Monday, January 11, 2010

Funimation Gets Axis Powers Hetalia & Sacred Blacksmith

Funimation announced today that they have aquired the rights to both Axis Powers Hetalia & Sacred Blacksmith.

Axis Powers Hetalia is a 52 eps comedy about a pasta-loving young soldier in an Italy on the cusp of war. The series is directed by Bob Shirohata and based on the manga by Hikekaz Himayura.

Sacred Blacksmith is a 12 eps series about a young woman taking her role in the family business with a sacred blacksmith, who can forge swords that can beat demons, on her side. It's based on the light novel series by Isao Miura.

In other news, Funimation will not license the second season to the Big Windup! baseball anime. Lance Heiskell (of Funi) cited low sales, saying, "there was not enough of an audience there who bought the series." Heiskell also said the low sales does not warrant Funimation acquiring other titles from the same genre of sports anime. I can certainly confirm that Big Windup was one of our worst selling titles released last year. It's not a bad show, it's just Anime fans don't seem to care much for the sports genre anymore.

Funi has also confirmed on that it's release of the FLCL anime release later this year will include the original English dub done by Synch-Point for the previous release. That's good news because that's the dub we already know and love!

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