Forum - View topicNEWS: Kurokami's U.S. BD Release to Have English Dub Only
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Mr. sickVisionz
 Posts: 2173 |
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I was thinking wtf until I read this,
Update 2: Bandai Entertainment tells ANN, "The license for the Japanese audio was not granted for our Blu-Ray release of Kurokami." This really sucks. I'd never buy a DVD when Blu-Ray was available. When the Blu-Ray is the super gimped version, i'll probably just buy neither. |
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russ869
Posts: 422 |
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Heh heh... I almost wish I could. But no can do. I've already seen some of this is HD. Once you've seen it, there's no going back. A mere DVD encode of this show will always look cheap to me now. I might be able to only watch the dub and not mind it. But I still won't buy a dub only disc because what if someday I don't like the English dub that much any more or something about it starts to bother me? I want to have the option to watch subtitled if I decide I want to. Otherwise, the value of the disc will have diminished significantly for me.
I feel exactly the same way on all points. |
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KanjiiZ
 Posts: 661 Location: Central Coast |
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Not to mention the fact BD's have massive amounts of space left over. Don't tell me it couldn't handle a second track. |
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Sam Murai
 Posts: 1051 |
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While the English track is, technically, as official a version as the Japanese (and the Korean), this whole ordeal certainly reeks of "reverse importation" fears, which is finely underlined by that well-worded statement from Bandai Ent. Its somewhat understandable from a business standpoint, but regardless, it's a horrible one and disastrous from a foreign market and PR perspective. Since Gundam Unicorn will be getting a similar simultaneous treatment to Kurokami (the testing ground?), this doesn't necessarily bode well for it.
Thankfully many seemed to have read between the lines this time and didn't just jump on the subsidiary en masse. On the other hand, at least the DVD collection has a good episode count and price, and features the Japanese version as well (no Korean, though, which is disappointing since I was really looking forward to it). However, the North American Blu-ray edition is waste of space and potential. As good as the English language version is, it won't move anywhere near as many units as it could since most people will regard the release as "crippled" no matter what. |
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TJR
Posts: 223 |
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Yes, I definitely see this as more of a testing ground for future Blu-Ray releases. Kurokami itself is insignificant. The show tanked in Japan, and no one wants the DVDs/BDs anyway. As far as that title is concerned, there couldn't possibly be any fear of reverse importation. However, Kurokami may also be a chance to gauge consumer response (versus sub-only title, etc.) to this kind of release. |
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Kalessin
 Posts: 931 |
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Well, I really want BD releases, and I'm generally a dub fan, so I'm likely to buy Kurokami on BD, but it's not high on my list of shows to buy, particularly when there are so many other shows that I'm interested it.
What really worries me about this though is that it's mixing the dub-only issue and the BD issue. Not buying the BD because it doesn't have subs could be interpreted as the failure of Blu-ray at this point rather than the failure of dub-only releases (possibly leading to a slower adoption of Blu-ray by Bandai). On the other hand, buying the BD with no subs could be interpreted as supporting dub-only releases (possibly leading to more dub-only BD releases) - it certainly says that you're willing to buy BDs without subs. So, whether you buy the BDs or not, you're sending a mixed message. I fully expect that Bandai Entertainment will always be looking to do releases with both dubs and subs, but if dub-only BDs do well enough, then they may have a hard time convincing their superiors to allow the Japanese tracks on BDs. And if they don't, then we may see fewer BDs. One solution for fans will likely be to just watch the fansub releases of the BDs - some of them are bound to have the English audio from the Japanese release (at least one group that I'm aware of does). And if you want to be honest and pay for the anime, then you can buy either the DVDs and BDs and then just watch what you downloaded. All in all, this is a bad situation for those in R1, but if the higher-ups in the Japanese Bandai are screwing us, I'm not sure what we can do about it except yell at Bandai and not buy it (which either means not getting it or getting it illegally). It's just a bad situation all around. |
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Kalessin
Posts: 931 |
