Fansub

A fansub (short for fan-subtitled) is a copy of a foreign movie or television show which has been subtitled by fans in their native language. It is most commonly used to refer to fan-translated anime videos that are shared amongst other fans.

Copyright Problems
One of the issues of fansubbing is the infringment of copyright issues concerned with the anime being fansub. While many fansubbing groups stop distributing a show once it is licensed in North America, some continue long afterwards. Shows licensed by 4Kids, for example, are considered by some to be "not truly licensed," due to the company's refusal to release unedited versions of their properties. Fansubbers have been the lone source of subtitled versions of several 4Kids shows, including Tokyo Mew Mew, One Piece, and Yu-Gi-Oh!.

An older example is Sailor Moon, which was initially licensed by DiC. No uncut or subtitled version was ever released by DiC, prompting some fansubbers to distribute their own. It wasn't until 2003 that commercial subtitles of the first two seasons appeared; no commercial release of the fifth season has ever been made. However, all of Sailor Moon has recently lapsed into being unlicensed, making fansubs the only available source of the show for fans.

There are other examples, such as Samurai Champloo or Ghost in the Shell, which were fansubbed after they were licensed by respectable domestic companies (Geneon and Bandai respectively) who later produced accurate subtitled DVDs of the shows.

YouTube
Efforts to combat fansubs are found on YouTube, who have been pressured by many companies to regulate the site. YouTube is against the use of licensed material being added to the site; fansubs fall into this category. However, it should be noted that AMVs, episode clips and other such media are also against their rules, and that YouTube has also targeted many anime other than One Piece.

Speed Sub
Speed subs are fansub releases that are released quickly after the episode is originally aired. Due to the speed at which these are released, they typically have not had as much editing done to the script, and they often times have less detailed effects. However, the episodes can be released even the day the raw file is available, making these preferable to some people, although others don't care for speed subs because of the lack of quality typically seen in them. For One Piece, ADC-Elites is a speed sub.

Hard Sub
Hard subs are the most common form of fansub available. With a hard sub, the subtitles are encoded into the video file itself, resulting in one file in which the subtitles cannot be removed or altered in any way. Fansub groups typically use this format, as it means that they can be assured that their work (mostly the translation and effects, but the timing as well) is not being stolen. For One Piece, Nakama-fansubs, Kaizoku-Fansubs, (along with many other groups) are hard subs.

Soft Sub
Unlike hardsubs, softsubs are not irreversibly merged with the image but rendered onto the video during playback. They may either be packed inside a mkv container together with video, audio and necessary fonts for playback or come as a separate file that must share the name of the video and be in the same location for players to recognise them. With a soft sub, the user can modify how the subtitles appear on the video, as well as being able to modify the script itself. However, some fansub groups avoid softsubs, so as not to give others easy access to their timed scripts. For example, Yibis uses soft subs.

One Piece Fansubs
With the exception of Movie 8, none of the movies have been dubbed. Fansubs have been the only way so far that fans have managed to watch them. The three OVAs have not been dubbed either but fan subs have been made of all three. The subbing of the anime was done by fans until the FUNimation simulcast started.

ADC-Elites
ADC-Elites is a fansubbing group, known for their speed subs. The main anime they have subbed was One Piece. They began subbing the series at episode 248, and stopped subbing on 9 April 2007, as they felt that the Vegapunk fansub group was doing a better job. They did, however, state that if One Piece was again without a good fansub group, they would begin to sub it once again.

Releases

 * Episodes 196-206 (G8 arc)
 * Episodes 248-294
 * The Giant Mechanical Soldier of Karakuri Castle (Movie #7)
 * Chopperman (Straw Hat Theater #1)

Gerusama
Gerusama was the name of a One Piece fansubbing group. The group originally started because Kaizoku-Fansubs was far behind the current anime, and nobody else was planning to sub the (at the time) upcoming Water 7 Arc. However, due to various difficulties amongst the members of the group, they disbanded; there's no plans for the group to resurrect. Gerusama's translator, Murasaki, joined Vegapunk.

Releases

 * Episodes 219-258
 * The Detective Memoirs of Chief Straw Hat Luffy

Kaizoku-Fansubs
Kaizoku-Fansubs is the name of the main fansubbing website dedicated to subbing One Piece anime for others to watch. They are quite popular and well-known, being the only fansubbing group that decided to begin from episode 1 to the present.

However, as the group prefers to use the highest quality video available, they only used the files ripped from DVDs, and then they switched to HDTV rip for HD quality (in 720p for eps 207 and up). Because of this, the group is rather behind the most recent episodes. They are currently subbing the Enies Lobby Arc. The reason they were too slow, is that their only translator's house, Foolio, was caught in a fire. When Foolio came back to sub, K-F started releasing episodes at a great pace, even going back and rereleasing episodes for increased quality videos and translations. They use IRC (XDCC) and bittorrent for to provide episodes for downloading.

