Hey, Luna!
It has been quite a long time since we have talked. How have you been doing?
Please do not feel obligated to respond, I ended up typing a lot and its perfectly understandable, and fine, if you do not have the time to reply.
My depression has been getting worse.
I have completely ran out of anime to watch. I suppose this was inevitable seeing as there are only so many dubbed anime from the past. I am not good at adapting, I like what I like, I won't watch shows I know I won't like just so I have something to watch or just so I can hate them.
I have only watched 3 shows that aired in 2019 or later
My Roommate is a CatReal Girl Season 2My Youth Romantic Comedy is Wrong as I Expected Season 3
Thats it, every other show I have tried to watch from the last three years I have dropped. Truthfully, I shouldn't have even watched Snafu 3, I didn't even realize until after I watched it how many VAs I dislike from that show.
I'm so tired of hearing "Netflix Jail" whenever Netflix licenses something. Sub-fans think their entitled to watch every anime episode the day it airs in Japan, and cry that its unfair that they have to wait a few months to watch a handful of shows per year. They act all high and mighty but then are upset that Netflix is dubbing every show in multiple langauages, allowing people from around the world to be able to enjoy anime. They would rather dubs not get made at all, especially if it meant they didn't have to wait to watch anything. How much more selfish can sub-fans get, they already get everything while dub fans gets scraps, and they have the nerve to complain? If a show goes to Funimation a dub is only like 90% confirmed these days, and even if it gets dubbed it will only be in English. If it goes to Crunchyroll it almost definitely won't get dubbed unless its Isekai or a sequel. Netflix is easily the best scenario yet its the only one they complain about. Not one of these people complained when Nagatoro or any of these other shows went to Crunchyroll sub-only. It's obvious they only care about themselves. The only people who say "Netflix jail" are spoiled children.
2021 has been the worst year in the history of Sentai, Funimation, and Crunchyroll all at once.
Sentai has become a completely different company than they were in 2019-2020 ever since September 2020 when they began their partnership with Crunchyroll. Sentai went from dubbing School, Romance, and Ecchi shows from the late 2000s/early 2010s, to now almost exclusively dubbing Action shows from 2019. They had carved out a good role for themselves before as they were the only people dubbing shows from the early 2010s and the only ones dubbing those genres most of the time. Now we have no one doing either, and as a result almost every single show dubbed in 2021 has been from 2019 or later, with the exception of a few sequels.
Sentai could of dubbed Is This Order a Rabbit and Non Non Biyori when their third seasons aired several months ago, but they didn't. They could of dubbed Killing Bites when someone finally licensed it from Amazon (the Amazon show I wanted to be dubbed the most) but they didn't. To make it significantly worse, they just re-released The Fruit of Grisaia and it is still sub only. Grisaia is the most popular show they have that is sub-only, and they haven't dubbed any old shows since Shirobako (its now been over a year since the Shirobako dub was announced).
In the last year, Sentai has dubbed
Rifle is Beautiful (Sentai's pathetic name for the show, Chidori RSC, shows what cowards they are)Kandagawa Jet GirlsBabylon
While re-dubbing
Venus WarsBakiHero MaskVinland Saga
Dubbing Dororo is fine since it was actually popular for some reason, but there is no justification for the rest of this. Vinland Saga was already getting dubbed by Netflix, but Sentai decided it, along with the rest of these shows, needed second dubs while many (I would argue, most) of Sentai's best looking shows still aren't dubbed at all. It's pathetic, its disrespectful, and they should be embarrassed.
Babylon is easily the least popular Amazon show that Sentai licensed, yet they dubbed it despite the fact that they did not dub much more popular shows like Killing Bites, Karakuri Circus, and Magical Girl Site. If it were purely about sales like they pretend, then those three shows would of got dubbed and Babylon would not. These companies have gone past the point of having any shred of credibility or decency. They blatantly have agendas and don't even try to hide them.
Which brings me to Funimation, who refuses to dub anything with a bunch of girls in it. The fake woke company that hates lesbians, since lesbians want the same shows dubbed that straight males do, and we all know straight males like myself are the devil according to SJW doctrine. It is no surprise then that shows like Love Live Nijigasaki, Talentless Nana, Gekidol, LBX Girls, Idoly Pride, Battle Athletes Restart, and Blue Reflection Ray are all still sub-only several months after they began. Straight males might actually enjoy those shows, and thats the last thing Funimation wants.
