Anime Fandom in Indonesia: Communities which Emerged from Piracy and Illegal Consumption — Part 1
How does piracy and illegal media consumption plays a big role to the development of anime fandom communities in Indonesia?
Nowadays, anime fandom communities have become a major part in Indonesian pop culture communities. Many major anime fandom and even minor anime fandom communities with their own niche existed in Indonesia. Each of these communities are also welcomed by various companies who support many aspects of various fandom activities done by those communities from official content provider (such as manga publishers), Event Organizers, or some online stores which provide many anime-related merchandises.
Indonesian anime fandom has gone through a very long journey, from a niche small groups to becoming a big and complex communities we see today. There are many factors which drive many anime fans to make their own fandom communities where they can do their fandom activities together. Soon these fandom communities grow to become a promising market for many local and even multinational corporations to build their business which aimed to those fandom communities. But ironically, among various factors and reasons that drive the growth of anime fandom communities in Indonesia, piracy and illegal media consumption plays a very big role. A role which become the foundation of how our communities are existed.
First Encounter with Pirated Contents
Unlike K-Pop (which becomes a major fandom in Indonesian pop culture scene nowadays), anime pop culture products are not something new. Anime has existed among Indonesian people since the dawn of non-state owned television broadcasting from 90’s to early 2000’s era. Some claimed those times as the “Golden Age of anime” because at that time there are many anime series aired in Indonesia. The primetime for anime airing in Indonesia was during morning to noon, especially during weekend. But there are also some anime which aired for weekdays evening primetime slot, I still remember the time when I watched Pokemon aired at 7.00 pm by SCTV.
From Doraemon to SDF Macross, many local TV channels provided broadcasting slot for anime, but at that time anime fandom communities were not as huge as what we have today. The existence of anime fandom communities at that time were only recognized by their own niche. Indonesian anime communities started to grow bigger and gain more awareness during 2010’s when anime started to disappear from local TV channels.
My first encounter with Indonesian anime communities happened when I visited an event called Jakarta-Japan Matsuri at 2010. I thought by visiting that event I would meet with many visitors who cosplayed as popular characters from various anime which aired at local TV or from manga published by local publishers. But what I saw there was a totally different scene.
Arrived at the event, I got amazed and confused when I saw many cosplayers with characters which looks totally unfamiliar to me. “What are those characters? I never see them, not in the anime I watched at TV or published manga I read. Where are those characters come from? How did they know about it?”
Soon my mind would be more puzzled when some of my friends at school were suddenly talking about Book Three of The Last Airbender and One Piece’s Punk Hazard Arc. At that time, The Last Airbender which was aired by Indonesian local TV channel, Global TV, were still only aired up to the second half of Book Two. About One Piece, at that time the manga which was published by Elex Media still hadn’t reached a volume where the Punk Hazard arc was begun. “Where do my friends watch and read those materials which haven’t released yet?” I asked myself.
Found out that my friends were already familiar with pirated DVD and online manga scanlation sites, two things that made me fell deeper to this fandom. “It’s updated way more faster and cheaper than those manga published in the bookstore.” Said one of my friends when he taught me how to access an online manga scanlation sites at internet café.
That Sanctuary wasn’t Far From Home.
Internet café was my personal sanctuary at that time, an epicentrum where I started my journey to the wonderful world of pop culture hobbies. Internet café which located only 5 minutes from my house is the place where I mostly spent my time playing MMOs with many other gamers. Not only playing games, sometimes we also had some manga and anime recommendation sharing sessions.
During those times, broadband and high-speed internet was still a luxurious thing, even at that internet café. Anime streaming was a difficult task at that time, a time where we had to wait for a one hour buffer time only to watch a 3-part divided 24 minutes anime in YouTube. There was no any Indonesian subtitle, even looking for English subtitled anime was a very hard task where we had to look up between some episodes released with Spain subtitle.
So the solution to watch anime was asking cooperation with the café staff. Usually at night, around 1.00 A.M when there were almost no any customers came to the net café, one of the staff would do his mission. A mission to download our requested anime episodes, manga chapters, and J-pop songs. That was the only possible solution to do so, because if you dare to try downloading even a 10MB files in that net café during the crowded time, well, be ready to face the wrath of angry gamers who got connection lag because of your downloads. So, for everyone’s comfort, we decided to make a consensus where we would not do any downloads and let the café staff to download our request during the night time.
The existence of illegal manga/anime download websites soon become a central point for Indonesian anime communities. At the time when many local TVs were not airing anime anymore, and the time when manga price became more expensive with infrequent release date, internet is the cheaper and more reasonable solution. I only need to pay 25-cents to rent a PC for one hour at the net café which I used to watch 1 episode of anime and read 12 new chapters of One Piece and Naruto manga. Sometimes I also saved some of my allowances to buy a pirated anime DVD from a shop named Anime Machi with only the price of $2 for one DVD consists of 4–5 episodes of anime.
