There is an enormous nostalgic loss as well. I have made a lot of friends this way and I will miss them when they no longer have need to call on me. I have built a small amount of foolish pride on the fact that I was the first person to distribute full episodes of digital anime to the public and therefore the oldest of the thousands of such sites now on the internet. I felt that as long as I was here, I had some kind of fatherly attachment to them. But the truth is, they never really cared about me or what I was trying to do with the ADS. They just so a way to get in the action.

When I first became active in fansubbed anime (long before I started the ADS), there were certain "giants" in the fansub community: Will Ray of KNA, Barbara Chambers of Technogirls, Jay Harvey of Anipike, some people at Kodocha and later Anime News Network, and maybe one or two other people whose name escapes as I write this. With the exception of Chambers, all of these people have since retired from public life. Without putting these people on a pedestal so high they would feel uncomfortable getting down, these people were an inspiration to me. They were leaders of a movement. A movement I supported and wanted to contribute to. But now that they are gone, I feel I have no one to aspire to. I never wanted to be a giant myself. I never really thought I was, but if I am, then it is long since time I passed the torch to someone else. The king is dead, long live the king.

But there is one thing about public anime fansub distribution that I will not miss. That is, of course, the affiliation with the thousands of sites that are similar to mine but which are run in an unethical fashion for the benefit of the person who runs it. I have no qualm at all about divorcing myself from such people - who now number in the majority. Ethical fansubs are not needed much anymore, and the wave unethical people, bootleggers I say, should quit what they are doing immediately.