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Classic Japanese anime comes to YouTube, with fansubs from Viki

By Jean Huang Lundgren

Head of Video Partnerships, YouTube, Greater China And South East Asia

Collaborative subtitling hub Viki has opened a new channel on YouTube called tezukaanime bringing classic titles like Astro Boy to a global audience. The original animation series are in Japanese, but thanks to Viki’s crowdsourcing, polyglot community, the YouTube videos have captions available in as many languages as the community contributes.

The channel currently hosts 16 full-episodes of the iconic Astro Boy series from the 1980s, with subtitles uploaded so far in English, Arabic, Romanian, Turkish, Spanish, French, and transcribed Japanese. As more translators finish captions in new languages, Viki will add them to the videos on YouTube. The channel’s videos are available everywhere other than Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Italy and Spain.

Other titles on the channel include Jungle Emperor Leo, Black Jack, Dear Brother, The New Adventures of Kimba the White Lion, Don Dracula, and Marvelous Melmo, with more exciting titles to come soon. Subscribe to the channel to find out anytime new episodes are added.

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