My Encounter with Anime Fandom Community
Soon after I joined with many anime communities which I found at social media and online forums, my weebs life was getting much easier. At first, I thought that anime communities are existed as an online-only community situated on social media or forums. But I found out that those communities which I joined, always have a regular monthly offline gathering. During each of those offline gatherings usually there are some members who made some cosplay costumes and also some who started a “sharing sessions”, not a heart-to-heart talk and counseling sessions of course. Sharing sessions was a session where we share our anime, manga, and game collections, which we owned illegally of course, to other community members. Those are the times when my pirated anime libraries got much increased. Not only anime, I also started to play some visual novels game which I got from my friend who downloaded it through torrent sites.
But a whole different thing happened when I decided to join with KAORI Nusantara at 2013. At first, I joined with KAORI Nusantara simply only to become the member of their online forums, but months later I joined as reporter for their Newsline unit. When I was still just a regular member at KAORI’s forum, I found out that there were some members who did anime fansubbing with Indonesian language. Indonesian anime fansub sounds like something really familiar nowadays, but not during 2012–2013 era.
Honestly I never really get to know deeper with KAORI’s fansub team, but when I saw that there was a community which did an anime fansubbing with Indonesian language, to be shared with other Indonesian anime communities, that was the time when I felt that “This activities is what makes this fandom communities to stay alive.” Of course, sharing a fansubbed anime, which in the process involved adding unofficial subtitle text in Indonesian language submitted by the fans using the pirated anime video file was an illegal activity, a piracy as you might say it. But this fansubbing activity is what supports our communities to grow.
So does the scanlation communities in various illegal manga reading websites. Once I found out that one of my high school friends was looking at a manga page in her laptop with serious expressions. I thought she was reading that manga which still written in the original Japanese text. But actually, she was in the middle of “cleaning”, a process which she described as “cleaning the scanned page, and erasing the Japanese text” right before she added the English text on it, copied from a Microsoft Word she opened in her laptop.
Yap, I found out that my friend was a member of a scanlation group who distribute online manga illegally without any permission from the publishers. And as well as KAORI Nusantara’s fansub team, what she did was just a mere contribution that she did to her fandom communities, to deliver contents for the members in hope that more people will know about the manga, read it and join her community to become a part of that fandom group.
Encounter with Cosplay Communities
When I started to visit many Japan culture and anime-related events, I befriend with some cosplayers I met there. Thanks to that, I got invited to join with many cosplay communities. Found out that the activities in those cosplay communities were no different than fansub or scanlation communities. Each of those cosplay communities I joined also did many illegal media consumptions, from pirated anime, manga and game for the benefit of their communities.
Before the costume was created, usually the first step we had to do was researching certain anime and/or manga characters. The research was a crucial step for the costume maker to learn more details about the costume worn by the characters in order to create a good costume. To do that, we had to watch more anime episodes and manga chapters to learn all those costume details. Of course, we had to illegally stream anime and read manga from scanlation sites.
In some cases, there were some of us who did cosplay in a more serious and professional scene, where they got paid by their fans or Event Organizers due to their cosplay as characters which they had no any permission, or license to do so. There were many of us who commercialized on some materials which we didn’t fully owned/licensed.
Not to say some cosplay makers/crafters are the one who had revenue stream by creating/designing and/or selling unlicensed cosplay costumes. The demands for those grassroot unlicensed cosplay makers/crafters are high because we don’t have any licensed costume makers/boutique here in Indonesia. Those demands were not only driven by personal gain, but also driven by the urge to “contribute and develop the local cosplay communities”. Although in the case of cosplay, those things are still considered as a “debatable” because some corporation though cosplay and fan activity as “User Generated Content” while there’s also others who have strict restrictions and regulations about them regarding the license and the characters’ image identity. If we talk in the context of anime community, in Japan there has been many licensed cosplay makers and boutiques, and there’s even many cosplayers who got contracted by the IP owner/licensee to appear in public and portraying their characters.
Found out that in my encounter with many local anime communities, they have one thing in common: Illegal media consumption through piracy and unlicensed sharing are done for the greater good of their communities. There are those who make unofficial fansub with Indonesian language to make anime more accessible to us who don’t understand Japanese or even English, there are those watch pirated anime for their research material to design a cosplay costume, there are also those who simply download pirated anime and manga to share them with their friends, but there are also others who earn a living by the consumption of illegal anime. All of those illegal consumptions are not simply done only to fulfill personal gain but also for the greater good of their communities, to develop and expand their communities which originated from hobby group, to become an interesting market population which attract multinational corporation to held an International-scaled anime convention in Indonesia.
This story will be continued to the 2nd part which hopefully will be written soon. Sorry for my so-so (or maybe broken) English grammar on this article, it’s been a while since I write a long feature article in English. Anyway, while waiting for the 2nd part feel free to follow my Medium account, leave a clap would be much appreciated, and also you can have discussion with me on Twitter.
