Section23 Films Announces October 2009 Slate

Prede, I’m in the same boat as you, for the most part - but over the years I’ve gotten a lot more flexible in that regard as ultimately something is better than nothing for me.

One can only hope the market rebounds and things improve for us dub fans though, it would be very depressing for ADV Studios not to continue especially since before the Sojitz disaster it was in a golden era. On the other hand though, I also believe the production costs were in part what helped put ADV and Sojitz in such a big hole when the market collapsed on them.

Unfortunately with more and more fans watching or being introduced to shows via sub, there has been a huge shift in the last 1-3 years of preferences and language entry points for new fans. And I know since you and I talked about this before a lot of times in the past… sadly the sub-elitists have been the most vocal and have won the internet discourse over the last few years - since most legal dub fans tend to fall in two categories, older anime fans who got introduced to anime via dubs who remained interested in it, and the casual anime fans who don’t really get mired in the debates - both groups haven’t really participated in the intellectual and philosophical discourse of why dubs are not the crap that it’s made out to be by the vocal side - over time there’s now this domination of bandwagon superficial thinking of dubs sucking whether it be anime or videogames, etc. Far too often saying the dub sucks is viewed as cool and part of the in-crowd, while the dub fans had to sit and stew in silence or be mocked. Now that it’s too late with the lack of value in dubs… dub fans have been caught off-guard to a degree - well it’s been discussed for the last 1-2 yrs that this may be coming, but the more casual dub fans are finally seeing the tangible realities of it all.

I’m optimistic that things will improve to a degree though, but I’m pessimistic that the boom days won’t return like in the early to mid parts of this decade. The boom days may truly be over for the foreseeable future. :frowning:

[quote=mitamaking]
I guess Clannad didn’t sell enough to get a dub

There that is the only time I am saying it, don’t attack me…

Now on to the other news, why not just go to Otakon, they would have killed Funi and Bandai with these announcements, maybe not enough money.

Still ADV(or should I say Sentai) lives.[/quote]

They may not have had clearance yet. These also could have been the titles ADV wanted to reveal at Anime Boston, but couldn’t get clearance. Also, I have a feeling Ghost Hound was a package deal with that Fist of The North Star series.

I think one of the most surprising things is how quickly ADV/Sentai licensed this. The show only stopped airing a few months ago in Japan. And considering it already has a street date, Ledford and company was probably working on this either while the show was on the air, or right after it ended.

Anyway, it’s great to see three new titles from ADV and Sentai in one month. Can’t wait to see the holiday solicitations. :slight_smile:

[quote=TheCoffeeGod]
Thinking about it, I’m kinda curious now.
Is it known yet, whether they also rescued the Sugar Summer Special?
It’s not really required for the series, though it does tie a nice little complimentary bow on it.[/quote]

At this point you know as much as we do with Sugar.

[quote=mitamaking]
I guess Clannad didn’t sell enough to get a dub

There that is the only time I am saying it, don’t attack me…

Now on to the other news, why not just go to Otakon, they would have killed Funi and Bandai with these announcements, maybe not enough money.

Still ADV(or should I say Sentai) lives.[/quote]

Well Clannad has always been an otaku type series that wasn’t mainstream in my view, but…

I think it’s too early to say, only because I believe it did sell well enough… TO THE SUB group, the main people interested in Clannad. Now if those people who were interested in it in the first place with such zeal were all dub fans, then yeah it might be dubbed.

If this weren’t the case, TBS, Kyoto Animation, Visual Arts, Key would not have given this to Sentai and ADV… so it seems they were pleased with the sales on a very hot and marquee title, even when burdened with very high expectations. I still remember some of the hardcore dub fans predicting months ago once the Season 1 was announced sub-only that the Japanese would pull the license away from Sentai and ADV within days, since they thought having no dub would devalue the series and piss of the Japanese companies. I guess the haters and speculators might be eating crow now. :wink:

The better question I think is… if they dubbed it would it have given then much more overall value, and profit and sales? Yes, but I don’t believe enough, especially for a long series like this. I believe the dub fans in this context were marginal and those that were very into the series were into it subbed to begin with.

Profit was key I believe.