They've already started dubbing Summer 2021 shows, and despite Love Live Superstar clearly being the most anticipated show they have this season, it is not among the first shows being dubbed. There's a less than zero chance all of this is coincidence, especially considering all the other anti-male stuff they've done since Sony bought the company.
Meanwhile every fujoshi/all male show or gay show is dubbed immediately, despite the fact that these shows are undeniably less popular. Before 2019, fujoshi shows pretty much literally never got dubbed except the extremely rare popular ones like Free and Yuri on Ice. Now all of a sudden theres a bunch of them getting dubbed left and right.
Even worse, after a long drought of high school anime and shows with fanservice basically not even airing in Japan at all, we finally got some of them again in the Spring and Summer 2021 seasons, yet almost none of them are getting dubbed. How did that happen? A few seasons ago Funimation was licensing everything, yet it's just a coincidence that when the good stuff finally starts airing Funimation didn't get any of them?
Crunchyroll licensed, and streamed the following shows sub only between the past two seasons...
NagatoroI Shaved, Then I Brought a Highschool Girl HomeIt's Disgusting to Call this LoveThose Snow White NoisesJouran: The Princess of Snow and BloodIdaten Dieties in the Peaceful GenerationPeach Boy RiversideAquatrope on White SandThe Great Jahy will not be Defeated!Remake Our LifeD.Cide Traumeri
There's definitely some I'm forgetting, but the point is how is it possible for Crunchyroll to license all of these shows all of a sudden, this is just a partial list of the ones they left sub-only. Crunchyroll licensed probably double the amount of shows that Funimation did over the last two seasons, while not increasing the amount of shows they dub at all, completely screwing dub fans. Of course most of these shows just so happen to be shows that straight males like, while Funimation continued to license every fujoshi show under the sun.
For the first time pretty much ever, we have battle shonen (Peach Boy Riverside and Idaten Dieties) not being dubbed. We have the most popular show of the year (Nagatoro) not being dubbed (not the first time that has happened though). Surprisingly, there is even Isekai not being dubbed for once. Crunchyroll has never dubbed anything that wasn't currently airing, since they started doing simuldubs. They haven't gone back and dubbed the shows that were sub only last year like Sing Yesterday for Me, Tsugumomo season 2, Dogeza, etc.
I will be the first to admit I was wrong three years ago when Funimation and Crunchyroll split up. I was the first (and perhaps only) dub fan to say it was a good thing, as I remembered how Crunchyroll wanted to start dubbing shows as early as 2016, but Funimation ruined it by offering a partnership where Funimation dubs their shows for them. The idea of Crunchyroll dubbing their own shows while Funimation dubbed their own shows seemed like a win-win situation. More diverse casts of VAs, some in LA, some in TX as opposed to all of them being in TX.
I thought at the time it would lead to more shows being dubbed, and Funimation announced a partnership with Aniplex that I thought meant Funimation would dub Aniplex's old shows. Unfortunately that never happened, and three years later Funimation hasn't dubbed a single show Aniplex already had before their partnership, only dubbing simuldubs that came after. It's pretty obvious at this point that Funimation has no intention of dubbing the first season of The Irregular at Magic High School, leaving dub fans with just the second season that most of us refuse to watch until season 1 is dubbed. I'd be willing to bet Funimation will dub the currently airing The Honor Student at Magic High School, which is a re-telling of season 1 from the female characters perspective, but they won't actually dub season 1 because its from 2014, and Funimation hasn't dubbed anything from before 2019, with the exception of Nichijou, since breaking up with Crunchyroll.
I could not possibly have known in 2018 that Funimation would stop dubbing old shows for home release. The last one they dubbed I believe was Concrete Revolutio. Back then they were dubbing old shows for DVD/BD release every month or so, no one could have forseen that Funimation (and now also Sentai) would completely give up on shows from the past. Sentai's October 2021 releases look a lot like Funimation's releases these days, 100% re-releases or shows that were simuldubbed, with the Nozo x Kimi OVAs as the only new release, and its sub only. There has never been a less exciting, more depressing year in anime history.
A few days ago I still hoped Sentai would dub Mother of the Goddess Dorm, the one Ecchi anime of 2021, but unfortunately even that is gay. After the first 3 episodes showed a lot of nipples but only 1 female ass, which was mostly seen from the side instead of from behind, the fourth episode shows a close up of the male's naked ass directly from behind. It's just the latest in an extremely disturbing trend of gay shonen anime that pretend to be for males only to end up being the gayest show of the year. Like Warlords of Sigrdrifa and Peter Grill last year, and of course Food Wars, the gayest anime of all-time.
