Fansub

A fansub (short for fan-subtitled video) is a copy of a (usually foreign) movie or television show which has been subtitled by fans (usually in their native language).

Overview
A fansub is generally defined as a fan-produced, subtitled version of a movie or TV show (primarily anime). They are distributed free of charge and without the permission of a company that has the copyrights to the show or movie.

Benefits of Fansubs
In most parts of the world, various dubbing companies such as FUNimation and Toei distribute anime episodes of One Piece via DVD or on TV programs. However, in some parts of the world, area codes on DVDs and other issues make legally distributed episodes inaccessible. Therefore, fansubs are the only way for One Piece fans in these countries to view the anime. In addition, FUNimation has yet to distribute and dub a large section of the anime (Including the Enies Lobby Arc (which is currently being dubbed), and all arcs after that until the Sabaody Archipelago Arc), making them only accessible via fansub. Regardless of this, FUNimation has said that they will continue to dub the show, so eventually, these problems will be resolved. The same situation applies to all of the One Piece movies, with the exception of Movie 8 and Strong World (the latter has been licensed by FUNimation, but not released yet).

Some anime companies even view fansubs as "free advertising", though this is not a commonly accepted view.

Effects of Fansubs
Fansubs, while beneficial to places where legally distributed episodes are not available, have had a claimed effect on the companies who sub One Piece in the first place. Companies such as Toei and FUNimation have claimed that fansubs and other forms of illegally watching One Piece distract from their sales and cause them to lose profits. Many American companies have publicly stated that fansubbers are not welcome, and many Japanese companies have likewise asked for their releases not to be fansubbed.

On October 23, 2007, the government of Japan issued a formal statement asking people to cease illegal fansubbing and other unauthorized reproduction and selling of Japanese animation online. Furthermore, on October 1, 2012, the Japanese Parliament passed a law listing a two year prison sentence and a fine of 2 million yen (about $25,000) for illegally downloading copyrighted material or ripping content from a DVD.

Types of Fansubbing
The following types of fansubs are not totally separated, e.g. a video can have a speed sub, which is partly hardsubbed (e.g. for karoke, special effects, fansub group information) and partly softsubbed (e.g. for normal dialogues).

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 oftentimes 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 do not care for speed subs because of the lack of quality typically seen in them. For One Piece, ADC-Elites is a speed sub.

Hardsub
With a hardsub, the subtitles are encoded into the video file itself, resulting in one file in which the subtitles cannot be removed or altered in any reasonable way. Fansub groups typically use this format to protect their translations, timing and styling from being "stolen" - though it does not mean that they can be assured that their work (mostly the translation, but the timing and effects as well) is not being taken - and because of playback reasons in case of users with old PCs or special technically inferior playback devices. For One Piece, Nakama-fansubs, Kaizoku-Fansubs, ADC-Elites (along with many other groups) are hardsubs.

Softsub
Unlike hardsubs, softsubs are not irreversibly merged with the image but rendered onto the video during playback. They may be packed inside a mkv container together with video, audio and necessary fonts for playback or come as a separate file. With a softsub, the user can modify how the subtitles appear on the video, as well as being able to modify the script itself. For example, Yibis uses softsubs.

ADC-Elites
ADC-Elites was 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 4/9/2007, 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 (480p), 248-294 (720p)
 * The Giant Mechanical Soldier of Karakuri Castle
 * Chopperman

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 are no plans for the group to resurrect. Gerusama's translator, Murasaki, joined Vegapunk.

Releases

 * Episodes 219-258 (720p)
 * Episode Special 4

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 to provide episodes for downloading.

While most believe all of Kaizoku Fansubs' 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 spun 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 Kaizoku Fansubs should have done any of them in the first place.

Releases

 * Episodes 1-206 (480p), 207-209 (720p), 210-260 (480p), 261-308 (720p)
 * Episode Special 1
 * Episode Special 2
 * Episode Special 3
 * Episode Special 4
 * Defeat the Pirate Ganzack!
 * One Piece: The Movie
 * Clockwork Island Adventure
 * Jango's Dance Carnival
 * Chopper's Kingdom on the Island of Strange Animals
 * Dream Soccer King!
 * Dead End Adventure
 * Curse of the Sacred Sword
 * Take Aim! The Pirate Baseball King
 * 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 was a fan-subbing group that has released episodes from 364-417, 436-445, and 464 standalone  (7/29/2010). Unlike Yibis, who use more localized translations, they stick to "traditional" One Piece fansubbing standards. Encoding straight from the transport stream (.ts) raws, Nakama Fansubs 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 another group and began releasing One Piece under the name of Shin-Nakama, but it did not last long.

As per 10/29/2010, in their website they announced 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 K-F. It was founded by TroutNinja sometime in 2003, and released episodes 110-120 before slowly dying off in 2005.

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.

As of 2010, the group seems to have died out, and their domain has been reclaimed by a hi-fi blogger.

Releases

 * Episodes 409 (720p) as ACSF and 410-426 (720p), 430-435 (720p) as UTSF

Vegapunk
Vegapunk was 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 8/20/2010, 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 has not 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 (720p) soft-sub and 294-342 (720p) hard-sub
 * Chopperman
 * Report Time
 * Obahan Time
 * Jinginai Time
 * Monster Time

Yibis
Yibis is the name of a fan-subbing group dedicated to subbing One Piece anime. 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 12/23/2008. They are also one of the few fansubbers 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 (720p), 430-491 (720p), 493-541 (720p), 543- (720p)
 * Episode of Chopper Plus: Bloom in Winter, Miracle Sakura
 * One Piece Film Strong World Episode:0
 * One Piece Film: Strong World
 * Episode of Nami

Yonkou Fansubs
Yonkou Fansubs was the name of a fan-subbing website dedicated to subbing One Piece anime. Its video/audio resolution has 720p releases in mp4 container format, putting it on par with Yibis Fansubs, but the encoding quality leaves something to be desired. 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 7/8/2012, the group announced that they will 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 (720p), 491 (720p), 493-541 (720p), 543-551 (720p)

Kousei Fansubs
Kousei Fansubs  is the newest quality subbing group dedicated to subbing One Piece anime. Its video and audio quality is above most known fansubs with 720p and 1080p releases, and encoding quality is normal for a quality sub group. They take days 4 on an average. The script is pretty much flawless. Accuracy is 10 out of 10.

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.

Releases

 * Episodes 1-8 (720p) (Remastered), 554 - (720p and 1080p)

Releases

 * Episodes 545- (720p)

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.