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Never underestimate fear. Many people - studio executives included - do stupid things due to fear. And fear of losing money is likely one of the biggest fears that studio executives have. The fact that the US is such a small part of their market doesn't help. As good a job as Funimation is doing these days with BDs and box releases and such, they've had plenty of problems in the past with fears of reverse importation. That's one of the reasons that many shows weren't released in boxed sets. I'm not sure if there are any shows that still suffer from that, but they definitely used to. The place where Funimation is definitely still suffering from it is with simulcasts. They're extremely lucky that they've been able to talk the Japanese into as much as they have with that. They had to work hard to get that to happen, and probably still have to work hard to keep it happening (the recent fiasco with One Piece being a prime example). And of course, the poor economy (both here and in Japan) likely doesn't help us any either. The Japanese executives are likely that much less willing to risk losing money from reverse importation - especially when the American market is so weak right now. I mean, as much as it screws us over, is it really going to hurt the Japanese studios much if we only get the English dub on the BDs in the US? Given the prices in Japan and the generally low sales here, it wouldn't take much in the way of reverse importation for the loss in Japanese sales to outweigh the gain in US sales. This just plain sucks for us, but it would not surprise me at all if it's actually a good business move for the Japanese. Maybe if Bandai were to wait to release the BDs here, then they could have both tracks and it wouldn't result in much reverse importation, but as it is, the Japanese are just too afraid of it to not screw us over. |
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Blood-
 Bargain Hunter Posts: 23769 |
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Pardon my potential ignorance here, but if Japanese companies wanted to do things that would make an R1 Blu-ray release less attractive for re-importation, couldn't they just insist that the English subtitles can't be turned off if the Japanese sound track is playing? It seems to me having subtitles in a foreign language on the screen would be a turn off. I know it would for me.
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samuelp
Industry Insider
Posts: 2231 Location: San Antonio, USA |
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That has in fact happened already on a number of releases (see the blu-ray thread on aod forums). It's not a trend I'd particularly encourage. What's the difference between that and hard subbing in the subtitles like they did with VHS? (okay, don't answer that, I'm well aware of encoding/bitrate issues, bla bla my point still stands). |
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 23769 |
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I made the suggestion based on what would be most appealing to the R1 customer base while still potentially easing re-importation fears. I can't imagine there are many R1 dvd purchasers who would care that English subtitles are inextricably married to the Japanese soundtrack. And they wouldn't appear on the English dub version, so dubbies wouldn't be affected, either.
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pparker
 Posts: 1185 Location: Florida |
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I realize you're trying to point to a solution. But what if you live in the U.S. and understand Japanese? You've once again excluded a segment of the market. These situations often lead to unusual half-solutions that just add to costs from complexity of manufacturing and marketing, and primarily result in aggravating customers. We just shouldn't be accepting a crippled product. (In this case, the hack would drive quicker breaking of the restriction and posting the DVDs online for download, even if they hard-coded the subs). Either release the U.S. BD versions with the same options as DVD (maybe pricing them much higher) or don't release them yet, period. If you absolutely lose money regardless by releasing on BD here because of reverse importation, then just don't do it now. In a year, or when the risk is low enough, release the BD's. Simple. As to pricing, I would much prefer to have the option to buy standard BD releases at twice the price, than to not have the option at all. Bandai would likely make more money, and save on production costs over having to re-release a real version later. No matter what cost (R1), the consumer cannot buy a sub version with HD video, even if they buy both versions. So charge me a bit over the combined price for both a DVD and a BD, and give me a standard BD release. Make sure the Japanese release has more exclusive extras to entice otaku, and that the U.S. release isn't cheap enough to warrant large scale reverse importation. You won't sell as many discs, but I would bet you could at least sell half as many as you would of crippled versions. Meaning you actually make the same profit, but you won't be losing goodwill and customers either. Once the reverse importation threat abates, lower the cost of BD's. The economic effect is the same as delaying the release, because then those who waited for price drops will buy it, except you did gain some revenue during the high-price period. And for god's sakes, EXPLAIN why you are doing it! Reasonable customers will support your decision, not attack it. Most shows from here on out will have dual releases, and I normally will wait now for the "standard" BD release, whenever that may be. DVD is over, on its death spiral. If there is truly no BD release in sight, I might still buy DVDs of shows I really like. I guess Bandai will find out soon enough whether BD buyers think similarly to me, but bluntly, I certainly hope this strategy fails. tl;dr = Sorry, no time to edit down: If you can't do it right, just don't do it. |