While most believe all of K-F's releases are unedited, this is not entirely true. They have made a few edits to the video, both major and minor. One such example was made to the Bon Kurei vs Sanji fight in episode 116, in which overall blood was added to the scene as well as splatters of saliva coming from Bon Kurei's mouth being re-colored red, to make it appear to be blood. Some claim this was intended to make the fight closer to the manga, however the scene in which Bon Kurei span around and the saliva is shown coming out of his mouth was added by Toei and has no equivalent scene in the manga.

They have also made other minor changes to the footage that, while still minor, are nonetheless edits to the art as it was originally aired. An example of these is that Kaizoku also edited the "ARABASTA KING DOM" title on the Map that appears in the beginning of every episode of the Arabasta Arc to remove the space between "KING" and "DOM". There is some debate over the credibility of these changes, and whether K-F should have done any of them in the first place.

Releases

 * Episodes 1-302 (1-206 SD, 207-209 HD, 210-260 SD, 261-302 HD) (June 1, 2012)
 * Adventure in the Ocean's Navel (TV Special #1)
 * Open Upon the Great Sea! A Father's Huge, HUGE Dream! (TV Special #2)
 * Protect! The Last Great Performance (TV Special #3)
 * The Detective Memoirs of Chief Straw Hat Luffy (TV Special #4)
 * Defeat the Pirate Ganzack! (OVA)
 * One Piece: The Movie (Movie #1)
 * Clockwork Island Adventure (Movie #2)
 * Jango's Dance Carnival (Short that aired with movie #2)
 * Chopper's Kingdom on the Island of Strange Animals (Movie #3)
 * Dream Soccer King! (Short that aired with movie #3)
 * Dead End Adventure (Movie #4)
 * Curse of the Sacred Sword (Movie #5)
 * Take Aim! The Pirate Baseball King (Short that aired with movie #5)
 * Baron Omatsuri and the Secret Island (Movie #6)
 * The Giant Mechanical Soldier of Karakuri Castle (Movie #7)
 * Episode of Arabasta: The Desert Princess and the Pirates (Movie #8)
 * Chopperman (Straw Hat Theater #1)
 * Report Time (Straw Hat Theater #2)
 * Obahan Time (Straw Hat Theater #3)
 * Jinginai Time (Straw Hat Theater #4)
 * Monster Time (Straw Hat Theater #5)

Nakama Fansubs
Nakama Fansubs is a fan-subbing group that has released episodes from 364-415 and 436-445 (29 July 2010). They are officially known as the quality fansubbers and some people compare them to Vegapunk Fansubs. Unlike Yibis, who use more localized translations, they stick to "traditional" One Piece fansubbing standards. Encoding straight from the transport stream (.ts) raws, N-F releases in three formats: SD (480p), HD (720p), and upscale FHD (1080p). Nakama Fansubs release their episodes through MegaUpload and bittorrent and also have an XDCC bot. Their releases are also highly compatible with Microsoft XBox 360's and Sony Playstation 3's because of their decision to hardsub their episodes into the .mp4 format instead using the increasingly popular softsub .ass, which is usually compiled in the .mkv container.

After some problems that slowed down their releases, Nakama joined with other group and began releasing One Piece under the name of Shin-Nakama, but it didn`t last long.

As per 29 Oct 2010, in their website they announce that they are dead. The main reason is "Most of us are too old to dedicate time to fansubbing or are in important stages of our lives where we need to focus on school.". But still, they promise to finish the Amazon Lily Arc and will release Strong World.

Neko-Factory
Neko-Factory, or NF, was an early One Piece fansub group that competed with KF. It was founded by TroutNinja sometime in 2003, and released episodes 110-120 before slowly dying off in 2005. All that is left of their group can be found on the internet archive here.

UTSF
UTSF (Un-Tan Subbing Force) is a fan-subbing group dedicated to subbing One Piece. They have became popular for their fast speed, quality, and up-to-date release schedule. The group originated from a popular anime streaming community known as Anime Crazy. The group was first known as ACSF (Anime Crazy Subbing Force), but due to Anime Crazy's anti-ecchi policy, Anime Crazy deemed it inappropriate for the group to sub under them. Thus, UTSF was born. They started subbing under the new name from the Amazon Lily story arc. The group has now been subbing One Piece for over a year. Like their competitors, Yibis, they have also skipped subbing episodes 427-429 due to the fact that the content is non-canon. UTSF uses normal .mp4 HD raws to encode both versions of their releases (SD & HD), unlike other groups like Yibis or Nakama-fansubs, who use the highest quality raws (.ts).

The group uses BitTorrent and cyberlockers to distribute their files.

They also use IRC, and their channel is #Un-Tan @ irc.rizon.net

Releases
Till 409 as ACSF and 410 - 435 as UTSF

They skipped 427, 428 and 429.

Vegapunk
Vegapunk is the name of a One Piece fan-subbing group. The group began in order to offer soft sub scripts to fans, so that they could style them on their own, as well as translate them into their own language. They now offer hard sub encodings of their episodes as well. They are the first One Piece fansub group to have released high-definition encodings. The group started during a time in which ADC-Elites|ADC was still subbing and are slower than Kaizoku-Fansubs at releases.

