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I am a little surprised no one has mentioned what I consider one of the worst offenders, Shaman King.

It was a major Shonen Jump title. The series was no where near as long as even MAR or D Gray man, I think it was about 60 episodes.

It got 2 single dvd releases, with 4 episodes each, and that is it. Then again maybe people don't even know it was released at all.

Air Master is another one that comes to mind, and Slam Dunk as well.

With regards to Kodocha, I don't think the second season is bad, but I am disappointed that they changed the ending. The manga ending or should I say final arc was pretty epic.

Pure Fault wrote:

If you get a DVD player that's been out long enough, you may be able to find the program menu code online. It's usually just a number code you enter on the remote while the disc tray is open or while there's no disc inserted, and it'll take you to a menu where you can select the region, or just set it to region 0 to play any DVD.

I think that VLC can generally play DVDs from any region, provided the hardware doesn't enforce region locking. I haven't tried this myself, though.

Ditto on what everyone's said about Mermaid Melody (It would be nice to see that one released someday if possible since most of the work is already done, same thing for Full Moon.) And I believe almost everyone would love to see a release of ALL of Sailor Moon here in the US again!

And like someone else mentioned, as bad as 4Kids was, there was a LOT of really great anime that they had their hands on that I wish could've gotten a complete release (or even any release at all!) By biggest beef is with Tokyo Mew Mew, they only gave the US a little less than half of the series on TV before dropping it (I think they actually couldn't get the rest of it for some reason. Merchandising perhaps?) and never released any of it to DVD! In a few other countries they released more of the episodes as well as the ones they had on DVD. And I think in France a company even picked up the 2nd half of the series for release on DVD as well. And as much as Mew Mew was cut, it supposedly did quite well for 4Kids during it's short broadcast. I'm a Mew Mew fan through and through and would love to see an official release of the entire series!

And all this magical girl talk reminds me...does anyone know why Shugo Chara was never picked up by anyone???

At least Shaman King got a complete dub that aired on the FoxBox/4Kids TV, and was quite popular on TV here. Those single DVD releases contained a different dub with the same cast that was uncut, but the releases were canceled either for low sales or FUNimation and 4Kids' terminated contract. Yu-Gi-Oh!'s uncut release was also aborted, but at least it was able to squeeze out a third volume (a 4th volume was solicited though. Shaman King I think had volumes 3 and 4 solicited as well).

I communicated with Tom Wayland (the ADR director of Mew Mew Power) through Facebook a few years ago. He confirmed the dub was canceled because 4Kids could not get a merchandise deal for the show, despite high ratings (he said toy companies thought 52 episodes was too short). 26 episodes (out of 52) were dubbed, but only 23 aired here. All 26 aired overseas (many foreign dubs were based on ours, and most also ended at ep. 26). Unfortunately the dub even ended with a "To Be Continued" blurb...

In another universe, 4Kids would have teamed up with Studio Pierrot and produce another season of Tokyo Mew Mew to make the property look more attractive to toy companies. After all, it was a hit for them, and they also helped produce more episodes of Yu-Gi-Oh!, Ultimate Muscle, and Sonic X after the shows were successful for them.

I still have hope Tokyo Mew Mew would be rescued by another company and properly dubbed. My money is on Sentai or Maiden Japan. The manga was a hit for Tokyopop, enough to be picked up and re-issued by Kodansha USA in FAR superior omnibus editions! Maybe Kodansha USA will get into licensing anime...

Magical girl shows not named Sailor Moon usually don't do very well here (Tokyo Mew Mew / Mew Mew Power is a rare exception). No one probably wanted to take a chance on Shugo Chara.

I appreciate FUNI taking a chance with Conan, but it's just too long for even the most die hard collectors. I hope they're willing to bring us more of the movies (at least the 10th anniversary film).

I enjoy Funimation's releases and i do believe they are a great company but they are incredibly fickle. They will re release Dragonball Z every so many years and then cancel the release mid way. The only one's they finished was the Dragon Boxes and the Orange Brick season sets. But yet they left Shin Chan out to die(which is a shame because the show is easily one of the funniest Anime's licensed in North America)Also lets not forget Kodocha not selling up to expectations. I personally believe Funimation sets their expectations way to high.

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They've failed to finish up their business here and there—Queen Emeraldas comes to mind, but that's another case where the first two episodes and the second two episodes are owned by separate licensors. Also, the second two episodes are absolute rubbish.

Or there's the Happy Lesson OVA, where ADV released the first three episodes, but not the last two. I don't know if there was some licensor/contract change, or if the 11-month gap in the Japanese release between eps 3 and 4 had something to do with ADV's incomplete release. Sad thing is that ADV's release only has two unique episodes, since OVA 1 was remade as ep 1 of the TV series. And eps 4 and 5 aren't significantly worse than the previous ones, either.

EricJ2 wrote:

Think Kodocha suffered the same fate as a few other shows:
Funi had bought it believing they were going to hitch the cart to the horse and drive the dub on into a cable-broadcast deal (hence the JP-free OP credits), the deal never happened, and they shot the horse...Who needs another ungrateful mouth to feed on disk?

Doesn't Funi remove the Japanese text and replace it with English for pretty much all their OP/ED sequences, though? Or at least that's what they do when clean OP/ED materials are available; otherwise, they'll freeze-frame, shrink, distort, or messily overlay the Japanese video to shoehorn English credits in.

GATSU wrote:

I like how the column ignores the elephant in the room, which is that American fans were more willing to pirate Kodocha than pay for it legally.

