Wednesday, March 31, 2010

April 1st Update: Hanging In!

Hey out there! A quick update to let you know I'm still around!

I'm just letting you all know that I've shifted my goals in life from anime to cooking, so this will clearly be my last post here.

:(

Alas, I must pursue this new love with all my heart as soon as I can! Why, there are so many dishes I must learn to prepare. Roast Snipes with Baka Sauce and a frosty treat called Revenge for dessert should come first on the menu.

. . . .

Or I could stop making bad jokes and get back to proper posting on the 2nd.

. . . .

Yeah, but, I'm a cook now. I must leave the path of anime for that magic white hat and those lovely sharp knives.

Very sharp, glittery knives.

They sparkle in the light so keenly.

Twinkle twinkle little knife, how I wonder who you'll ice.

Uh, wait, what was I saying? Oh, yes, the blog! Well, after a brief delay brought about by a case of lazy with a side order of minor crisis, I'll be getting back to my half-baked attempts at entertaining you soon.

First up, a run down of new menu options out there! Some lovely meals are now coming with a side order of English Dub, which always hits the spot. Then I'll regale you with a review of a favorite restaurants where they serve witches and fans. Maybe I'll even bitterly discuss the burdens of having no money to buy the best ingredients.

Well, look forward to our next exciting edition where we'll be cooking with Suigintou! Look forward to it!

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Bye-ni desu!

Monday, March 15, 2010

Section23/ADV To Dub Clannad, Ghost Hound & MORE!

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Ah, it's nice to be proven wrong about a company.

Richard J. here to add my voice to the legions of fans who are currently filling the world with their squees of joy.

From the very beginning, I thought Clannad and Ghost Hound were EASILY the titles that would sell the best and would benefit the most from English dubs. Now, we're finally getting those dubs we should have had from the beginning! (Pass the Hilary Haag please!)

Plus we're getting dubs for Blue Drop, Tears to Tiara and Fist of the North Star: Legends of the Dark King. (Can't say I'm interested in all of those but dubs are always a welcome addition.)

Hopefully these dubs will improve Steven Foster's image with some fans. (While he's not as awesome as Kyle Jones, he's hardly the menace some fans make him out to be.)

I may have to skip meals for it but I'm getting Clannad no matter what! Just when I was starting to convince myself that I really wouldn't have liked it anyway, they go and do this. Thanks guys.

Now can we please dub more? Pretty please?

Bye-ni!

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Kanokon Dub Update + Vampire Bund Censorship News!

Greetings and salutations fellow anime fans, I am Richard J., your slightly demented but typically friendly blog host! Welcome to another edition of Blog of a Heretical Dub Lover, where I pretend to be important!

Today was going to be a post just about a few new developments on the censorship front with Funimation but our good friend bal-anime was nice enough to treat me to some news about the Kanokon dub! (Which made me very happy. I love dub news!)

What was revealed about the dub? Two cast members!

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First, we have Jessica Gee playing Kiriko Takane. This is according to her website, which also has a slightly better list of her anime roles than ANN, and appears very much a fully confirmed fact.

Next, we have Steve Cannon, possibly better known to some of you as Steve Staley! He's voiced several characters I'm quite fond of like Hitsugaya from Bleach and Soma from Kannazuki no Miko/Destiny of the Shrine Maiden. (His ANN profile has a pic and I don't know yet which character he's playing so no character pic.)

Now, this comes from Amazon.com's listing for the first volume so while good news, it should be taken with a grain of salt as Amazon does on occasion get their anime info wrong. Also, we're still unsure of the studio being used. It could be Bang Zoom, it could be Arvintel or it could be someone else in LA that we either don't know or wouldn't expect to be used.

Still, dub news is dub news and I need to start getting a little more serious with my efforts for this blog!

Speaking of serious, Media Blasters, the company that will be releasing Kanokon, had to make a tough choice and recently cut it's workforce. This prompted the team at ANNCast to make some rather dismal predictions about their future.

Humorously, major player at MB John Sirabella responded over at Mania.com's Anime on DVD section. If he's actually worried, he hides it very well. Personally, I'm not buying that the company is doomed. Should you buy any English dubbed anime they've got out? Yes, go for it! But I'd say that about most anime!

Well, since we're getting serious, lets talk about a topic that is close to my blood pump: censorship. I am a very strong Free Speech advocate. I've been quite vocal all over about my irritation with Funimation over their statement of intent to censor the DVDs for Dance in the Vampire Bund.

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It now appears that, perhaps, we won't have to worry about censored DVDs after all. On their Blog, Funimation has begun backtracking away from the apparently VERY UNPOPULAR choice to censor their DVDs. Robert of the Anime Corner Store (buy from them, they have awesome customer service!) talks about this on his blog, including a great quote from a company rep at Funimation. From what is being said now, the issue was never a matter of legality as the first 7 episodes are okay for uncut on DVD. Either someone was being overly cautious or they thought censored anime would be easier to market.

