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

For those people who still don't believe me about the BakaTest thing: (it's from the 5th episode)

http://blog.seiha.org/images2/bakatest5/bakatest5_97.jpg

NOW you understand?
 
Stop it Meso. This is what I was afraid of. Once they censor one anime, we'll start thinking they'll censor everything because of a few images. Trust me, Vampire Bund is just a special case.
 
well, especially these days. if the whole worry now is whether a drawing would fail the miller test, it'd be very easy for strike witches to be in the clear while as funimation said, if you took the right scenes out of context, they could get slapped for bund. it's stupid, but i can see where recent rulings may have their legal team worried.

that, i still don't rule out this being funi trying to kill the show to send the message to the studio that they don't want to deal with package deals that include unmarketable titles.
 
...Not really. For starters, they're made it QUITE clear that Hideyoshi's a guy. They play this up for laughs. It might be a double standard, but showing a guy half naked doesnt have the same issues as it does with a girl. Additionally, even if Hideyoshi was really a girl, he's still not showing any objectional bits. I can think of hundreRAB of other anime series that are many times worse then that image, done for pure fanservice, and no one really bats an eye at it. We've seen non-animated films that depict teenagers in worse ways. Your analogy is just flawed all over the place.
 
FUNimation will think about releasing an uncut version. With only seven episodes aired they can't even release a full set yet, so they might as well wait until it is over before releasing any episodes on home video.

Speaking of which, is the series capping at the usual mid-twenties?
 
12 episodes for now, but SHAFT subtly introduced one or two elements from later arcs in the episodes so a second season may/may not be coming. (They still haven't explained anime-only Meirin and the current arc looks like it could wind down the remaining episode so...meh.)

I liked this post from ANN

Where's my pic of Gen Fukunaga with a "Keikaku doori" balloon?
 
Well, I doubt it'd be an intentional marketing move, but if they did back off on this do to fan outcry, it would actually build more cred that they started with in someways.

Funimation: We listen to fans.

Nice play, even though it's probably completely accidental.

Besides, I still say something like Kite Director's Cut which was widely distributed gives them perfect cover to put this out. It's as arty, it's more sexual and it's sexual in the same way from the legal standpoint (underage characters, rape.) Yeah, Bund uncut might be such a hard MA they can't get into Best Buy, but the fandom for Bund is so narrow, making it con/online-exclusive wouldn't hurt sales significantly. If you say "TOO HOT FOR STORES" that's a marketing point, and you'd at least come out ahead of a widely-available but entirely unwanted edited version.

Of course, they directly cite current US law this time, which mean Funi understanRAB that:

-There is a worry a drawing/animation could fail the miller test. Bund may run afowl of that.
-They could be tried for obscenity in an unfavorable locality.

Basically, stuff is gray - very very gray - right now, and they are being upfront about that now.
 
Thanks JTP.

I was just thinking about that.

Well, at least they did say something which is more than I can say for other companies (So Viz, why am I not getting uncut Zatch Bell/Megaman/etc.?)
 
Also, when you consider how some of SHAFT's other "12-13 episode" shows (i.e. Hidamari Sketch, Sayornara Zetsubou-Sensei) have mutliple seasons, it's most likely that Vampire Bund with be following the same path as well.
 
Which again brings up: Why would they take this package deal if they know they may have to return to the well later on, and thus risk further problems? I guess it must have come cheap. Funimation will buy anything if the price gets low enough they figure they can monetize it.
 
Alternately, Funi could be filling the void left by ADV and Geneon by licensing whatever they feel like regardless of whether the audience is big enough to support such an endeavor.

They're likely much smarter than that though.
 
FUNimation will likely see an increase in sales, at least in terms of across the year, with the Dragon Ball Kai, Fullmetal Alchemist, and Dragon Ball Z Dragon Box releases hitting full-force across the year. Hardcores like myself will without doubt work to make sure FUNimation knows they can expect Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball GT Dragon Boxes get released (not to mention an entire set for the seventeen films), so I don't foresee any hit from the more niche titles causing any detrimental damage, although any failures might move them away from these sort of series'.
 
Oh, Funi definitely isn't drift-net licensing. They do a lot of research and know exactly what it takes to get in the black on a title and won't pay a cent more than that, and if title doesn't pan out, well, the unlicensed second-halves of various titles are proof they won't stick with a loser.

Given that, this package had to have come cheap or they think the other titles in the deal will be very brisk sellers, because they have to know edited titles are dogs on the shelf, and yet they took a deal where they might have to edit one of the shows, which means that they must figure that even edited, the package at least would pay for itself.
 
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