I’m not a big anime-watcher these days so I tend to leave the anime news to other sources but since so much has come up in the last little while, I figured it’d be of interest to my visitors for some sharing. And so, quick anime recap!
Funimation’s big New Show-A-Go-Go has come to an end with lots of Geneon rescues, a few inevitables and a couple surprises. The complete list of licenses are:
| Ikki Tousen Gad Guard Vandread Nabari No Ou Last Exile Oh! Edo Rocket |
Gankutsuo: Count of Monte Cristo Slayers Revolution Gungrave Samurai Champloo Soul Eater Evangelion: 1.0 |
It’s great seeing Funimation rescue some of these great series and it’ll likely mean that fans will see some affordable boxsets in the future. May I highly recommend Gankutsuo, Gungrave and Last Exile. I’m also happy to see Nabari no Ou licensed because I’d really like to watch it after seeing the first episode a while back. Oh Funimation, you’re making an anime-watcher out of me again!
December was a month of boys’ love anime announcements following the news that the manga Sex Pistols would be made into a set of OVAs. Now not only are we getting an animated version of Kaori Monchi’s Hey! Class President, but also a remake of the retro-popular Ai No Kusabi (and the leads are very attractively redesigned, if I do say so myself).
Meanwhile, Crunchyroll is on, well… a roll, when it comes to picking up animes for showing on their free, ad-supported website. Since stripping the site of its illegal fansubbed work, they’ve wasted little time in refilling the site with lots of subbed, legal and still free works to view streamed from their site. Since the list is too long for me to dig for and post, I’ll just direct you here. Happy legal watching!
And finally for this anime-day posting, it was announced early in December that CLAMP’s Kobato series would be getting the anime treatment by Madhouse. All I can say is that if the studio handles it half as well as they did Cardcaptor Sakura, then all is well in the anime world as far as I’m concerned ;)
Follow
Crunchy did well at first, with their releases of Gonzo stuff, however pretty much every other release they do is region restricted, which defeats the purpose. Sure they have moved the fansubs from the site, but all it's done is caused the creation of at least 3 other sites that now host them instead.
The only way that the system will ever work right is they remove the region restrictions. I've heard all the arguments about how the series isn't available in x country and stuff, and 99% of the time that's pure bull.
Crunchy should be allowed to release the series to which ever country can buy the series. So if you can buy the DVD's in the UK, you should be able to watch from the UK.
All of the shows they've recently added that are licensed (Chron Crusade, Kalaido Star, Kurumi etc etc) are all readily available legaly on DVD in the most of western europe (UK, France, Germany etc etc). But they aren't allowed to watch on Crunchy.
The only way to get rid of fansubs is to give a legal alternative, sadly all they're doing is producing more site that host the original fansubs (1 of which was started by an Ex crunchy staffer). In essence it's having the reverse effect.
Crunchy also needs to work on their translations, as it it the system they have in place is horrendous, and translations change from 1 episode to the next.
BLASSREITER, Druga, Strike Witches, all were done great, with consistent and quality subs. Linebarrel subs are all over the place.
Same with the subs for licensed shows, but those are because of the publisher (ADV, Viz etc etc) making a hash of the subs originally.
As for FUNi's acquisitions, i'm in 2 minds. They've done some quality work in their time, but likewise they've also put out some of the worst DVD subs in history. And their dubs *shudders*
The industry as a whole needs a wake call, and good hard kick in the rump IMO.