Apparently, FUNimation announced at Sakura-Con that they’ll begin streaming some of their videos on ANN. Earlier this month, they added a bunch of stuff to Veoh. There was also the recent announcement that they’d be adding a bunch of old TOEI properties to the their own video site and that they’d be adding a bunch of shows from their rival, Viz, to their broadcasting station. And of course, they already have a YouTube channel and Hulu channel with a ton of stuff on both. Oh, and their Playstation Store is now up too, the latest of their various Download-to-Own platforms (the others being their own site, Xbox Live, iTunes, and Amazon Unbox). I might have missed some. Is it just me or is this a bit much?
On one hand, I’m always happy to see FUNimation take the initive and find new ways to get their products to their fans and their customers. On the other hand, it’s starting to feel kind of disorganized. Many of the titles are available across most of the streaming sources — YouTube, Hulu, FUNimation Video, and now ANN — but there still seem to be a number of series that are only available in one place or another; I think the FUNi video site has the most titles, which makes sense, but then I kind of wonder why they bother with everything else? Most video sites are pretty much the same to me; Hulu might have the best quality of the aforementioned, but I find myself using the FUNi site more than anything else because I perceive it to be more beneficial to them.
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Finally saw the first episode of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood tonight. As I’ve mentioned, I wasn’t that eager to see it, but then my RSS feeds started getting cluttered with other bloggers posting about it and I spent the week feeling a little impatient. It’s always annoying having to avoid reading things ’cause you’re not up-to-date, but I guess that’s something I’ll just have to deal with since I’m going to be adamant about supporting FUNimation’s stream on this one. I’m actually pretty disappointed that so many people seem to have downloaded fansubs anyway since I think a vast majority of anibloggers reside in countries that are getting a simulcast in one form or another. (Sorry, Europe!)
That said, I was surprised to find that I had ton of issues getting the video to work right for the stream. I’d previously seen all of Ouran Host Club and some of Mushishi on FUNi’s video site and never had any issues, so I’m not sure what was up — the video wouldn’t load at all in Firefox, so after several attempts, I took it into Chrome. There, it loaded… but very slowly. Like, absurdly slowly. It kept stopping to buffer, so I decided to just let it sit to load the whole thing before playing. It took like two hours to load the whole episode. Unbelievable. I’m sure there was a lot more traffic on the site than usual today, but still… I sure hope it isn’t like this every week. :|
The video quality was great once it did load though. The subtitling is consistent with the other subs FUNi offers, and that’s pretty damn good, I’d say. I would have liked to see a translation to the opening and ending themes, but that’s not a huge deal. It did bug me a little that they used “sneaked” instead of “snuck” twice in the episode; even though the former is actually more correct than the latter, “snuck” has become so much more common these days. Oh, well. All words are created equal, but some are more equal than others!
Anyway, on to the actual content of the episode…
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I probably shouldn’t be as surprised as I am considering how much amazing progress this digital streaming and simulcast thing has seen in the last few months alone, but I am seriously applauding FUNimation for this move. Four days lag time between the Japanese broadcast and an official English sub (presumably) isn’t quite simultaneous, but it’s good enough for me. That’s about how long I generally waited to watch my weekly Soul Eater anyway, so it’s great to see FUNi stepping up like this and beating the fansubbers to the chase since they do already have the series licensed.
I’m really curious to see how many fansub groups this official stream deters. Since the stream is only available for those in the US and France, there will likely still be foreign language sub efforts. It’s probably presumptuous of me, but I feel at least a little confident in guessing that a significant portion of fansubbers and leechers reside in the US. I don’t usually keep up with these things, so I’m not sure if any major fansub groups have already announced FMA:Brotherhood as a project, but if there have been, I wonder if any will drop it out right following this announcement.
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First off, though mostly unrelated, I found this article pretty hilarious. And this just made me lol.
But anyway, the news of the day is that in South Korea, Internet video has eclipsed the DVD. This is really far from surprising though; there’s been such a rise in the number of companies doing the digital distribution model that I skip out on mentioning most of it here because there’s news about it pretty much every day and who likes to be redundant? The fact that Internet models have officially outpaced DVDs is something noteworthy though, and another indication that Korea is ahead of the game. I imagine that Japan will be quick to follow, then Europe, and finally the States because we’re kind of slow about everything.
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Maybe I’m just picky, but even though I highly support the proliferation of both subbed and dubbed digital releases, I really wish there was some consistency in where all they’re releasing this madness.
FUNimation has a YouTube channel that it’s using to post previews and promos, but they’ve also said that they’re going to have full episodes on there, probably three episodes or less for some series. Now they have a deal with Sony to release titles exclusive to the PS3 online store, not to mention the exclusive release of the new BONES title. I’m assuming these titles will all be subbed. Elsewhere, iTunes has added a good bit of Viz’s dubbed Naruto and Bleach, as well as all of Death Note. And let’s not forget various deals and ideas Crunchyroll has made with and is pitching to Japanese companies. Am I the only one overwhelmed by the scatteredness of all these options?
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The office did some seating rearrangements this week, and as a result, I now sit in front of one of the wall TVs that has CNBC on all day. So for eight hours a day, I have a perfect view of the constant live coverage on Wall Street. As if the last few weeks haven’t been bad enough, this last week seems to be one new record after another. Today, both the DOW and the S&P 500 have hit a two-year low? Crude oil hit another record high ($147.27/barrel), though it did drop back down to $145 before I left. I don’t really know what the hell Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are (okay, okay, so they’re country’s two biggest mortgage buyers). but opening at an almost 50% drop in share prices can’t be good for anything, right? Lehmen Brothers is also down 20% today or something like 80% from several months ago. The stock ticker seems to be a perpetual stream of red arrows. Don’t forget the dollar is still steadily dropping against other major currencies. There are so many headline-worthy stories of woe that the news anchors seem ever flustered at picking topics. Interviewees called in don’t really know what the hell they’re supposed to talk about first because there’s so much to address.
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