Media Blasters Dubs Previously Released Titles

When I logged onto my favorite anime news site today, I nearly jumped out of my seat in delight at one of the headlines. It is something I've been waiting for for a long time: Media Blasters Confirms Loveless, Kashimashi Dub Plans

The North American anime distributor Media Blasters confirmed on Thursday that it will release the Loveless and Kashimashi television anime series with both English subtitles and English dubbing in early 2011. Both titles were originally released with only Japanese dialogue and English subtitles.

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Original article at Anime News Network

By and large, the majority of anime fans are split between two groups: the sub fans, and the dub fans. I count myself among the latter. When anime companies, like Sentai Filmworks and Media Blasters started release mostly subbed DVDs, I was just a bit upset, since they tended to license shows I was looking forward to watching in English. However, aside from my personal preferences on watching anime, I was concerned that this move was going to hurt their sales.

Now, I'm not sure how much it costs to dub a single episode of anime, so I don't know how much money they are saving on production costs by not doing dubs, but the majority of US Anime fans that buy DVDs do so for the dubs. Although many sub fans do as well, because the DVDs contain the original Japanese audio as well as subtitles, sub fans are far more likely to illegally watch the series online. Dub fans generaly will not because they prefer the English audio, or at least the ability to watch the show without staring at the bottom of the screen the entire time.  It seems to me that your sales would decrease drastically if you only release subs without the option of a dub, which is unrevealing to the majority of people who buy the R1 release DVDs.

Recently many of the companies that were mostly releasing sub-only DVDs have started to re-dub their previously sub-only releases into English. Sentai has recently done this with Blue Drop, CANAAN, and Tears to Tiara, all of which were original released in a sub-only format. I'm really glad to see that Media Blasters has decided to start doing the same thing with their licenses.

I'm interested to know whether this is a result of their profits just being better, or because only releasing subs has been hurting them. Perhaps I'll get an interview with someone over there who can answer these questions...

As always, don't be a parasite.