More motivation!
Here's the second of those amusing motivational posters Chris "Robotech_Master" Meadows sent along. Rather like this one.
Ah, so true.
So, yes, Funimation has the rights to distribute The Shadow Chronicles in a whole variety of formats -- DVD, theatrically, and on the TV. (Almost wrote "telly" -- too much Doctor Who for me, I guess.) Fantastic news, and I betcha the reason it wound up leaked through Anime Insider is just a mere case of the publication of the magazine not quite lining up with the convention schedule. Simple and harmless, but annoying for all involved.
Given the level of presentation that Funimation's been bringing to the table lately with releases like Fullmetal Alchemist and Samurai 7 (excellent overall graphic design, premium collectors' goodies, thick full-color booklets), and the fact that they've been really good about getting their high profile stuff into stores (always getting harder, what with so many anime releases coming out week after week), especially the big central spots like Wal-Mart and Target, this sounds like an excellent deal for Harmony Gold and the future of the ROBOTECH franchise. Five years ago I would have been a panic-stricken mess if you told me Funimation was involved in the release of the new ROBOTECH animation, but in the intervening years they've done a dramatic transformation from "the company that screwed up Dragon Ball Z" into one of the premiere anime dubbing and distribution companies in the U.S. So yeah, I'm feeling fired up.
Hey, who wants to guess a release date? I'm still thinking March. How about you guys?
Ah, so true.
So, yes, Funimation has the rights to distribute The Shadow Chronicles in a whole variety of formats -- DVD, theatrically, and on the TV. (Almost wrote "telly" -- too much Doctor Who for me, I guess.) Fantastic news, and I betcha the reason it wound up leaked through Anime Insider is just a mere case of the publication of the magazine not quite lining up with the convention schedule. Simple and harmless, but annoying for all involved.
Given the level of presentation that Funimation's been bringing to the table lately with releases like Fullmetal Alchemist and Samurai 7 (excellent overall graphic design, premium collectors' goodies, thick full-color booklets), and the fact that they've been really good about getting their high profile stuff into stores (always getting harder, what with so many anime releases coming out week after week), especially the big central spots like Wal-Mart and Target, this sounds like an excellent deal for Harmony Gold and the future of the ROBOTECH franchise. Five years ago I would have been a panic-stricken mess if you told me Funimation was involved in the release of the new ROBOTECH animation, but in the intervening years they've done a dramatic transformation from "the company that screwed up Dragon Ball Z" into one of the premiere anime dubbing and distribution companies in the U.S. So yeah, I'm feeling fired up.
Hey, who wants to guess a release date? I'm still thinking March. How about you guys?
posted by Captain JLS at
07:16
8 Comments:
wild guess..i'd say 2008 .
why ? because...they can >_<
By
Kurotsuki, at 23 July, 2006 13:35
March would work. I'd like to have at least a decent chuck of the game done so that when I get all bulled up from watching it, I can dork around in the game world.
By
Anonymous, at 23 July, 2006 15:15
Cautious optimism Darkwater, but Funimation has done well with recent titles. If HG can exploit the potential success of Shadow Chronicles with merchandising and good marketing, I can see a new Robotech TV series as the next phase for HG and Funimation. Cheers in hopes for success of Robotech Shadow Chronicles.
By
Anonymous, at 23 July, 2006 17:08
Hey,personally i think it'll be out a little before christmas...Not 100% certain on that though, but there is definately time to make that happen. Hmm, actually that might be too rushed, what with ramping up your advertising, packaging,replicating and so on... Damn. March it is then. AAAAArgh. Hell I mean we've waited this long. At least i've got the sentinels books to carry me through until then. Am reading "World Killers" right now actually. It's humorous to come across some old 80's phrases or sayings that tend to crop up in these books. I am ultimately glad that Harmony gold didn't go through with animating all of the sentinels stuff and instead decided to start right after mospeada, because we've had these books for so long now, and it'll be nice to see something completely new that no one knows about.(in terms of where the story will go. pretty exciting.)
By
Anonymous, at 23 July, 2006 21:14
Funimation screwed up Dragonball Z??????? Wha-huh?
By
Anonymous, at 24 July, 2006 21:44
Yes, at that point (around 2001 and prior) there was still a widespread perception among "hardcore" anime fans that they screwed up DBZ. Here's a website that was devoted to this notion:
http://dbzuncensored.dbzoa.net/
Personally I don't think they did a particularly good job with the Dragon Ball property myself (replacing the soundtrack with a mediocre synth score was a bad idea; repackaging Dragon Ball GT to make it seem "hardcore" was even worse), but given how good they've gotten with their more recent releases, I'm going to just chalk it up to a learning curve.
By
Captain JLS, at 24 July, 2006 22:38
Kiddification happens. Yeah, we got lucky with Robotech, but practically every other mass-market-hit anime and kaiju import has been dumbed down for the kiddies.
Power Rangers. Sailor Moon. Voltron. Pokemon. Digimon. Thelistgoes-on. :)
I don't think a "learning curve" was necessarily involved; they were just following the trend of kiddification to get broadcast rights. It's a little too much to expect that the show would get left alone and be able to make it to television.
Fortunately, the kiddification doesn't extend to their non-kiddie licenses. And why would it need to? They're not going to be trying to get it shown on kid TV.
I think Funimation was probably the best possible choice remaining to Harmony Gold at this point, and I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.
By
Chris Meadows, at 25 July, 2006 13:22
No, there was definitely a learning curve of sorts involved. FUNimation did the first two "seasons" of DBZ in cooperation with Saban, who handled most of the production work. When FUNi forged on ahead with "season 3" on their own, they started to do the show in a less kiddified fashion, but they were just getting their own dubbing studio started -- their actors were raw and being forced to play their roles based on the portrayals done by the original Canadian dubbing studio, and the mixing on the audio was off, too. They also started doing their video packaging on their own, and the results were less than inspiring. And they still weren't using the original Japanese soundtrack, so they had a local composer with what sounded like a mid-range synthesizer doing a repetitive new score that wouldn't pass muster in a video game.
A few years later, they acquired the rights to Yu Yu Hakusho, a similar action/adventure series with stronger supernatural themes -- no avoiding the issue of death in this one! -- and lo and behold, they maintained the original Japanese score, the actors all started off much stronger, and they even used a pretty decent English dubbed version of both the opening and ending themes. The DVD covers had a stronger sense of style about them. Certainly a learning curve was in evidence here -- there was a much greater sense of polish about their work on Yu Yu Hakusho across the board.
I didn't point out the DBZ site to say, "Oh noes, why did they go with Funimation?!" I pointed it out simply to show that, yes, there were some things wrong with their release of DBZ. They've gotten much better. I'm buying their releases of Fullmetal Alchemist and Samurai 7, and both have top notch production values across the board. Like I said, looking at those makes me excited about how they'll be treating their release of The Shadow Chronicles.
By
Captain JLS, at 25 July, 2006 19:15
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