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NEWS: Toei, William Winckler Prod., Rioloco Dub 23+ Features

Heck, I'd like to see them rescue the out-of-print 2002 Captain Herlock OVA series (boxset listed at amazon for $128! )

Considering the fact that these shows are already too old by today's anime standards

Or it's $16 if you use the right website. I doubt the boxset gives you anything more than a cardboard box.

1- The thing with digital distribution is that it's not really making money yet. Not real money anyways- Funimation, Media Blasters and others mostly use it as a form of advertising, an extra revenue source, or a way to profit off of existing materials..... DVD's are still where most of the money is, and the home video market looks to be exactly what Toei's aiming for with these [anyhoo, they can have their cake and eat it too, considering they're doing this alongside their existing subtitled streaming efforts. They're also dubbing shows entirely for TV broadcast as seen in their dub of Bobobobobobo for CN (Illumitoon was just the dvd distributor), and their dub of Pretty Cure which is airing here in Canada, with no dvd all at at the moment, and the only online streaming of it the subtitled version].

2- If costs are being kept low, Toei probably won't lose all that much money on these dubs. In the 80's and 90's, stuff like this was often just produced for pilot presentations, never to be seen by the public [just look at Harmony Gold's Dr.Slump]. I'm guessing they could break even pretty easily, and are probably more likely to make money then if they dubbed the hundreds of episodes involved with these series, given even the shortest ones run around 50 episodes, and the longer are well into the 100's like FOTNS and Kitaro.

Anime Companies are only interested in what us nerds think when they're making money off of it. If we're not a profit source for them, we don't really count as much, and I can live with that. Toei knows this quite well, and if we want product that suits us, we have to show them there's a market for it [no doubt Funimation's doing their darndest to do so with One Piece]

On another note, with the return of dubbed compilation films alongside stuff like subtitled only dvd's and a return to dubonly edited kiddie shows like Bakugan being the big breadwinners merchandise-wise, it feels like anime's going back to it's slightly more oddball roots before the days of bilingual dvd's, unedited tv runs and dubbing everything. The glory years are over, but it's certainly not stopping companies in Japan and here from trying their darndest to keep bringing us more anime.

Ashita no Nadja is from 2003, hardly what I'd call old. I hope we get a subbed version at crunchyroll, like with Pretty Cure.

The dubbing cast includes Winckler, G. Larry Butler, Robert Axelrod, David Gerrold,

Don Glut

Fred Laderman (Fred Ladd),

Chase Masterson

Butch Patrick

Even splicing them into movies and putting them together in huge cheap packs, they still won't sell. Besides, cutting up something like Harlock would be horrible.

I see, these "features" are all supposed to be compilation movies. I was expecting something a little different for a brief moment there.

I would imagine that saves a lot of time and resources as far as the production of dubs goes, but in terms of content the results might be uneven, to say the least, depending on each series.

Wow! They're dubbing a lot of classical anime! Maybe they'll license and dub some modern anime too! I wanna see them dub shows like Candy Candy or Lady Lady or even some World Masterpiece Theater anime!!!

Kitaro's Graveyard Gang? Is this the English name for the beloved "Ge-Ge-Ge no Kitaro"?

Wait, they're planning on releasing spliced versions of their TV shows as movies?

Somebody stop Toei!!! They're not thinking straight!

Well, would you rather not want any chance of these shows being released on DVD at all? Really, these shows would normally have no chance at being released on DVD at this point in time, so these compilation movies are the best bet. Yes, I too would rather want the actual shows in their entirety, but dubbing all of these shows in their entirety would not be economically feasible.

Of course, if these DVDs end up being dub-only then I too would have a big problem and would probably not buy them, but at the same time I fully see this method as the only real way to get these shows on DVD anymore. Just because FUNimation is streaming the full shows of Harlock and Fist of the North Star doesn't mean that they'll pick up the entire shows, dub them, and release them on DVD.

In one sense you can call this a "neccessary evil".

Funimation, Media Blasters and others mostly use it as a form of advertising, an extra revenue source, or a way to profit off of existing materials..... DVD's are still where most of the money is, and the home video market looks to be exactly what Toei's aiming for with these [anyhoo, they can have their cake and eat it too, considering they're doing this alongside their existing subtitled streaming efforts. They're also dubbing shows entirely for TV broadcast as seen in their dub of Bobobobobobo for CN (Illumitoon was just the dvd distributor), and their dub of Pretty Cure which is airing here in Canada, with no dvd all at at the moment, and the only online streaming of it the subtitled version].

2- If costs are being kept low, Toei probably won't lose all that much money on these dubs. In the 80's and 90's, stuff like this was often just produced for pilot presentations, never to be seen by the public [just look at Harmony Gold's Dr.Slump].

Anime Companies are only interested in what us nerds think when they're making money off of it. If we're not a profit source for them, we don't really count as much, and I can live with that. Toei knows this quite well, and if we want product that suits us, we have to show them there's a market for it [no doubt Funimation's doing their darndest to do so with One Piece]

On another note, with the return of dubbed compilation films alongside stuff like subtitled only dvd's and a return to dubonly edited kiddie shows like Bakugan being the big breadwinners merchandise-wise, it feels like anime's going back to it's slightly more oddball roots before the days of bilingual dvd's, unedited tv runs and dubbing everything. The glory years are over, but it's certainly not stopping companies in Japan and here from trying their darndest to keep bringing us more anime.

Has anyone actually seen William Winckler's Tekkaman dub? It's hilariously awful. Granted those were done way back in 1984, I'm not expecting them to do any better now.

It's still a surprise, they just came back out of nowhere.

Fred Laderman (Fred Ladd)
He's still working? (I mean that not in a dismissive way, but I'd thought he'd retired...)

Butch Patrick
Interesting choice there....