Author: Gabriel Persechino-Forest Published: January 14th, 2018
Many titles are licensed and then forgotten about while others even go unlicensed in spite of demand and popularity. This article looks at 5 of the licenses who are currently uncertain on the Western market.
5 – Concrete Revolutio
Image Source: Official Website
Licensed by FUNimation a while back, we have not heard anything about this title since it finished airing. While FUNimation has taken its time before and could be said to be unlikely to allow a licensed they paid good money for to simply linger, it seems strange that no progress has been made for this title, at all. Perhaps the Japanese side of things is holding up the release but one thing is certain, the time frame for the release of Concrete Revolutio appears to be running out.
4 – Gintama
Image Source: Official Website
Largely ignored in the West, Gintama eventually received its first release within Western territories when Sentai Filmworks released the first 49 episodes on subtitled DVD in 2010 and 2011. Eventually, the animated movie would also see a release, this time dubbed in English, by Sentai; but since then they have not released a single Gintama property. It is safe to assume that the franchise, in Sentai’s agenda, is dead. But then hope was recently revived for fans when Crunchyroll began to release dubbed episodes of the series and then FUNimation made a DVD/BD release of a recent batch of episodes as well. So what’s the problem? The problem is Funimation only released episodes from latter parts of the series, not the beginning. So now we have well over a hundred episodes which Crunchyroll admitted not having the rights to, we can only guess because of Sentai holding on to the license they aren’t using anymore, with no idea if they ever will be dubbed, let alone released on physical media. Not to mention it might very well not even be financially worth releasing those episodes although this is something only Crunchy and Funi would know at this point.
3 – Lyrical Nanoha
Image Source: Taken from Lyrical Nanoha TV series
Both the first and second season of the franchise were licensed by Geneon Entertainment and released with a dub in the mid to late 2000s. Since the crash of the anime market though, no further development has followed the Nanoha franchise in the west. StrikerS, both seasons of Vivid and the movies remain without a physical release, let alone a dub, and all we have been allowed to get our hands on are legal streams for some of these titles. With the franchise still going strong anything can happen, but why nothing has as of yet and what will happen to any of the unreleased series and movies is anyone’s guess at this point. There are even speculations that Aniplex might be involved although no concrete evidence on that front. The one ray of hope is the Western theatrical release of the Nanoha movie which seems to indicate the Japanese side of the industry is at least still interested in the Western market.
2 – Fate/kaleid liner Prisma?Illya 3rei!! (Or season 4) + the Movie
Image Source: Official Website
Sentai Filmworks licensed, dubbed and released the first three seasons of this series for the West. The fourth season and the movie have yet to be released though and no word on their licensing has been made. It is uncertain what is happening with this franchise. It is part of the greater Fate/ franchise and as thus seems unlikely to be unprofitable or abandoned. Crunchyroll and Sentai were fighting over titles not long ago and perhaps it is FUNimation, through Crunchyroll, that now has the rights to the new entry of this franchise but if that’s the case, why haven’t they spoken up about it (Of course, Funimation has demonstrated a severe lack of courtesy when it comes to titles they release through other companies as we’ve seen little warning for Kanaberi of the Iron Fortress and Re:Zero even though one was later confirmed for a physical release and Re:Zero has already been revealed to have a dub in the works). For the moment, there’s no word as to what is going to happen with any future work of this segment of the franchise and the deadline for someone announcing that they’ve licensed it is running out fast.
1 – Phi-Brain Season 3
Image Source: Crunchyroll’s Page for the series
Both the first and second season were released on BD and DVD with a dub by Sentai Filmworks but that was back in 2013. Since then, the third and final season, even though licensed, has never been released or even talked about by Sentai for physical media. Maybe we can guess season one and two weren’t selling well enough and so they decided to sit on the license but you’d think they would have released it anyway to recoup cost. Of course, Sentai said that anything they start dubbing will see any future sequel or spin-off also receive a dub and as such they may have decided that if the third season wasn’t worth dubbing, it wasn’t worth releasing at all. Although dub or not, it still seems curious that when Sentai moved their titles from Anime Network to HIDIVE, season one and two of the series both transferred over but season three did not. It seems highly unlikely at this point that we’ll see a physical release of this title in the near future but what is even more frustrating is Sentai’s refusal to update fans on the situation.
This is it for the current list, I’m working on a second list of uncertain licenses which I hope to release soon. Hope you enjoyed this article and if you can shed any light on what’s going on with any of these titles fell free to comment.
Update: Thanks to tigeress02 for helping me correct the article.