[quote=“sortoffaerygirl”]But I didn’t want this to turn into the “I hate the work that Steven Foster does” thread… I still do not have any reasonable answer to the question…
Why isn’t TAN providing a subtitle option for K-ON! season 2 on the website?
No one has yet given a good or plausible reason as to why this is being done. So, can we get on topic please? Or can someone who knows the answer answer that one question?[/quote]
I am sure Anime Network does not have the license to stream the sub, just like how on some Bandai Blu-rays that came out dub only.
Thanks for trying, but that is not reasonable because there is no explanation as to why they don’t have the rights.[/quote]
Like I said some Bandai Blu-rays that came out dub only while the dvd had the dub and sub, you pay more for less. A lot of things with anime makes no sense at all.
I saw that the first time you posted it. It’s still not a reason I can accept because it’s just speculation and not to pull your own backhanded comment and throw it back in your face, but Bandai and TAN are different companies, so maybe you should get your facts straight before we all laugh at you… kidding of course.
What I want to know is the specific reason why and I want one that makes sense, so thanks for trying and I do appreciate your contributions to the discussion.
I saw that the first time you posted it. It’s still not a reason I can accept because it’s just speculation and not to pull your own backhanded comment and throw it back in your face, but Bandai and TAN are different companies, so maybe you should get your facts straight before we all laugh at you… kidding of course.
What I want to know is the specific reason why and I want one that makes sense, so thanks for trying and I do appreciate your contributions to the discussion.[/quote]
I have given you a reason, if it is not acceptable to you, then I apologize. However, it’s true.
Just something that was bugging me a little. You do know the subs used online might not be the same as the subs used for the Home Media? So even if the translation is good or bad online it might not be the same for the Home Media. So basing your decision to purchase something based on online subs might not be the best idea.
As for the answer to your question you need to re-read Inphy’s post . Your answer is there in one of them.
Who did do the translation for the subs for K-on Season 2 Home Media anyway? Was it Seraphim Digital or was it Bang Zoom? I keep thinking Bang Zoom ,but since I did not have interest in the show I don’t have the Home Media. Thus I can not check to make sure what is said Online is correct.
[quote=“psychopuppet”]Just something that was bugging me a little. You do know the subs used online might not be the same as the subs used for the Home Media? So even if the translation is good or bad online it might not be the same for the Home Media. So basing your decision to purchase something based on online subs might not be the best idea.
As for the answer to your question you need to re-read Inphy’s post . Your answer is there in one of them.
Who did do the translation for the subs for K-on Season 2 Home Media anyway? Was it Seraphim Digital or was it Bang Zoom? I keep thinking Bang Zoom ,but since I did not have interest in the show I don’t have the Home Media. Thus I can not check to make sure what is said Online is correct.[/quote]
Contracts, dub only Blu-Rays… Hmm… Maybe the folk from Japan stopped/delayed the subs from appearing online/TV/VoD with the contract they signed with Sentai?
Yeah… that’s why the Saiyuki fans like him… oh wait… they hate his breathing guts… and that’s why Milk-chan is so popular… oh wait, it’s one of the worst received shows ever by American audiences… and Chromartie High School… where he took a comedy that was awesome in subtitle and made it boring as watching paint dry in the dub… yeah I see how brilliant he is… smartest kid on the short bus that one is![/quote]
Actually, most of us Saiyuki fans much prefer the Foster dub to the abomination that was the poorly scripted and acted dub that Bang Zoom shit out. If you would bother to look on most online forums, you would see that the people who prefer the BZ fun are actually quite in the minority. In fact, when the release came out and everyone realized Geneon had recast the entirety of the show, they were inundated with complaints and apologized many times for it. One of their executives even said it was one the more memorable mistakes they made. In fact, if you look at online reviews for the Saiyuki Reload, especially on Amazon, the change in the dub is mentioned prominently in the negative reviews.
As for Milk-chan, which one of the dubs are your talking about. The cartoon network dub wasn’t very well received, but the home video dub still comes up quite often on places like FandomPost where people are talking about good comedy dubs.
