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NEWS: Pied Piper Licenses Skip Beat! Anime, Plans Crowdfunding for Release With English Dub

srlracing wrote:

Gemnist wrote: Hope this gets done; the more English dubs out there the better. Now if only the Time of Eve anime series got a dub/licensing... Pied Piper dubbed the movie which is available through Right Stuf http://www.rightstufanime.com/Time-of-Eve-The-Movie-Blu-ray-Hyb-Soundtrack-CD and I have to say it is a really great dub.

I was referring to the ONA series, not the movie. I already knew the movie was dubbed.

The Time of EVE dub was really top notch, and the way Pied Piper handled the Kickstarter really impressed me with their attention to customer cares and concerns.

I know next to nothing about Skip Beat, but I'm willing to back it just to help support the company. Count me in.

Shoujo anime does not sell well.

Makes me quite happy - shoujo anime gets so little attention with western anime fans I didn't even know most of these shows had anime adaptations.

Megiddo wrote:

I wouldn't agree that shoujo is a poor seller (just look at Fruits Basket). However, Skip Beat is not your average shoujo title. Romance takes a backseat (in the anime at least) in favor of the main character's actual developing a talent. It's much closer to Kaleido Star (albeit the seemingly-unreachable senpai for Skip Beat is male instead of female) than any average shoujo title, and I wouldn't be surprised if Kaleido Star being a poor seller made companies hesitant to license Skip Beat.

Shoujo anime is definitely more likely to be a poor seller than other genres. Many people watch/read the series, yes... But they often don't actually put the money forward. Since they're often longer and cost more money to produce as a result of that, theyre often ignored by licensors entirely

A bunch of series that got licensed didn't get completed or got rushed final volumes for that reason. Corrector Yui and Glass Mask sold so poorly they never finished releasing them and Saint Tail had a sub-only multidisc final volume to quickly complete the series, for instance. Shugo Chara was ignored for YEARS and still doesn't have a physical release. No Pretty Cure was ever released in the US until Netflix took the plunge last December, despite there being a Canadian-made English dub for the first series. It just doesn't make enough money in the US. -Which is really annoying when you like shoujo.

Then the shoujo boom exploded at the turn of the century, especially shoujo manga at bookstores where middle- and high-schooler manga cows grazed. [...]

Also, what's up with not including links to the campaign in the article? I had to Google it. =\ https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/skip-beat-anime-english-dub-for-north-america/coming_soon

I don't believe the reasons you state are true. Lately, there's been very few long shoujo series. Meanwhile, there are multiple ongoing shounen series that at this point feel like they've been running since the dawn of time: Naruto, Gintama, Fairy Tail, One Piece. Meanwhile, series like Ouran High School host club has been quite a success, at least for an anime in America. I'd personally like to see some numbers.

Also, what's up with not including links to the campaign in the article? I had to Google it. =\ https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/skip-beat-anime-english-dub-for-north-america/coming_soon

Huh? No they didn't. Skip Beat! was never licensed for a physical release.

Just saw the campaign preview. Definitely will be backing. Thrilled it'll be on BD as I don't think it's ever been released on BD before. Japanese release was DVD only and I'm pretty sure the French release is also DVD only.

Hope there's enough fans for this to work. I don't personally care about a dub, but I know that's a big motivator for a lot of fans so it'd be nice to see it accomplished. The dub is also required for release, which explains why Sentai never picked this up for a sub only release. TV Tokyo requires a dub for this show.

Hope it is OK to jump in... This is Ann from Pied Piper (I'm showing up as Directions because I used to be part of Directions, the producers of Time of EVE.) "Why not release it as sub only?" Because TV Tokyo, the licensor, has always believed that Skip Beat! needs to reach the widest audience possible, and so the dub is the condition of the license. No dub, no license. I commend TV Tokyo for taking a stand on the series. It wasn't an easy decision, but I love this series, and I believe in the fan base. So I decided to step up to the plate and take on the license. And, TV Tokyo decided to trust me to take this title directly to fans through crowdfunding.