There is some truth to that, although the pirated versions available for Kodocha were/are hardly a better version than the official release -- they're sub-480p rips of HKDVDs whose subs range from "just above mediocre" to terrible. I still bought all the singles as they came out, despite having the whole show downloaded and still unseen. Other factors include the general underperformance of shoujo anime, and the fact that they were trying to sell a 1996 anime in 2005-07... right about when all the cutting-edge new series were starting to become available in widescreen ultra-awesome station-upscaled "HD"TV fansubs.

CrownKlown wrote:

With regards to Kodocha, I don't think the second season is bad, but I am disappointed that they changed the ending. The manga ending or should I say final arc was pretty epic.

How could the anime studio change an ending that didn't exist? The manga ended in November '98, while the TV series only lasted until March '98. Imo the second half was okay, although like Marmalade Boy it is dragged down by a filler "New York Arc," and the ending obviously isn't conclusive.

Mune wrote:

...Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha movies, and Nanoha StrikerS...

The StrikerS season of MGL Nanoha, I really want to see (if anyone will ever try finding a way around that licensing issue...). The movies are mere bonuses to me since they're basically condensed rehashes of Season 1 and A's, if I correctly recall.
Of course, even if the third season of MGL Nanoha never comes to fruition in the U.S., I always have the manga version of it to take care of that. Smile

Zalis116 wrote:

Doesn't Funi remove the Japanese text and replace it with English for pretty much all their OP/ED sequences, though? Or at least that's what they do when clean OP/ED materials are available; otherwise, they'll freeze-frame, shrink, distort, or messily overlay the Japanese video to shoehorn English credits in.

It has always been very routine for them to replace the Japanese credits with English ones. At the time they released Kodocha, this was REGARDLESS on if they had the right materials to do that. Now, if they don't have them, they just do the "ending scroll," but otherwise have proper English credits when they can. Also at the time when Kodocha was released, they produced English covers of 90% of the songs in their anime.

Let us not forget the horrendous Mermaid Melody incident... ADV Films had the rights to release it in North America, even dubbed the entire series... But it was never released due to not getting a TV deal.

Also, I am always screaming for a re-translating and "undubbing" of Tokyo Mew Mew, Shaman King, and even Yu-Gi-Oh!. Now that 4Kids is basically gone... Someone? Please??

I actually just sold my two complete season sets of Sgt. Frog. I kept them in the hopes that Funimation would release more, but I highly doubt it.

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I like how the column ignores the elephant in the room, which is that American fans were more willing to pirate Kodocha than pay for it legally.

Or the other elephant in the room, the fact that the Funimation subtitles were vastly inferior to the fan subtitled version.

People ask me why I hate the US licensed anime DVD industry...Kodomo no Omocha is a perfect example of why. The licensing of the series immediately put a bullet in the back of the head of the superb job John P. and the Kodocha Anime crew were doing of subtitling the series. We then got a mediocre release of the first half of the show from Funimation, with little hope of ever seeing the rest of it released.

Then there's the announcement that Bandai/Anime Village were going to release Giant Gorg and Layzner on DVD. I've heard the rumors about it being killed due to substandard source materials being provided, but it doesn't change the fact that neither series is available in the US to this day, and that the premature announcement of their licensing set fan subtitling of both shows back by a decade.

I do buy US DVDs...there are quite a few series (Captain Harlock, Famous Detective Holmes, Dunbine and many others) that I'm delighted to own on R1 DVD. But there are also many others (His & Her Circumstances and the Studio Ghibli catalog come to mind) where the "official" DVD releases feature subtitles that are vastly inferior to the fan subtitled versions. I'd love to give those companies my money if they just did a better job.

Speaking of Funimation and unfinished series, what the heck is up with the last two episodes of Hellsing Ultimate? OVA 8 was released here I think at the end of 2012, and since then not so much as a license announcement for 9 and 10 which were released 1-2 years ago. It's hard to imagine them leaving this unfinished, but I just hope they don't sit on their hands until they have to recast the whole thing because everyone is no longer available.

As a manga fan, I kind of think I have it way worse. For example, the following series were cut short as a result of company shut down:

Cromartie High School
Future Diary
Song of the Hanging Sky
Pet Shop of Horrors: Tokyo
Hotel Africa
From Eroica with Love
Swan
Demon Sacred
Two Flowers for the Dragon
Ginga Legend Weed
Moyashimon

And these were left due to the company not caring, not making enough money, or it being on permanent hiatus in Japan.

Zatch Bell
Gintama
Eden: It's an Endless World (maybe? They seem to change their mind and release a volume every couple years now)
Beet the Vandel Buster
Flunk Punk Rumble
Scary Book
Museum of Terror
Club 9 (and this one was even completely translated in super manga blast!)

And this is just the start! And sure, with anime, one or two singles out of 4 or 6 might be hard to find, but with manga, it can be 5 to 8 volumes out of 20+, it's even harder to collect oop manga!

But yeah, I do wish that even a quick box set shove would occur. It just seems strange to me if it's all dubbed.

@classicalzawa: With Zatch Bell, I think Viz stopped publishing it due to Makoto Raiku's lawsuit with Shogakukan and move to Kodansha; hopefully, Kodansha USA will pick it up. On the subject of Viz droppings, I really wish they hadn't dropped Koukou Tekken-den TOUGH; that's a super fun manga.

And don't get me started on OOP manga; I spent $140 on three volumes of Saint Seiya. The rest of the series together cost me less than that!

Onto anime, I really hate what Media Blasters did with Squid Girl. First, they announce that the first series will be released on two DVD sets. Then, they later announce the Squid Girl BD set for the whole first series. I'm assuming most folks did what I did and opted not to buy the second DVD set or the BD set; that's probably what led to MB not releasing the second season.

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