Fandub
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A fandub (not to be confused with a fansub) is a fan-made dub or redub of a production, typically completely altering dialogues, story plots and personalities of protagonists in a funny way (frequently referred to as “fundub” or "Abridged Series"). Fans use copyrighted material and heavily modify the original content to create a new version of material, though fandubs sometimes make attempt at actually making a legit full series dub of a series or movie (usually for a series that has not received an official dub, or has had a poorly received dub). These projects are rarely completed past a few episodes. Fandubbing, except redubbing, is most commonly done with Japanese animation.
Copyright implications for fandubs are very similar to fansubs except the difference of scale (see Fansub for a detailed explanation of the legal and ethical issues with this type of distribution). There have been cases when popular fandubs, such as Yu-Gi-Oh! Abridged, Dragon Ball Z Abridged, and Sailor Moon Abridged are tagged by the Japanese production company for copyright use of their material. These productions are usually later re-uploaded to a new channel, and are sometimes tagged again. Despite this, gag dubs are often popular among the fan community of a particular series.
History
Amateur voice acting began simultaneously and independently from each other in a small number of developed countries. One of the first recorded projects, dating from 1994[1], is "Sinnlos im Weltraum" ("Senseless in Space"), a German redub of Star Trek: The Next Generation. The recordings were distributed on VHS, and copies were circulating only among a smaller group of people due to the technical limitations of the media. With digitalisation, starting in 1998, the fandub gained enormous popularity among the German audience[2].
However, the first commonly noticed fandub can be regarded as Mark Sprague's Sailor Moon S 1997 video fandub[citation needed], receiving international publicity on the Sailor Moon News Group. Sprague's fandub prompted many others to produce similar productions of their favorite shows[citation needed].
While fansubbing is a highly-popular means by which various Internet-downloaded visual media can be understood by other language markets, fandubbing as a practice has not gained similar momentum as a means of translation by lay Internet users. The majority of fandub projects are arranged for short-form video clips and are often posted to video hosting services such as YouTube.
Most series are produced online with voice actors often auditioning via forums, [3], but live dubbing sessions at anime cons often take place, for example the " Anime Dub Live" panels held in the UK. [4]