This essay hinges upon Roland Barthes’s distinction between work and text, proposed in his essay “From Work to Text,” in which he distinguishes a work as a “fragment of substance” (i.e. a tangible item, like a book, DVD, etc.) from a text which is “experienced only in an act of production” (i.e. the content of a book, DVD, etc.).  This is an oversimplified description of exactly what Barthes means by these two terms, but it does represent the ways in which Cubbison employs these two terms.  These terms are important for Cubbison because she wants to understand how a work (in the case of this essay a DVD or VHS) can alter the text (the program contained on the work).  Further, she wants to examine how fans, particularly anime fans, are able to influence the work, and thus in turn influence the text.  Finally, she wants to relate all of this to a notion of an “authentic text,” a notion that she feels is bound up with fans, the form of a work, and ultimately the text.  This essay, then, looks closely at how hard-core anime fans, known as otaku, are able to dictate the form that a work takes through debates on “authentic” modes of viewing anime, and how this fan intervention ultimately effects the text.  All of this technical cant may seem a bit austere initially, but this is really a very simple, coherent essay.  Put most simply, Cubbison thinks that anime fans exert influence on how their anime commodities are produced, and this in turn influences the content of these commodities.
    This is a somewhat informative essay, particularly if one is interested in the production and distribution of anime films, but the argument it makes is an exceptionally simple one (although it dons the clothes of profundity).  Cubbison’s essay basically wants to say that form effects content, and that now consumers are allowed to dictate (to a certain, very limited extent) form.  She also adds that the form consumers desire is based on an idea of authenticity, but this aspect of the essay is only explored through the relation of a few contrasting anecdotes and resulting in the conclusion: nobody is really certain what an authentic text is but there are lots of opinions about what it may be.  To get back to form, content, and consumers, though, one must admit that her argument is not a very novel or complex one.  Form and content have always been interrelated, and have always been seen to mutually affect one another.  Cubbison’s argument that anime fans have some control over the form (or work) of the anime VHS or DVDs they buy is interesting, but as she herself admits, the debate over what form the work takes is moot at this point since DVDs are now able to provide dubbed and subtitled, original and edited versions of any given work (whereas before VHS had to make formal judgments that often upset fans).  DVDs have rendered the debate amongst fans about the most authentic form an anime work can take irrelevant because they can now offer every potential “authentic text.”  Anyway, this essay is an interesting look at the way that anime fans have been involved with the distribution of anime films historically, and how these debates have been waged over “authentic” anime texts, but as you will find if you read this essay the tensions and squabbles surrounding the distribution of anime films has been squelched by the capacity of DVDs to provide all possible “authentic texts.”  So, for a historical glimpse of the debates about form amongst anime fans definitely read this article, but beyond this the essay is little more than a rehashing of a now dead debate.