Get ready anime fans, 2016 is gonna be a big year! FunimationNow has all the subtitled and English-dubbed anime you love, completely ad-free and in HD.
I can’t wait to see these changes take off. It’s refreshing to see an anime company make changes to keep things from being boring. The new logo is quite impressive.
[size=16]FUNimation Broadcast Dubs initiative[/size]
Flower Mound, TX - (10/29/14) - FUNimation announced today the start of a new initiative–the FUNimation Broadcast Dub. Fans will soon be able to watch the English dubbed episodes of select shows that are currently broadcasting in Japan. FUNimation has experience with broadcast dubs, having had previous success dubbing the hit series Space Dandy for U.S. broadcast on Adult Swim. FUNimation Broadcast Dubs will be available exclusively for FUNimation subscribers commercial-free and streaming in 1080 HD.
Even though I already know that the show is no where near as cool as this plot synopsis suggests it could be, every time I read it I wish it were. I might check out an ep or 2 dubbed, but the odds are that the kind of dub that would make this show watchable for me would make it less appealing to the demographic that it is meant for.
That’s my issue with this initiative in general as it takes the brutality of the “if you want it, you gotta simulcast it” scheme to a new level. With the simulcast scheme, I just have to stream subbed the shows that I like in order to see them released (which is still undesirable) but in order to support this initiative I will have to watch shows that I already know that I don’t like, one of which is fated to have a mediocre dub.
Which is the lesser of the 2 evils?
I am intrigued by the 2.0 audio prospect. It seems unlikely to happen, but I wish that Funimation would include this “Broadcast Dub” audio with their releases as some Funi releases are 5.1 only with the dub and Funimation’s audio work generally leaves their 5.1 dubs incredibly obnoxious to listen to over 2/2.1 setups.
It’d also be interesting to see these broadcast dubs preserved for posterity.
Now think of all the “hate” that the fans will be throwing: you’re gonna have the “simulcast dub lovers” vs. the " final home video release dub lovers". Now add that plus any Ben-To/Sankare incidents and you’re gonna have peeps cursing the heavens.
I’m not too interested in this myself, as FUNi very rarely picks up something I’m already interested in before they announce a license for it.
But there’s probably more to come at some point, so I figured it it was big enough news that it deserved its own thread rather than splitting the discussion of it across several threads.
I think the last FUNi simulcast (delaycast really, since I was watching it on Hulu for free) I watched was Date A Live II.
So this doesn’t really affect me in much now, or probably even in the future.
Oh that just brought to mind formerly-repressed memories of the Data A Live dub. The perils of being a dub fan, I suppose.
I don’t believe that it’ll be so bad as those since the whole dub will be up even if the physical release is delayed and we’ll know that we’ll be seeing broadcast visuals with that dub, so there’d be neither the dub deprivation or bait-n-switch of those 2 shows.
That reminds me of the Deadman Wonderland dub situation. I don’t remember too big of a fuss over that, except the Greg Ayres profanity bit. Which reminds me, I wonder if these “broadcast dubs” will, due to their limited availability, be free of any language restrictions?
Personally I thought it was better than I expected, but below what I’d expect from Funimation. Versus recent Joel McDonald dubs, LutC was better than Bent-To and Date A Live but was quite a few rungs below Robotics;notes and Haganai NEXT. I’d put it on par with Sankarea.