The other main issue is, they wanted to get it out the door fast to combat piracy. The thing people forget is, a lot of hardcore titles tend to have more limited window of opportunities, especially in this down market. With Clannad After Story being so new and ending so recently, if Sentai and ADV were to release season 2 dubbed, they’d have to do season 1 dubbed as well. To do that now, after experimenting with Clannad Season 1 to test the waters… doing so will put Season 2 for late 2010, like other dub companies do… by then the market value and interest might have greatly diminished. Notice all the new announcements with dubs recently? All… 2010 unless they’ve been working on it secretly for a while. That is way too long a time frame to wait for revenue. The cost of dubbing a long series like this too would be enormous.

Sentai and ADV found out they struck gold by hitting when the title was hot with Season 1, so now they are doing the same again. Sentai and ADV need to capitalize on the now, not long term.

:slight_smile: :slight_smile: :slight_smile: :slight_smile: Clannad After Story! Yes! Sorry I am really liking clannad on anime network and have the first collection but haven’t had the chance to get second. Will try Ghost Hound and He Is My Master. I still have to watch Popotan volume 1. On the no dubs thing. I am a dub guy to but have become flexable. Like I said I like clannad. I have been enjoying Princess Resurrection, Koi Koi Seven, Izumo, Maria Watches Over Us, Aria all without a dub on Anime Network. I rather see titles being able to be brought over here then not. I take sub over nothing really. I been watched uncut Sailor Moon dvds ADV released years recently.

[quote=dragoon]
I’m optimistic that things will improve to a degree though, but I’m pessimistic that the boom days won’t return like in the early to mid parts of this decade. The boom days may truly be over for the foreseeable future. :([/quote]

I personally never bought into all the dub hate. But you are correct in saying how most people think it’s cool to hate dubs. Unless the dub you are talking about is Dragonball Z, most of them are fine. The online sub-fandom used to have legit concerns about dubs but now it’s useless bickering. Factor in all the new kids who are online and watching fansubs and you have a nightmare. Which kinda brings this “we want dubs” thing now into a weird light. Before you had the attitude “Why should I pay for a dub I won’t watch”. Now it’s “We want dubs to”. I wish these damn toddlers would make up their mind. Either you want sub only or dubs with subs.

yes I love ADV slasch Sentai

[quote=blakdragon7]

[quote=dragoon]
I’m optimistic that things will improve to a degree though, but I’m pessimistic that the boom days won’t return like in the early to mid parts of this decade. The boom days may truly be over for the foreseeable future. :([/quote]

I personally never bought into all the dub hate. But you are correct in saying how most people think it’s cool to hate dubs. Unless the dub you are talking about is Dragonball Z, most of them are fine. The online sub-fandom used to have legit concerns about dubs but now it’s useless bickering. Factor in all the new kids who are online and watching fansubs and you have a nightmare. Which kinda brings this “we want dubs” thing now into a weird light. Before you had the attitude “Why should I pay for a dub I won’t watch”. Now it’s “We want dubs to”. I wish these damn toddlers would make up their mind. Either you want sub only or dubs with subs.[/quote]

People will always find a reason to complain. If we suddenly were back to the point of everything being bilingual again, you would have people complaining about paying for dubs they won’t watch. If you produced sub only sets too, people would complain about the packaging. If you improved the packaging, they would complain about the lack of animated menus. It’s just an endless cycle. There are just some people you can’t please, NO MATTER WHAT! They will always find a fault with something, and excuse to not support their alleged hobby.

Like many, many others here, I use to only watch dubs, but I’ve grown and expanded my horizons. It was actually live action movies that got me to really start watching subs, things like Asian horror flicks, Pan’s Labyrinth, and the Orphanage. I thought “If I can watch these, why can’t I watch anime subbed.” Then after Clannad and Aria, I was finally able to really anjoy an anime series without the aid of a dub. Yes, I miss them, and would love to hear Clannad or Ghost Hound with ADV’s VA’s, but I would rather have the series subbed, with competent encoding and video quality, than possibly never get the series at all.

Also, I get really pissed at the whiners who want an R1 to go out of business, just because they didn’t do a release a certain way. I’ve never heard such selfishness in my entire life. I may not like the way Company A does business, or handled one of my favorite series, but I would never wish them out of business. I know people are dependent on them for their lively-hood, and there are plenty of people out there who are perfectly content with their releases. Just because they don’t do something just the way I like it, is no reason to wish them misfortune.

