Toonzone Talkback - FUNimation Licenses "Vampire Bund" and "Baka and Test"

Very, very, VERY recommended. It's very hard for me to find anime gut-bustingly funny and this is one of them (probably the only other ones are Gintama and Seto no Hanayome). A lot of the humor really revolves around the Easter eggs and stuff that happens to the main character.
 
On the editing: Of all the titles I would've expected Funimation to spend some of their fan-approval on, a weaker Shaft title that shares parallels with a previous Shaft title that wasn't that successful for them (Moonphase), didn't strike me as a likely candidate. Still, while I understand fully why they'd cover their bases, they probably would've been better off finding some way of not having to take the title on.

Bund seems like something Media Blasters would've knocked out uncut with subs-only, and relative to their adult catalog, wouldn't be that controversial. If anyone tried to bring them up on obscenity charges, they could use shipment data to prove that in probably any given locality in the US, they've pushed out worse to enough people to get the case thrown out (Kite's shipment data alone would probably get them out of any trouble.) It's also bizarre because the manga has made it's way over into bookstores mixed the rest of the manga unwrapped and rated a mere 16+/Older Teen, and the manga is pretty intense too from what I've seen of it.

Oh well, I wasn't going to buy it anyway, but I hope this doesn't be come a crutch for Funimation. Last thing they need to do is have this become some standard means of getting less than interesting lolicon titles into the states. It burns up fan respect for nothing.
 
FUNimation has been uploading all the shows on their site to You Tube and Hulu two weeks after they premiere on FUNimation's Video Player. They haven't announced any of the shows except for FMA: Brotherhood that way, but it seems that will be FUNi's typical practice from here on.

Baka and Test has me interested solely because the avatars are so funny and the characters are so unpredictable. The test system they are using is also an interesting concept, and having a teacher off to drag them to remedial studies if they lose all of their avatars health is classic. I almost wis a real computer avatar were so simple.
 
I'm betting that Vampire Bund isn't necessarily something they wanted to have, but something they HAD to have because of contracts.

That being said I haven't watched the anime beyond the first two episodes, and while I understand their reasoning for editing the anime I think this is going to hurt whatever sales FUNi would get out of the title. Unless they're going to shoot for a younger demographic (a teen demo instead of the adult demo) this doesn't make a lot of sense.

But I think FUNi's going to shoot for the teen demo in this one, and try to make it their Vampire Knight. Good luck to them with that, I suppose.
 
I'll tell you one thing. This news sure has brought more than a few true characters to light.

"It's not like I was watching this for the deep story since it sucked big time. I wanted my bare loli chests and now it's ruined! Screw you FUNi"

..is just a standard example of such a quote.
 
Makes me feel bad for those people who are truly against this in principal regardless of content. Some people will admit to being angry for shallow reasons but who knows how many people are crying censorship to disguise the fact that they're just pissed they lost fanservice material, not to mention the people who just hate FUNi period and can't wait to dog-pile them at any opportunity. Wait, what am I saying! Of course this is all a noble fight against censorship with no other intentions!
 
Regardless of one's main reason for not wanting Bund edited, it's still censorship, which is bad because you're not getting the full product as expected, and as has been mentioned, FUNi's basically telling you what's offensive instead of letting the consumer decide for themselves, which in and of itself is pretty offensive.

Plus, it's a potential slippery slope. If they edit scenes in Bund (and keep in mind, FUNi hasn't made it clear exactly WHAT will be edited; everyone's just assuming it will be the loli-looking main character's nudity, but Taekmkm mentioned other scenes as well), what's to stop them from making other edits on future shows? They may eventually get to something you DO care about. And it doesn't even have to be nudity/sex we're hypothetically talking about, either.

And, according to the quote from FUNi: "we have determined the series contains controversial elements which, when taken out of context, could be objectionable to some audiences." But context is everything! You can take ANYTHING out of context and make it look bad.

AND, as has been mentioned over at AOD (where their thread on this topic is much, much longer- not making value judgments on us, just stating a fact), this is going to look bad for FUNi because now every time a new license is announced, the fans are going to wonder if it's uncut or not. For a long time, FUNi worked to build a good reputation after their apparently less-than-stellar early days. And it worked, and that's part of why they're #1. But a move like this could throw all that work out the window.

I'm not going to boycott all of FUNi's titles or anything, but I'll be avoiding this particular release on principle. (Well, that and the fact that, like I already said, I wasn't really that interested in it anyway, but even if I was, I'd be avoiding it)
 
I can't say that I'm worried about the slippery slope angle. We do have the years of uncut releases to look back on, and they've released titles like Afro Samurai and, more recently, Rin. What puzzles me is that in terms of content Rin is supposedly beyond Vampire Bund, just as Vampire Bund is supposed to be edgier than FUNimation's other releases (I'm taking this on the word of others, mind you--I haven't seen either and don't care to). That's the one part of this that I have difficulty understanding.

In any event, it seems pretty clear that they consider Vampire Bund a very special case. But I think that if a company thinks that they have to edit a show to make it acceptable, they might as well not bother.
 
I never said it wasn't, just pointing out a couple hollow reasons for why some people have decided to "Fight the Good Fight" against censorship. If people want to say intentions don't matter and we welcome as many people on the Justice Train as can fit, hey that's great, All Aboard! but watching some people put on the cloak of nobility for less than noble reasons leaves me underwhelmed with the process as a whole. But hey, again, that's just me.
 
I don't get why they had to take a package deal on it really. They're the biggest player in this market, they should be in the position of telling their Japanese partners "we're going to take a hit on this if we've got to buy this, and that'll be bad for both of us in the long term - shop it to someone else." Maybe they're editing explicitly because it won't sell then, and they can tell anime producers with hard nurabers that this stuff doesn't work in the US.
 
First of all, I think if they were editing BakaTest, they would have said it in the article.

Second, if they dare edit Hideyoshi, they shall know fear and terror.
 
Think about it, if they don't edit BakaTest, that's just one step closer of Boku no Pico being licensed on the near future.

You don't want that, do you?
 
My fInal Verdict on the Situation for.....

THE BUND ULTIMATIUM!!!

(has a Nice ring no)

but yea, I dedicate my rant to the Funi Forums, in all their overreaction & just pure Awsomeness (& no thats not sarcasm Funi forums are great, but they do have alot of overreaction going on, as I'm sure many other forums do.)
 
Child pornography.

FUNi edits Vampire Bund to prevent child pornography, right? Well, that's why they should really should do the same to BakaTest.
 
Dance with the Vampire Loli getting edited? *shrug* Not a series I was that interested in seeing, so I'm not personally worked up about it. On a more philosophical level however, I wish they'd rather have just not grabbed the license if they were going to edit it.


...If there was anything even CLOSE to child pornography in BakaTest you might have a point. As is, your entire chain of logic completely escapes me here.
 
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