anime English versions

A possible method for combating anime piracy

January 26, 2011 by Yumeka 57 Comments

As many of us are aware, a couple of incidents involving Funimation and anime piracy have recently come up. The first incident involved the halting of Funimation’s simulcast of Fractale by the anime’s production committee until Funimation put a stop to illegal uploads of the series (after a week’s delay, it was just announced that the simulcast will resume this Monday). The second incident involved Funimation suing 1,337 bittorrent users who downloaded a fansub file of One Piece episode 481. A recent post by Ultimatemegax got me thinking about possible ways to combat anime piracy in this day and age of streaming and torrents…

Pokemon Black and White English release preview post

January 24, 2011 by Yumeka 18 Comments

BLACKWHITE by ほう

It’s now a little over a month until Pokemon Black and White make their American debut on March 6th (and, for the first time, Europe will be getting the games two days before America on March 4th). Bits of info have been trickling in about the English release, particularly the English names of characters, places, items, and other aspects of the games…

Thoughts on dubbed anime

November 10, 2010 by Yumeka 46 Comments

Fruits Basket – one of the best dubs ever

Despite what we may think nowadays, the majority of us got our start with anime through dubs on TV, whether it was shows like Astro Boy and Voltron in the old days, Pokemon and Dragon Ball in the semi-old days, or Cowboy Bebop and Inuyasha in the newer days. Ever since anime began to be recognized as a medium that should be separated from typical cartoons and not necessarily be edited and Americanized, most non-kids anime, especially DVD-only releases, have had dubs that stay faithful to the Japanese script. So what is it about dubbed anime that spawns so much debate?…

Is anime going to die?

April 30, 2010 by Yumeka 25 Comments

I’m sure many of you have read a recent editorial posted on Bang Zoom!’s Anime TV web site. The relatively short article (which can be read here) consists of Bang Zoom! president Eric Sherman’s bleak prediction of the future of anime – that the continuation of illegal downloads will bring about the demise of the industry.

I don’t have the time or patience to read through the nearly 200 comments on the post, nor the many comments about it on other sites. So I’m just going to discuss my own thoughts about it here…

Haruhi Suzumiya English version novels review

October 27, 2009 by Yumeka 7 Comments

Yen Press and Little, Brown Books for Young Readers released the official English version of the first Haruhi Suzumiya light novel, “The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya,” in April of this year. Volume 2, “The Sigh of Haruhi Suzumiya,” recently came out earlier this month. I’ve purchased and read both of them, so I figured it’s time for a review…

Nostalgia: Rewatching Digimon Adventure in Japanese

September 20, 2009 by Yumeka 19 Comments

Back when I first became an anime fan about 10 years ago, I didn’t have cable TV or high-speed Internet, so I was stuck with watching mostly Americanized “kiddy” anime on local channels. Thinking back, many of these series were pretty dispensable. However, Digimon was one of my early favorites that I still enjoy even to this day…

Veteran Pokemon voice actress Maddie Blaustein passes away

December 17, 2008 by Yumeka 5 Comments

Earlier today it was announced that English anime VA Maddie Blaustein, most famous for her role as Meowth in 4Kids’ dub of Pokemon, passed away unexpectedly last Thursday at the age of 48…

Fansubs and what the R1 industry needs to do

August 8, 2008 by Yumeka 3 Comments

This has been a pretty hot topic amongst the English speaking anime world lately, especially with the collapse of Geneon and with ADV barely holding on. Now I don’t know much about business, licensing, finance, etc., nor about the inner workings of US anime companies. However, from what I’ve seen being an American anime fan for almost ten years, I definitely know that there are some things that need to be done in order to help the R1 anime industry recover, outdo fansubs, and to also please the majority of fans…

Bleach movie: Memories of Nobody US theatrical release

June 13, 2008 by Yumeka 4 Comments

Last night I went with my one of my friends to see the US theatrical premier of the first Bleach movie at a theater in Woodland Hills, CA. Like the US premier of the Death Note live-action movies back in May, Viz premiered the English dub of the Bleach movie for two nights (June 11th and 12th) at a few select theaters across the country…

Anime is a luxury…

September 16, 2007 by Yumeka

I could’ve used this money to pay off my debts…

From what I’ve seen during my years of anime fandom, there are generally two kinds of fans; those who mostly watch their anime by buying the official DVDs and those who mostly watch their anime via fansubs. Putting the limited amount of anime aired on English TV aside, DVDs and fansubs are really the only other sources for watching anime. But I’ve noticed that some fans who are dedicated to buying the official DVDs (and may also have morals which put them against downloading fansubs) have a poor respect and think little of fans who only download fansubs and don’t support the anime market by buying the DVDs. Since I’m one of those fans who watches almost all my anime via fansubs, I want to point out the main reason why I do so and don’t buy the DVDs when they come out; I’d like to buy them, but I simply can’t afford it…