Hmm, apparently all the rage over that decision is changing their minds!
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Good job anti-censorship otaku!

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Well, that's all for today folks! It's been a crazy week for me but hopefully sanity will be restored on all fronts soon. I'm hoping for the best but planning for the worst.

Bye-ni!

Saturday, March 6, 2010

Personal: Okay, I'm Hopeful About Non-Anime Troubles. . .

First, let me inform everyone that I have a much more positive opinion of the situation my family is in. The situation hasn't actually changed. I wish it would but right now, the potential for total screwage is high.

I'm feeling hopeful because A) I'm a masochist when it comes to hope and B) I just can't accept that my family could be screwed for literally doing nothing illegal, immoral or even unusual. I won't go into details but this situation is quite literally due to abject and wanton mistake-making. My family could lose a lot over a misunderstanding. (I mean, crap, even the con-artist liar who put us in the situation says we're not a party to his dirty deeds. Trust me, that's like a biblical miracle.)

So, basically, I choose to think happy thoughts.

I just wish Funimation were providing me more of them.

That segue, poor as it was, brings me to point numero two: While I plan to continue to buy from Funimation, their recent choice to license Baka and Test as well as Dance in the Vampire Bund has been severely tainted by their further choice to censor the later.

Now, I'm not going to go through some long rant about censorship and why it's wrong or how I blame the abuse of the police powers of government by all sides for this paranoia-induced madness or that I think naked loli Mina is fine. Frankly, I'm sure anyone here who has read anything I've ever posted on the subject of lolicon knows where I come down on censorship issues. (For those that missed the epically long posts that probably made me sound "creepy," I am a strong supporter of freedom of speech.)

Instead, let me bring up a financial point, since people love to hit me with them when I talk about English dubs (ignoring that I rarely if ever question the financial wisdom of not doing them as a short-term issue.) A poll on Mania.com's Anime on DVD section seems to shows that a LOT of people are saying "no thanks" to censored DVDs.

That includes me. I might actually buy sub-only Hell Girl because I LOVED in Japanese before I got to love it even more in English. Very rare for me.

My question to all is this: how many censored anime, especially ones that are CLEARLY aimed at audiences that will not appreciate the censoring, actually do well in terms of sales? Isn't this rather like shooting yourself in the foot before starting a race? While I can appreciate that we live in an atmosphere of paranoia, I fail to see why this particular series' content is suddenly too much. I mean, the manga comes out unedited and no one's freaked out yet.

Frankly, I feel rather like the judge in a recent case involving religious banners in school. A hypothetical student isn't enough to make a case for taking down things that have been hanging for over a decade and are quotes from founding documents. No one has actually objected here. Funimation is preemptively acting.

You know, proving the fansubbers RIGHT isn't a good way to beat them. The claim that official releases censor anime is classic and ubiquitous. Now it will receive a true example. Since Funimation always does an English dub, (though can sub-only be far behind now that they're breaking the biggest rule of all?) they're vastly increasing the chances of losing money on this series.

Will some buy it despite the censorship? Sure, some people will always buy. The question isn't will they buy, the question is, how many will think twice before buying again? How many will hesitate to buy other releases because they don't want to support a company that censors?

I can tell you right now, in light of what happened with Hell Girl, I've decided not to buy any future releases until I know that any additional seasons are licensed and dubbed as well. I was already upset to lose out on more Big Windup. I'll finish what I've already started and I'll give whole series releases a chance but no more of this buying in hopes of getting more licensed stuff. I've been burned a lot on that.

Plus, from here on out, I effectively have no budget for buying anime anyway. Yup, I'm officially in Penny-Hoarding Mode Mark II! My family may lose all income so my anime budget has officially been re-classified as my food budget pending future events. That is the one benefit of being potentially totally screwed: you can protest an anime company's decision by not buying their products without any remorse because you can't afford them anymore anyway!

You know, I think I want to cry about that but I'm too frustrated and tired. The amazing thing about having so many bad things happen over the years to my family is this just feels NORMAL to me. It literally felt strange to me earlier in the year when I felt happy about how my life was going.

It's possible my family's situation could be resolved happily around the end of the month so perhaps I'll be able to feel that odd sensation of being content again. If any of you are religious folks like me (yes, it is possible to be religious AND an anime fan who thinks lolicon is protected by the 1st Amendment, I just apply my principles uniformly rather than being a hypocrite like some false prophet types out there) and you feel okay with praying for a stranger, please pray for my family, especially my father. If justice isn't dead and buried, this mess should be resolved in our favor.

If not, we can largely kiss our normal lives goodbye.

Bye-ni. I'm not giving in yet!