[quote=dragoon]
With Clannad After Story being so new and ending so recently, if Sentai and ADV were to release season 2 dubbed, they’d have to do season 1 dubbed as well. To do that now, after experimenting with Clannad Season 1 to test the waters… doing so will put Season 2 for late 2010, like other dub companies do… by then the market value and interest might have greatly diminished. Notice all the new announcements with dubs recently? All… 2010 unless they’ve been working on it secretly for a while. .[/quote]

Well you have to keep in mind all these other studios and R1 companies have a lot of anime on their plate (for example Funimation has tons of stuff still to dub, that they announced months ago), while ADV has NOTHING to dub. Sure it would take time, but I don’t think late 2010. I mean they could get right to work on dubbing Clannad Season 2, and ignore the fact that season 1 had no dub. It would still probably be out faster then if Funi licensed and dubbed it. It doesn’t take that long to dub a show. Awhile yes, but almost a year? Not really…

Would the “market value” decrease by then? Probably…but not as much as you assume it would. Also I’m not quite sure how releasing DVD’s “really fast” even combats fansubs. The are out there already, so since people have already seen them, “why buy the DVD’s” (as they would say) . I mean I guess if the show is released really fast, there’s less time to look for fansubs, and it might interest some people who will wait, but not long, to buy stuff. But I’m not sold on that idea. There’s no debating new anime sells much better then older shows, but I’m not sure the reason is they are beating fansubs to the punch, because they clearly are not…

[quote=blakdragon7]
Before you had the attitude “Why should I pay for a dub I won’t watch”. Now it’s “We want dubs to”. I wish these damn toddlers would make up their mind. Either you want sub only or dubs with subs.[/quote]

This is called irony. Back in the day sub fans would find it hard if not impossible to find some shows on sub VHS, just because the dubs sold better. I mean why should a store order two copies of the same show pretty much? Also factor in all the series that were being licensed and released WITHOUT a sub VHS, and you have a lot of pished off sub fans. Their complaint was “why can’t I get my sub VHS!!” or like you say “I don’t want to pay for dubs that I don’t watch!”. Now this has done a 180, and with the bubble bursting, dubs get the hack, and you get a lot of dub fans pissed off.

When I say late 010, I meant if they had to dub all of Clannad and AS, especially when the fans of Air and Kanon will expect an award winning dub and not a regular one, ADV will be beholden to those high standards. Takes extra time to restart the studio/production when it’s not active as well.

Even the otakus who have been pining for these shows have admitted the window of opportunity narrows fast, even for Clannad. I remember a lot of people who had Ghost Hound at the top of their list, but only a few months later dropped out of their top 20 must wants. Those are the ones that are being targeted by fast releases, since it’s very trend and now oriented. For legal buyers and dub buyers like you and I, time isn’t that big of a deal to begin with, since we’ve waited all this time for the legal option anyway. But in the case of Clannad with the sub buyers they are a little less patient than us. Remember everyone complaining at the other forum why it’s taking so long to get AS, even though it just ended? Patience by fans has been diminishing greatly especially now that more and more companies are trying to do simulcasts. With ever increasing strides anime companies make, sadly sometimes unrealistically, demands and expectations rise in parallel.

Patience is a virtue that most just don’t have these days.

People are going to complain no matter what. That is just a fact of life. With Clannad/After Story and Ghost Hound I would love a dub and with Ghost Hound I think a dubbed version would sell.

I think with shows that has a good potential with a dub, Bandai had a good model with releasing the show quickly with sub only then releasing the bilingual version later on.

But I digress, even though I love dubs I am starting to get more sub only shows. People should be more open minded in today’s world.

I would be open minded about subs if my familly didn’t make me hate subs over the past few years. I am still going to buy Clannad in sub only, just I am not going to watch it as many time as I would if it had a dub.

I was in a hurry and multi-tasking yesterday… always something to do. :stuck_out_tongue: Just something to finish out the thoughts on rushing these releases out to combat fansubs. Remember Clannad After Story came out around the time Clannad was released. Just like any viewer group, they are not monolithic entities - not everyone saw it or completed it online. So when the hype was growing with AS, the ones who have not watched the first part yet had an option to get the DVDs… how many of them chose the legal option though certainly is unknown to us without the sales data. So the early release of that was trying to capitalize on the AS momentum as well, at least for the first 2 parts. Hopefully this will do as well or better, since sales tend to decline for longer series as further releases get out.

[quote=zidanetribal2000]
People are going to complain no matter what. That is just a fact of life. With Clannad/After Story and Ghost Hound I would love a dub and with Ghost Hound I think a dubbed version would sell.

I think with shows that has a good potential with a dub, Bandai had a good model with releasing the show quickly with sub only then releasing the bilingual version later on.

