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Funimation's Darker Than Black License Expires

Funimation had the licence for 8 years? That's how long licences last generally.

Chances are nobody recalled the licence, nobody screwed up, nobody spent money buying it back off them, it probably just ran the scheduled length of it's contract.

It's a shame it expired, but these licences don't last forever, and I fail to see why anyone was expecting it to. Nobody needs to starts slagging Aniplex off for something they probably didn't do.

There's quite a bit of ignorance going on in this thread, which I guess is something one can expect when it comes to industry matters, but no, AoA is not "stealing" or forcibly taking any shows. AoA most likely doesn't even have anything to do with this.

Possible options for these events could be that AoJ either wants more money for renewal of license, don't want to license out the show at all, or Funimation doesn't want to renew the license themselves.

Percival King wrote:

Why the f*ck are these dickstains still in business? ...Oh. Wait, I know. Cause people still keep buying crap from them blindly! Sorry, but no. I've given this whole argument pause, but frankly, it's all bullshit. If you buy stuff from AoA, you're doing more damage than piracy ever did.

Oh yeah, quit buying stuff from AoA who offers the best disc quality in the US market as well as the most widespread streaming options and who's parent company actually produces anime, i'm sure that will accomplish great things for the English fandom .

...that's it? Somewhat brighter, a bit more color banding visible, none of which you're going to remotely notice anyway when the shot is actually in motion? Yeah, I'll gladly take those if it means paying a sane amount to own my Japanese cartoons, thank you very much.

Seriously though, if people are that anal-retentive about their video quality, to the point that they're willing to pay a few hundred dollars for a single television series, I don't know what to tell them, but I do sincerely pity them.

*Not putting subs on the special features of releases AoA will import (And said extras not coming to the domestic release), being responsible for the ridiculous import pricing (I'm talking about Amazon Japan vs. Rightstuf)

Sure they've got video quality down (And that's only because Aniplex Japan is doing that work for them), but they have other issues that are worth addressing, they're not that good, and have gotten worse the past couple of years. For example, lately many people that are fluent in Japanese have had issues with their more recent translations, and some are so botched that even those that don't know Japanese can tell there's issues.

Then there's also the issue of them cutting out JP extras from the JP releases of many shows, something they used to not do that much.

And I could keep going. Are they better than the competition in many ways? Yes, absolutely, but they're far from being the best and aren't as good as they used to be. I'm tired of people acting like they're gods.

{Deleted by nobahn}

To you you think you won't notice that in motion, but for people like me, the difference is very clear, especially on Gargantia which in particularly looks poor. Not all R1 releases suck (There are plenty of releases with good to great video quality (And sometimes manage to beat JP releases Ex: Patlabor TV), with some problems, many times inherited from the source), but when they really suck, they really suck and it's very distracting (This looks even worse in motion, it's far less noticeable from just still screenshots).

Just because you don't have a problem doesn't mean there is no problem. This concept sadly is going over so many people's heads these days it's absolutely depressing.

I'll make it no secret that I own a lot of anime. Like, a lot of anime. (And that's not even fully up-to-date. *sigh*)

You should show off your anime collection on shelf-life or something. I'd love to see many pictures of your set up. I'm pretty big on collecting myself. It's always fun seeing other peoples' material goods.

I just deleted 2 posts. When a moderator says for people to calm down and 2 people to stop arguing that does not mean for other posters to make flame bait posts continuing the argument topic and poking at the users who were warned. That means everyone drops it. Not further antagonize users, or the situation, who cannot respond because they were told not to.

Given Darker Than Black was a big title for FUNi, it seems rather strange it'd go OOP, they also lost S2. What seems most likely at this point is Aniplex is blocking companies/forcing companies to lose their Aniplex titles. At this point it's possible FUNimation may even lose Fullmetal Alchemist despite how successful that's been (Just like Darker Than Black, albeit not nearly on the same scale).

Emerje wrote:

I'm not talking about full transparency, but when Crunchyroll loses a title they let people know in advance so they can watch it before it's gone.

Crunchyroll does sometimes lose titles without it being announced. There was no notice about the later two seasons of Hell Girl being removed, for instance, yet another casualty of expired Aniplex licenses.

Percival King wrote:

If you cease all monetary transactions with these fermented sausages, you will bleed their business dry. When their business dries up, they will have to close up their American subsidiary and revert to resorting to selling licenses to other companies.

Or they'll just stop caring about the US market entirely. Just like Bandai did for years after they closed down their US anime distribution arm.

Plus, even when another company does buy a license, it could be years before it gets released by that new company in the US. Funimation licensed Code Geass in 2013 and still haven't released it in Region One.

It's already very clear that AoA doesn't mind doing that. I suspect that AoJ is partially using them for that exact purpose. AoA's titles aren't reverse imported like most other publishers stuff for a reason. If they can control as many of their own titles as possible, and release only the ones that they think will be profitable for them, that is a total win-win for them, but a HUGE loss for the NA market. We won't get niche title releases from them. That's what is driving my rage.

-Gurren Lagann is missing many video extras, and the Blu-rays are entirely barebones (As they're the JP discs, and the extras were on their own disc in the BD box) and are missing ALL of the extras we at least had on the Bandai DVD's and AoA's very own DVD LE. Also, not extras-related but I heard they tried to wipe away Bandai's credits (They did most of the work for here already) and make it seem like Bandai had not a single thing to do with the show.

ShanaFan852 wrote:

Given Darker Than Black was a big title for FUNi, it seems rather strange it'd go OOP, they also lost S2. What seems most likely at this point is Aniplex is blocking companies/forcing companies to lose their Aniplex titles. At this point it's possible FUNimation may even lose Fullmetal Alchemist despite how successful that's been (Just like Darker Than Black, albeit not nearly on the same scale).

I don't get it. How exactly does this benefit Aniplex in any way? Or is it just a demonstration of control?

ShanaFan852 wrote:

-Gurren Lagann is missing many video extras, and the Blu-rays are entirely barebones (As they're the JP discs, and the extras were on their own disc in the BD box) and are missing ALL of the extras we at least had on the Bandai DVD's and AoA's very own DVD LE. Also, not extras-related but I heard they tried to wipe away Bandai's credits (They did most of the work for here already) and make it seem like Bandai had not a single thing to do with the show.

Wait, so their release of Gurren Lagann has no English dub? I loved that dub. It was a big part of what I associate with the show.

I mean, at Kyle Hebert's panels, people STILL constantly request Kamina lines from him. Way more so than some other, more iconic roles of his, like Ryu in Street Fighter or Aizen in Bleach.

Yoko Goes to Gainax - Study Animation at Gainax, Sazigen 3DCG Test Animation Footage, Creative Staff Interview, Shokotan Interview

Gurren Lagann Parallel Works Music Videos, Gurren Lagann Parallel Works Music Videos 2, Gurren Lagann Kirameki*Yoko Box -Pieces of Sweet Stars-, Eve of Gurren Lagann the Movie Event footage, Special Drama "Viral's Sweet Dream," Yoko Goes to Gainax - Study Animation at Gainax, "It's Summertime! Drills! Gurren Lagann Festival!!", Sazigen 3DCG Test Animation Footage, Interview with Marina Inoue (Yoko), "Believe in the answer that you believe in!! Gurren Lagann Quiz Contest!", Childhood's End Premier Event Documentary, The Lights in the Sky Are Stars Event Documentary, Voices - Testimony of 26 people - Staff Interviews, Original Sound Source of "Gurren Lagann Parallel Works 2" and "Kirameki*Yoko Box -Pieces of Sweet Stars-".