In addition to English releases, the group also has many other languages available on their site. They currently have 15 different languages: Swedish, Venezuelan Spanish, German, French, Dutch, Bahasa Malaysia, Turkish, Greek, Romanian, Norwegian, Slovenian, Brazilian Portuguese, Finnish, Hebrew, and Portuguese.

However, due to unknown problems, subbing has stopped at 340, while 341-372 were still soft sub scripts. After several months of hiatus, they released 341-342.

And as per 20 August 2010, this fansub is officially shut down. SakuraDestiny, one of the Vegapunk member, said "We've lost our manager/leader, our website, our FTP server where all of our subbing materials were stored, and our motivation. I finally heard from Hedi yesterday. He also hasn't heard anything from Kuzan since May, and we have lost touch with most of the other staff as well. Neither of us has the time/energy or desire to try to pick up the pieces and continue without him. So this is it. There will be no more releases of any kind from Vegapunk Fansubs, nor will the website return."

Releases

 * Episodes 293-377 (soft sub)
 * Episodes 294-342 (hard sub)
 * Chopperman (Straw Hat Theater #1)
 * Report Time (Straw Hat Theater #2)
 * Obahan Time (Straw Hat Theater #3)
 * Jinginai Time (Straw Hat Theater #4)
 * Monster Time (Straw Hat Theater #5)

Yibis
Yibis is the name of a fan-subbing group dedicated to subbing One Piece anime for others to watch. Their episodes are of very good quality with soft-sub. However they did not release Episodes 428 and 429 because they were filler and as such they had no motivation to sub it (though they did sub Episodes 426 and 427, which are part of the filler arc). Yibis uses newly available (.ts) RAWs to encode their episodes, which look significantly better than the older xvid raws; however, only the more recent high definition episodes are available from a .ts source. They released their first release (Episode 382) on December 23, 2008. They are also the only subbers who use Warlords, Navy, and Four Emperors. They use Navy even though Oda has officially romanized it as Marines. Yibis also localizes instead of translating accurately such as when they translated "kintama" as family jewels instead of the literal meaning of balls of gold.

They use IRC, bittorent and file hosting services like Megaupload and Rapidshare to provide episodes for downloading.

Releases

 * Episodes 382-427, 430-491, 493-541, 543-
 * Episode of Chopper Plus: Bloom in Winter, Miracle Sakura
 * One Piece Film Strong World Episode:0
 * One Piece Film: Strong World

Yonkou Fansubs
Yonkou Fansubs is the name of a new fan-subbing website dedicated to subbing One Piece anime. It's video/audio resolution is on par with Yibis Fansubs with 720p releases in mp4 container format, but the encoding quality is not as good. They release episodes very quickly compared to Yibis, but often have small editing errors such as misspellings of words, incorrect grammar, and inconsistent choice of words. However, Yonkou has faced early problems in maintaining its website, so delays are likely to happen. Overall Yonkou tends to release within a couple of days after airing, while Yibis tends to take around a week on average. They are a slightly faster, yet slightly lower-quality alternative to Yibis.

On 8th July 2012 the group announced that they'll stop subbing new episodes, with episode 552 being the last one. Mr. Prince, one of Yonkou's members, stated "It looks like 552 will be our final release. As you’ve probably noticed, our speed has dropped pretty drastically as of late. The reason is that now that we’re a couple years in, a lot of the members have grown up, gotten jobs, etc. and just don’t have the time to dedicate to fansubbing. As a full time employee myself, it’s very hard to dedicate Saturday night, Sunday morning, and another day in the middle of the week to release considering that is more or less the only free time I ever get. Also, do remember that a lot of us were members of fansubs prior to Yonkou, we’re all a bit older than you may think. [...]"

Releases

 * Episodes 473-489, 491, 493-541, 543-551

Kousei Fansubs
Kousei Fansubs (formerly knows as CCS Fansubs) is the newest speed subbing group dedicated to subbing One Piece anime. It's video/audio resolution is on par with most known Fansubs out there with 720p releases, and encoding quality is satisfactory for a speed sub group. They tend to do 0-day releases compared to other One Piece subbing groups that take days on a average. However, the script is quite good for a speedsub. For earlier episodes (517-538) they were modding the FUNimation subs but they are using their own translations lately. Accuracy is about 9 out of 10. They're slightly better, faster for a speedsub. Interestingly, they were the only ones to sub Episode 542 (Toriko x One Piece Collaboration Special 2).

They are currently working on refansubbing the early episodes of One Piece in HD, starting from Episode 1 up to 206, which all are in SD.

Shounen Jump Legal Scare
A notice at Arlong Park - expect late RAWs and scans noted that Shonen Jump Magazine has reacted to the increasing copyright infringement by online scanlation groups.

Site Status
Below is the current status of some sites that hosted scanlations, however some kept a quiet profile before the scare:


 * One Manga; pulled all scanlations for all manga, though forums remain open
 * Mangastream removed One Piece as well as other WSJ manga from their website, however, they began to release WSJ manga again shortly after, but the releases are kept on the site only for a couple of days and they are released some time after another group has already released their scans.
 * Mangafox originally removed One Piece but put it back up