Those willing to take the extra step of learning other ways beyond nyaa (or willing to wait for the next nyaa) will have no problem.
What gets me is the sense of entitlement these days. “Why won’t you use ?” “How could nyaa shut down without telling me?” “It’s been 2 weeks did you drop this or something, what’s taking you so long to release?” and the best one yet “You are killing fansubbing because you release in a format I don’t want!” <– this complaint really really irritates me.
Look, people. There is no lack of reencodes that should satisfy your need for smaller file sizes. You want smaller, get those. They are doing that specifically for you.
If a group does a primary release in 1080p, they likely have a good reason to do so. They are doing this without asking a dime of you. They are doing this on their own time. They have jobs / school / exams just like you. You are taking, they are giving. If you don't have the storage / bandwidth for their releases, there are plenty of other options, some using the same translations! But don't try to say that these groups are the downfall of fansubbing. They are making the contributions. Which was the last series or even episode that you translated, timed, typeset, had double-checked, had triple-checked, and eventually released?
Sorry this was long-winded and bitter. A recent comment really irritated me. Mods, delete this if it's too fiery. There's just been a bit too much shit thrown from the mob at the people trying to bring them the goods. (who are the most timely non-HS, non-HS-reencode group out there, I might add)