But I digress, even though I love dubs I am starting to get more sub only shows. People should be more open minded in today’s world.[/quote]

That model was only done to appease fans, and hide the fact that Bandai could have done dub releases just as quickly with Gurren Lagan, but chose to redub everything, rather than let ADV finish the series. At least the first volume was dubbed, and the second could have been ready in plenty of time to be released on schedule. There was already a significant delay in the release of Gurren, and they were hoping it would appease fans, which it did to an extent.

Plus, that release model turned out to be a failure for Bandai. All it did was hit them with massive returns, especially given the singles and double packs that were put out there. Not to mention, many, many copies were returned to retailers, because some people didn’t realize the discs being released did not contain the version that was on Sci-Fi. And let’s not forget Bandai’s quality problems at the time.

If that type of release had been successful, Bandai probably would have tried more of it. But considering they dumped it, and reduced the types of releases they did with Gurren, shows it didn’t turn out as expected.

Hey, Anime Corner was even positive about these releases. And for once I agree with Robert. If October is this good, not just for ADV, than November should be great. Nice to seem some positivity for a change.

[quote=dragonrider_cody]
That model was only done to appease fans, and hide the fact that Bandai could have done dub releases just as quickly with Gurren Lagan, but chose to redub everything, rather than let ADV finish the series. At least the first volume was dubbed, and the second could have been ready in plenty of time to be released on schedule. There was already a significant delay in the release of Gurren, and they were hoping it would appease fans, which it did to an extent.[/quote]

Actually I think Bandai said that the sub-only releases was something they needed to do in order to licenses the series. Well it needed to be out by a certain date, and no way a dub could be ready in time. So they released the sub-only set to make Gainax happy, and some fans. Of course there was no reason they had to go somewhere else to dub the show, when ADV had 4+ episodes dubbed already, in mid-production already, and running the studio at a good rate still. But they did what they did, and it probably cost them more for it. Then again perhaps they couldn’t or weren’t aloud to get ADV’s dub for some weird reason. While I doubt this, it is a possibility.

[quote=Prede]

[quote=dragonrider_cody]
That model was only done to appease fans, and hide the fact that Bandai could have done dub releases just as quickly with Gurren Lagan, but chose to redub everything, rather than let ADV finish the series. At least the first volume was dubbed, and the second could have been ready in plenty of time to be released on schedule. There was already a significant delay in the release of Gurren, and they were hoping it would appease fans, which it did to an extent.[/quote]

Actually I think Bandai said that the sub-only releases was something they needed to do in order to licenses the series. Well it needed to be out by a certain date, and no way a dub could be ready in time. So they released the sub-only set to make Gainax happy, and some fans. Of course there was no reason they had to go somewhere else to dub the show, when ADV had 4+ episodes dubbed already, in mid-production already, and running the studio at a good rate still. But they did what they did, and it probally cost them more for it. Then again perhaps they could’t or weren’t aloud to get ADV’s dub for some weird reason. While I doubt this, it is a possibility.[/quote]

Regardless, this release method didn’t pan out for them. So I doubt it would work for other shows. I can only see it working, if the dub is done quite a while later, similar to how ADV dubbed shows like Devil Hunter Yohko sometime after their initial release. But given the current environment, even that is extremely doubtful.

Woah. I never ever thought He is My Master would get licensed.

I wouldn’t be surprised if ADV gets Hanaukyo, DearS, and Chobits if Geneon doesn’t have the rights to them anymore. I’d probably buy the last two if they’re relicensed.

[quote=Mystic]
Woah. I never ever thought He is My Master would get licensed.

I wouldn’t be surprised if ADV gets Hanaukyo, DearS, and Chobits if Geneon doesn’t have the rights to them anymore. I’d probably buy the last two if they’re relicensed.[/quote]

I would love for ADV to get Chobits. That’s one of those shows that should always be available. Though I haven’t seen DearS, I could really see Hanaukyo really fitting with them. ADV also needs to grab X BTW…

This does make me wonder, what happened to Jewel Bem Hunter Lime. That was announced last year, and we still haven’t seen it. I wonder if something came up, or if they decided to drop it.

Well I’ve been asking for dubs because I find it hard at times to keep up with the subtitles. Specally when 2 or more caracters talk at once I know I some cases they do change the script a little but if I can keep up with the jokes and the stories then that’s great and I’m happy. Sorry sub fans but i’m no speed reader.