Meanwhile there is less female butts than ever in anime, since at least the 90s when nudity in anime was reserved for obscure OVAs no one ever knew existed and random Lupin films. The few Ecchi anime we've gotten since 2019 have almost all focused entirely on tits. Kandagawa Jet Girls shows every single girls nipples but not a single bare ass, which wasn't that surprising since the director of the show had done that with other shows before. We went 9 months from Fall 2020 to Summer 2021 without a single Ecchi anime, the longest period without an Ecchi since at least 2002. There's also way less female butts in non-Ecchi anime than there used to be, and way less fanservice of female characters in general.
Even Megami Magazine, which used to show bare butts all the time, has only shown 1 bare butt this year and its some random girl from Dogeza, who I don't think even has a name. The posters you get when pre-ordering Japanese anime DVDs aren't even sexy anymore either, up until 2019 they used to show the girl's butts quite often. Now your lucky to get cleavage or a bit of butt cheek.
There has been at least 10 Isekai airing every single season in 2021, and there are only 30 to 40 anime per season, so Isekai are now 25 to 33% of all anime. It should be no surprise then, that we're only getting 1 Ecchi anime this year, that High School, Romance, Harem, and Slice of Life anime are scarce, and Shoujo, Cute Girls Doing Cute Things, and Loli anime basically don't exist anymore. To make matters worse, there is more sequels than ever by a large margin, and the shows that tend to get sequels are usually Isekai, Battle Shonen, or otherwise Action shows, making it even more difficult for the other genres to make a comeback.
Meanwhile Netflix and Crunchyroll are paying anime studios to make their western cartoons, garbage like Cannon Busters, High Guardian Spice, Tower of God, The God of Highschool, Fena: Pirate Princess, Blade Runner, and Netflix's Terminator cartoon are not anime, no matter how many times those companies claim they are. I don't care who animates a show, if the series wasn't created by Japanese people then it cannot be anime. Anime is only anime because of how Japanese it is (or used to be until 2019), no westerner or even Asian person who isn't from Japan can ever make an anime or manga, these are merely cartoons or comics completely lacking in Japanese culture, mind, and personality. However, because these shows are being animated by anime studios, they can't make actual anime, causing there to be less anime overall.
Mecha have made a comeback, but only because the anime companies (especially the western ones) want to take us back to the dreadful 90s when Action, Sci-Fi, and Fantasy were the only anime genres and nudity and fanservice didn't exist.
There is something like 8 Mecha anime this year, thats probably more than there was for the entire 2010s, but none of them will come close to being as good as Lagrange: The Flower of Rin-ne, let alone Infinite Stratos. Meanwhile all the genres that were actually popular last decade are gone, getting less shows than they have at any point in the last 20 years. I never thought Romance anime would become rare but here we are, and every romance anime is considered a "rom-com" now. If there's ever a serious romance these days, it doesn't get dubbed (Sing Yesterday for Me, It's Disgusting to call this Love, etc). Funimation even calls The Quintissential Quintuplets a "rom-com" because Funimation has completely stopped using the word Harem (as well as the word Ecchi, but they don't even license those anymore).
Funimation hasn't even licensed an Ecchi that wasn't a sequel since 2017, when they licensed Hybrid x Heart. It's now been over 4 years since they announced the dub for Hybrid x Heart, and I am still waiting for it to be released. It's also been over 3 years since they promised it would be released in 2018. Media Blasters said they had news to tell everyone about My Wife is the Student Council President in February 2020. Several months later they finally responded to a fan asking what the news was, and they told us its "complicated" now that Crunchyroll is partners with Sentai. So they got our hopes up yet again only to basically tell us its not ever getting dubbed. Four years after announcing Big Order would be dubbed, Crunchyroll gave Big Order to Discotek and allowed them to release it sub-only. They did this discretely to avoid backlash, some people I talked to about it didn't even know the dub had been cancelled like this. I've waited 5 years since the dub announcement for two of my top 3 most anticipated dubs, and 4 years for the other. After all that waiting, it is obvious none of them are ever going to get dubbed.
When have you ever heard of this happening to shows of any other genre? It is only Ecchi fans who have gotten completely screwed and blatantly lied to like this. These aren't the only examples of us getting screwed lately either. In 2020, Hatena Illusion was the most anticipated Ecchi anime of the year, and it ended up not being Ecchi at all because they removed all of the fanservice from the anime. In 2021, Ex-Arm should of been the best Ecchi anime of the year, but once again it was not Ecchi because Crunchyroll purposely ruined the series, making it extremely ugly looking to justify removing all the nudity and fanservice, and even censoring the kissing.