Stephen Foster has also directed some of the most well received dubs of all time, including Le Chevalier Deon, which still receives high praise despite being six years old at this point. Honestly, I would take someone who is capable of both amazing and mediocre work, as opposed to a truly lazy director like Mike Macfarland who dubs are just above average and who has yet to really knock one of the park. Not to mention, few are as skilled at casting as Foster. With the Saiyuki dubs, it wasn’t even the script that bothered so many as it was the very poor casting decisions.
Back to the topic on hand. Sentai and Anime Network are two different companies. They have different executives and different people working for them. Anime Network does not automatically have rights to everything that Sentai has. Not does Sentai hold home video rights to everything TAN airs or streams. You don’t expect every Universal movie and TV series to be airs on NBC, and they actually have the same parent company. You certainly don’t expect Universal to release every NBC show on DVD or Bluray. It’s the same principal here.
Everyone has to remember that K-On!! is a HUGE property in Japan. It took a long time for the first season to finally come to the US and when it done the release was heavily crippled, due to TBS’s fears of reverse importation ( as well as legal rights surrounding some songs.). Bandai was forced to release the series in singles, which is the stipulation that kept it from landing at another company that had it just about shored up. The blurays were often delayed, poorly encoded, and they couldn’t even include lossless audio (which the Sentai blurays do FWIW.). The forced poor handling of the title caused the first season to perform poorly in the US.
As protective as TBS is of K-On!!, it would not surprise me if they didn’t allow the Japanese language version to be streamed. Even if they do, there may be a window limiting when they can stream it or where it may be streamed. Sentai itself may not even have the digital rights to the Japanese language track, and may only be able to use it for home video. That’s actually not an uncommon licensing requirement. So if TAN does want to stream or air the Japanese version, they may have to acquire the rights from TBS. Those rights may not be available or they may be too costly. As I said, K-On!! was extremely successful in Japan and anything related to it is extremely expensive.
TAN sublicenses TV and streaming rights from companies like Sentai, Nozomi, and others. They are limited in what they can do with their shows. They do not produce them or own them. Companies like Sentai, Funimation, and Nozomi in turn license their content from the Japanese companies like TBS and Kadokowa. They too are limited in what they can do with these properties. Look at Funimation scrapping and delaying bluray releases and Sentai being forced to release Persona 4 with no Japanese language track on the bluray.
As ChrisC said, things in the anime business don’t always make sense. But the companies involved here in the US are generally powerless to fix them, as they don’t actually “own” their releases. Do you think Funimation likes waiting almost two years to be able to release something on bluray, or that Sentai likes being forced to delay or strip features from blurays? No, they do it because they have no choice.
Also, I know I did reapond to it, but we really need to keep the sub-dub debate out of here before this thread gets locked. It’s been had a thousand times over and over and it accomplishes nothing. If you want to debate Stephen Foster or subs vs dubs , there are six thousand other anime websites that would be glad to host that debate.
One last thing, if you are concerned about the quality of the subtitles, there are literally 100s of sites that review anime home video releases and the majority of them do pretty in depth reviews of the subtitle quality. Anime News Network generally makes it a habit of reviewing subtitle and translation quality in many of their reviews, just to mention one.
I am wondering why everyone is talking about Stephen Foster? Tony Oliver was the ADR Director for K-ON season 2. To think sortoffaerygirl says I don’t know what I am talking about.
sortoffaerygirl I think you totally read that wrong. celestial_being is only talking about Towanoquon being “fast tracked” all that means is Anime Network shows the anime before the dvd release date instead of after. It doesn’t mean it was ruined by Stephen Foster.
Someone mentioned Princess Resurrection. They initially did not dub this series, but it sold well enough and was popular enough to come back and add a dub, which is true of several initial Sentai titles. Dubs cost money - and from what I can see, dub fans form a majority in the US, judging by all the complaining I see when a series doesn’t get a dub. So if a company is going to spend the bucks to dub a series, they’re going to promote that first.