I’m sure everybody’s heard the big news, and most have already blogged about it, but I thought I’d do my share anyway =) Yup, one of the most popular anime series’ of 2006, The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi(Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu) has been licensed in the US by Bandai and Kadokawa Pictures.
I wasn’t really following the details of it, but apparently about a week ago, a strange web site popped up that appeared to be the site of the American licenser, but it didn’t say who that was. For the next few days, fans were working hard trying to decipher the coding used to make the site in order to help find out who the mystery licenser could possibly be. Then finally, yesterday Bandai and Kadokawa revealed themselves on the site, respectively titled ASOS Brigade. Pretty much the only thing on the site now is their promotional video, which features a couple of the Japanese voice actors, as well as Patricia Lee as Haruhi(she plays the Pink Ranger in one of the Power Ranger series’) introducing The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi to American fans and talking a little about its licensing in the US. Nothing much is said about the English cast, and I don’t know whether Patricia Lee will actually provide Haruhi’s dub voice of if she was only used in the promotional video. But anyway, I’ll definitely enjoy finding out more info about the English version as it’s released ^_^ The whole vague web site and mystery licenser thing was quite a tactic by Bandai and Kadokawa to get fans hyped up about the US release of this popular series!
As for how I feel about it, I wasn’t 100% sure that Haruhi would get licensed in the US. Even though it’s extremely popular, it’s only popular among hardcore anime fans; it’s target audience is obviously otaku…it doesn’t have the mainstream potential of shows like Naruto and Bleach. But in spite of that, since it’s so immensely popular in the fansub community, that was apparently a good enough reason for a US release =) Though I liked the series a lot, I’m not one of the major fans…but I definitely wouldn’t mind owning the series on R1 DVDs ^_^ Hopefully they’ll do justice to the dub, but even if they don’t, there’s no doubt the DVDs will provide Japanese w/subtitles as well. I doubt they’ll be able to find an English VA with talent to match Aya Hirano, but you never know =P
Oh, and if there’s anyone reading this who hasn’t watched fansubs of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and doesn’t know what the heck I’m talking about, you can find some general info about it here on Anime News Network and AnimeNfo.com. Don’t let these sites’ simple descriptions fool you…the series is a lot more unique and complex than it sounds ^^
Well, guess there isn’t much more for me to say about this that hasn’t already been said. I for one am excited about Haruhi’s US release. Not only because we’ll probably be seeing more Haruhi merchandise at easier access in the US market, but we need more unique and less mainstream series’ like this one to be released in America in order to hopefully show the vast number of ignorant Americans how special anime is =)
Wait. . .Haruhi was licensed? No way.
Sorry, someone had to do it. Bad joke aside, I’m planning to buy the DVD’s as they are released, which is unusual for because I usually wait for boxsets.
I feel a lot of my boxset purchasing brethren will do the same.