I Didn't Ask You to Like It. I Made It Because I Wanted It to Exist.
Or: How One Goddamn Ending Song Inspired Eleven Episodes of Questionable Anime.
By Jerry “The Ankle-Biter” Silverhand
A Jerry's Marginalia — by Department of Petty Affairs
Somewhere around 2006, a fansub group called m.3.3.w decided to work on an anime with a title so fucking long that simply typing it probably counted as community service.
Naikaku Kenryoku Hanzai Kyousei Torishimarikan Zaizen Joutarou.
Or, as sensible people called it, Zaizen Jotaro.
Was it good?
Well.
Let's not get carried away.
It was an eleven-episode political-action anime with questionable animation, an absurdly long title, and a reputation that wasn't exactly setting the anime community on fire.
So naturally, we decided to subtitle it.
Why?
Was it the compelling political intrigue? The unforgettable characters? The groundbreaking storytelling?
No.
THE FUCKING ENDING SONG.
Aiko Kitahara's Moshimo Umarekawattara Mou Ichido Aishite Kuremasu ka?
That was it.
That was the reason.
One song was good enough to make somebody look at an entire anime and say, "Fuck it. We're doing this."
And you know what?
I still stand by that decision.
The Anime Was Questionable. The Music Wasn't.
Here's something people sometimes forget about old-school fansubbing.
We weren't corporations.
We weren't streaming services.
We weren't committees conducting market research to determine which anime would maximize audience engagement.
We were people with computers, free time, questionable judgment, and an unhealthy willingness to spend hours staring at subtitles.
Sometimes we picked projects because they were good.
Sometimes because they were obscure.
Sometimes because nobody else was doing them.
And sometimes because a Japanese woman sang a song so goddamn good that we decided the entire anime attached to it deserved our attention.
Was that a sensible production strategy?
Absolutely fucking not.
But it was ours.
And Yes, Our Subtitles Probably Sucked.
Fast-forward twenty years.
Somebody remembers m.3.3.w's Zaizen Jotaro release.
Not because it changed their life.
Not because it revolutionized fansubbing.
But because the subtitles apparently weren't very good.
And you know what?
Fair enough.
I remember Arial being involved.
That's already a warning sign.
We were probably doing some bare-bones shit, and I'm not going to sit here pretending every release we made was a carefully polished masterpiece.
We were amateurs.
We made mistakes.
We got lazy.
And sometimes the results reflected that.
Criticism doesn't bother me simply because it's criticism.
If something was bad, say it was bad.
If the timing was off, say so.
If the typesetting looked like somebody discovered Microsoft WordArt and immediately developed a superiority complex, by all means, bring receipts.
I can take it.
What I won't accept is the idea that because something wasn't perfect, it wasn't worth doing.
Those are two very different arguments.
Here's the Part Where I Admit Something.
We never finished Zaizen Jotaro.
There.
No dramatic revision of history. No pretending we completed some glorious eleven-episode masterpiece.
We started it. We released some work. And we didn't finish the series.
That happens.
Life happens. People disappear. Motivation changes. Projects stall. Fansub groups go quiet.
Sometimes you look up and twenty years have passed.
But here's the ridiculous part.
I still want to finish it.
Not because there's some enormous audience demanding it.
Not because finishing it would make me famous.
Not because I need to prove anything to somebody who criticized our old subtitles.
I want to finish it because I wanted to do it in the first place.
And apparently, that stubborn little part of me never completely went away.
Enter the Next Generation of Questionable Decisions.
Now m.3.3.w is stirring again.
There's a younger fellow named blue involved, and Germlin Subs is part of the picture.
We're talking about old projects, old scripts, old fansubbers, and whether any of this can be brought back to life.
I've even handed over Discord administrative responsibilities.
Congratulations, kid.
You're management now. Don't fuck it up.
But there's one thing I want to make perfectly clear.
I'm not resurrecting this hobby to chase popularity.
I'm not begging retired fansubbers to return.
I'm not interested in winning arguments about which group was better, who had more downloads, or whose subtitles were blessed by the sacred gods of typesetting.
If somebody wants to help, wonderful.
If they don't, that's fine too.
And if somebody thinks the whole idea is stupid?
They're welcome to think that.
I didn't ask them to participate.
Criticism Is Not a Veto.
This is the part that matters.
People are allowed to dislike what I make.
They're allowed to criticize it.
They're allowed to think I'm wasting my time.
Hell, sometimes they might be right about the quality.
But somewhere along the way, people started acting as though their disinterest should determine whether somebody else gets to enjoy a hobby.
No.
That's not how this works.
You don't like the anime?
Fine.
You don't like the subtitles?
Tell me what's wrong with them.
You don't understand why somebody would spend their free time working on an obscure twenty-year-old series?
Also fine.
But I didn't ask you to approve the project.
I'm doing it because I want to.
And I don't need to turn every personal interest into a public referendum.
Commitment Doesn't Mean Perfection.
Now, I know what somebody might say.
"If you're so committed, why didn't you finish it twenty years ago?"
Fair question.
Because wanting to do something and successfully completing it aren't the same thing.
I've learned that.
Commitment isn't a magical guarantee that life won't interfere, that volunteers won't disappear, or that every project will reach the finish line.
But it does mean taking the work seriously enough to keep trying, learn from mistakes, and stop pretending enthusiasm alone is a completed release.
If we revive an old project, I want us to actually work on it.
If the subtitles were terrible, let's make them better.
If the old files are gone, let's see what can be recovered.
And if it takes time?
Then it takes time.
No corporate deadlines. No imaginary shareholders. No unpaid middle-management power trips.
Just people making something because they give a damn.
Go full the fuck in.
Not on the drama.
On the work.
So Why Am I Still Here?
Because I like this shit.
That's really all there is to it.
I like anime.
I like obscure projects.
I like finding something that everybody else overlooked and deciding it's worth a little attention.
I like the idea that something unfinished twenty years ago might finally get another chance.
And yes, I apparently like ending songs enough to make terrible production decisions.
Some people collect figures.
Some people chase achievements.
Some people spend hundreds of hours arguing about which anime is objectively superior.
Me?
I hear a good ending theme and suddenly I'm considering subtitling eleven episodes of political nonsense.
That's my particular brand of bullshit.
And I'm comfortable with it.
Twenty years ago, I started working on Zaizen Jotaro because Aiko Kitahara sang an ending song I couldn't get out of my head.
We didn't finish it.
Our subtitles probably weren't great.
The anime itself wasn't exactly beloved.
And somehow, after all this time, I still want to go back.
Not to silence critics.
Not to rewrite history.
Not to prove that every questionable decision I ever made was secretly brilliant.
But because I still remember why I wanted to do it.
The anime might be trash. The subtitles might be worse. But if the ending song is a banger, somebody's getting that motherfucker translated.
Eventually.
Preferably before another twenty years go by.
Jerry “The Ankle-Biter” Silverhand
https://theglitch.bearblog.dev/