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PetrifiedJello
Posts: 3782 |
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First, my apologies if what I'm about to mention has already been addressed. I merely skimmed through the comments. Yesterday, while investigating an unrelated item, I came across the Blu-Ray reference chart of region coding and had noticed Japan is now sharing a region code with the United States. In addition, I visited the AnimeNation website and John addressed something very, very significant. Therefore, I'll modify the above statement for its possible true reasoning for the dub-only release:
Put in this new light, I'm going to have to agree with John's assessment. I had completely forgotten about the region coding and Bandai's position to release dub-only now makes perfect sense. This will be further enforced if Bandai should release Kurokami in standard DVD and it does come with Japanese audio. I guess time will tell. |
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einhorn303
 Posts: 1180 |
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I guess the real issue of this is a Japanese anime company saying, ¨Screw North American consumers, we don´t care about them. We´ll purposely screw them over as much as we need if it means protecting the domestic market.¨
Oh, there are many who would complain. I like anime, in no small part, due to the animation. Being able to turn subtitles off and just enjoy the visuals (with the dialogue memorized, usually) is important to my enjoyment of anime. If my Gunbuster 2/Diebuster DVD´s had forced subtitles, that would really put me off. And when it was done with Ghost in the Shell, there was a lot of controversy. Also, foreign subtitles can´t completely ruin anime for all Japanese viewers. I´ve seen a number of Japanese MADs where the source is clearly from hardsubbed fansub releases. Apparently for some non-tech savvy Japanese it´s easier to find pirated English fansubs than just TV rips. |
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 23769 |
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I stand corrected!  Hmm, it's funny - as a North American, I'm used to being in the primary market for whatever entertainment I happen to be consuming. It's illuminating (although not terribly fun) to be on the other side for once: in a secondary market that is adversely affected by considerations in the primary market.
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Dargonxtc
 Posts: 4463 Location: Nc5xd7+ スターダストの海洋 |
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The issue here is two pronged. Yes, the BD is dub only (I prefer bilingual releases myself, prefer dubs). But that is not the most significant issue. The significant issue here is the reduction in episode count. Here is why. If the Japanese really just wanted to quell the tide of reverse importation then all they had to do was remove the Japanese audio and remove the English and Japanese language subtitles. Every Japanese foreign exchange student and young businessmen that I have meet (among the best English speakers that fit the anime age category, not expatriates) prefer to still have English subtitles on when they are watching movies and other such media. See, even though the average Japanese are more adept at English then their American counterparts are at (let's say) Spanish, they still on average are not very good. When English speakers start talking fast, like in movies and TV, they tend to only catch the key phrases, but not much in between. They tend to do much better when they can read along. Yes, there are Japanese in Japan that are fluent in English. But fluent being the operative word here, they are few and far between among those who would choose to watch something in English without either Japanese or English subtitling for entertainment.
So what is Bandai doing here? If reverse importation was that much of a concern then it could have been virtually nullified by just having dub-only release. But they didn't stop there, they reduced the episode count. It's silly, it's stupid, it's overkill. They said they didn't have the license to the foreign track on the Blu-ray release, that means the episode count decision between the Japanese and their American counterparts was probably made with a little spite, a little ignorance, and a little desperation. It's a trifecta. It's not just a slap in the face for American fans. It's a kick in the crotch as well. |
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