The Odex debacle in Singapore is generating a lot more buzz than I ever thought it would. I’d always assumed it would go the way of pirated software in Sim Lim Square: people would talk about it quietly, usually acknowledging the undisputed illegality of the material in question, and bemoan the loss of cheap goods for a while before eventually forgetting about the whole thing. Clearly, I underestimated the collective rage of the anime fans in Singapore.

Some years back I was involved with Odex, doing some editing work on a few of their titles. Since one of my blog entries during that period has since become one of the few insights into the nature of the allegedly poor quality of Odex products, I feel it’s necessary for me to now step forward and put forth what little I know about Odex. However, as I have no email records dating back to that time, nor was there ever any contract between Odex and I beyond a verbal agreement made over phone calls and/or email, everything I say is naturally suspect, and readers can and should challenge the veracity of my claims. I wish I had more solid evidence to offer as proof, but all I can say is that everything in this blog post is stuff I would gladly repeat in a court of law, under oath.

I don’t remember when it was exactly, but some time in early 2002 I bought Odex’s Love Hina DVD set from Popular Bookstore in Bras Basah Complex. I’d previously downloaded and watched all the Love Hina episodes (including the Spring and Christmas specials), and felt that I really enjoyed the series and wanted to own in on DVD. I’d already been considering importing the US versions from Bandai at that point, but decided that if a local version was available I should support the local licensee and buy that instead.

When I took the DVDs home to watch, I was sorely disappointed. I don’t remember much about the video quality, but I recall that I had issues with sub-par sound quality — especially in the opening song — and that I was especially disturbed by the poor subtitling. The subtitles were rife with spelling and grammar errors, the lines were often grossly uneven in length, subtitle timing was often wrong, and the subtitles only covered dialogue, which left many onscreen words and signs untranslated.

The first thing I did was to go back to Popular to attempt to get a refund for what I considered to be a defective product. Popular refused to give me a refund or even an exchange for anything, and suggested I contacted Odex if I had a complaint about their DVDs. I don’t remember if I called them on the phone or emailed them, but I did contact them and made my grievances clear. I argued that their product quality was no better than the “legal” Hong Kong produced DVDs that I could get much more cheaply at Kinokuniya, at which point the Odex person I was talking to calmly explained to me that those DVDs were in fact pirated as the Hong Kong companies had not acquired licenses from the Japanese studios to produce these discs.

At some point in the ensuing discussion, I told the Odex representative, whose name I cannot remember, that I would gladly even volunteer to help them edit their subtitle scripts for in exchange for DVDs. Naïvely, I figured at the time that it’d be just like editing for a fansub group, except it’d be completely legal and I’d get the satisfaction of seeing my work on commercially released products. In retrospect, I was only partially right.

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