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INTEREST: BBC Plans Documentary Episode About Idol Industry Mogul Johnny Kitagawa's Alleged Abuse

Greboruri wrote:

And yet the Funimation version of Ultraman Tiga, released in 2004, still had V6's "Take Me Higher" included as the opening theme in each episode. Not saying Kitagawa didn't micromange his talent, music rights and artist imagery to an absurd degree, but material did slip through, as happened with Ultraman Tiga's original US home video release.

And that could simply be because 4Kids, who had the rights to Tiga (not FUNimation) probably actually paid the exorbitant amount that Kitagawa wanted for the song, because 4Kids would have had the money to do so back then. Also, bringing up one example as a counterargument, instead of being an exception to the rule, isn't really as strong as you think it is, because people will just continually bring up the examples that reinforce their argument.

Thanks to this scoundrel, a lot of music was deprived from overseas releases like Kodocha, The Skull Man, and Ultraman Tiga among many others.

Discotek was only able to get the 1st Kodocha OP and related music rights because Johnny had died in the intervening years between their release and Funimation's, which was kind of seoulman1985's point.

And a big reason why Yu-Gi-Oh! couldn’t be released here in Japanese for a long time. Yugi’s voice actor, Shunsuke Kizama was signed by Johnny’s, and they somehow blocked the release of his voice recordings here. We got bilingual DVDs around 2004, but this was some time after that. When 5D’s was streamed subtitled, Yugi’s voice was muted for a cameo.

The simple fact is that while Kitagawa was alive more songs featured in anime that came from his various acts did NOT see inclusion outside of Japan (& even sometimes within Japan itself) than actually did see inclusion outside of Japan. Just because a scant few did manage to make it across doesn't mean that what everyone else is saying isn't true.

Lord Geo wrote:

The simple fact is that while Kitagawa was alive more songs featured in anime that came from his various acts did NOT see inclusion outside of Japan (& even sometimes within Japan itself) than actually did see inclusion outside of Japan. Just because a scant few did manage to make it across doesn't mean that what everyone else is saying isn't true.

Sure, but the amount of anime and tokusastu themes Johnny & Associates acts have preformed is miniscule really, maybe around a couple dozen songs in total. This includes V6 and Tackey & Tsubasa songs which were included in Viz Media's DVD release of Inuyasha. The partial US release of Soar High! Isami by Hirameki International does include the opening theme song by TOKIO. All of this was prior to Kitagawa's death.

As for 4kids, the English language opening for US TV broadcast was not the V6's Take Me higher, but a new song they produced themselves. I suspect they just gave Funimation the original masters they worked off to produce the subtitled version and the fact the V6 song remained intact for the entire set was an accident. Why the Mill Creek set has the song included randomly is a mystery, but again probably an accident on Tsuburaya's part.

Now whether or not these were all errors by distributors or licensors, I really have no idea, but really, Kitagawa's micromanagement of his artists and the music they released had very minimal impact on English language anime and tokusastu releases. At most a handful of titles.