Thankfully, Funimation has now bought Crunchyroll. It should at the very least be impossible for Crunchyroll to ever ruin a series like they did to Ex-Arm ever again. Hopefully these "Crunchyroll Originals" are now dead and we can get back to getting more anime in their place. I'm optimistic. At least now all those shows Crunchyroll licensed this year should have a good chance of getting dubbed. I imagine Laid-Back Camp and Tsugumomo season 2 are now a lot more likely to get dubbed as well, and hopefully Funimation will try to dub as many Crunchyroll shows from the past as possible. There are many shows Crunchyroll has the license to that should now become Funimation licenses, including a lot of shows from years ago that would be great to see finally dubbed. Unlike Funimation's disappointing partnership with Aniplex, Funimation owns Crunchyroll now so they should be able to dub any of their shows that they want to just as they would a normal Funimation license.
A lot of people are saying this will make Sony a monopoly since they now own Funimation, Crunchyroll, and Aniplex (the Japanese company, not AoA). However I don't see that happening, in fact I think this helps other companies like Sentai, Viz, and Netflix compete for more shows. Recently, Funimation and Crunchyroll have combined to license almost every show of the year, with only a handful going to Netflix, and 3 shows going to Sentai. That only happened because Funimation and Crunchyroll were competing with each other. Now that they are one company, I think we should think of it more as if Crunchyroll went out of business than if Funimation and Crunchyroll teamed up. If the articles read "Crunchyroll goes out of business" instead of "Funimation buys Crunchyroll" people would think that's good for Sentai, right?
Consider that Funimation fans expect them to dub every show they get, I don't think Funimation is suddenly going to license 35 shows a season like some seem to expect. Funimation has only ever dubbed about 18 to 20 shows in one season, at the most. Crunchyroll usually only dubbed 4. I think it's safe to say that in future seasons, Funimation will be back to licensing about 20 shows, or about half of all anime. Crunchyroll won't be licensing anything, since they will most likely be merged into Funimation. That leaves about 20 shows per season available for Sentai, Viz, and Netflix to license. I would expect Netflix to probably grab most of those, as they seem to be investing more in anime lately and they obviously have way more money than Sentai and Viz.
Viz could potentially make a comeback though. It seems unlikely, but they have Yashahime and will probably license the new Bleach anime. If Funimation and Crunchyroll combining opens up the market like I expect it to, there is definitely an opportunity for other companies to get back in the game. Let's just hope the ones who never dub anything like NIS America stay away. There is a reasonable chance for Sentai to get back to where they were a few years ago during the original FuniRoll days when they licensed several shows per season.
Another reason this is good for dub fans is it should end Crunchyroll's partnerships with Sentai, Viz, and Discotek, which have been an utter disaster for dubs. Over the past several years, Crunchyroll has given Discotek many of their best looking shows, and every time they were released sub-only. Big Order, Isuca, Symphogear, My Monster Secret, and Recently, My Sister is Unusual being some of the best looking shows the Discotek partnership has directly caused to not get dubs. Sentai's partnership with CR has only been going for 11 months but has also been bad, resulting in Sentai releasing Granbelm sub-only while not dubbing anything.
It was also the CR partnership that changed Sentai from a company that dubbed old shows people wanted dubbed for several years to a company that exclusively dubs Amazon and Netflix trash from 2019. Even if Crunchyroll had stayed around, there are only a few Amazon shows left for Sentai to license. What was their plan after that? Sentai couldn't keep licensing Amazon shows as their main plan for 2022 because they'd run out of them by February. They can't release a bunch of sequels because they barely have any left after spending most of 2021 releasing their sequels. So if CR stayed around we were likely looking at Sentai having an even worse year next year as they would have spun their wheels re-dubbing a bunch of Netflix stuff that no one wanted, only infuriating dub fans even more.
Now Sentai's 2021 doesn't look as bad as it did a few days ago (it's still terrible). They got all the sequels out of the way and most of the Amazon stuff so now they will have to try something else. There's a decent chance that could mean starting to dub their older shows again. Before the CR partnership began last September, Sentai said they were proud of fans for making "the lewd shows" the most watched shows on Hidive. When a fan responded by saying "please dub them", Sentai replied that they were working on it. However, almost a year later the only lewd show they've dubbed is Kandagawa Jet Girls. They have a bunch of Ecchi shows that still aren't dubbed so hopefully they will dub them, they really had my hopes up last year but nothing ever came of it.
There is a lot of other things to talk about, but this is already a super long comment...
