Each Japanese anime producer it seems has a different strategy regarding how to reduce BD re-imports and protect their market in Japan. Kadokawa's answer to the problem is apparently to prevent international BD releases all together. Other companies, most notably AniPlex (our personal favorite), are forcing their international license partners to lock the subtitles on BD releases as a way to make those releases less desirable to Japanese fans.'Locked' subtitles, by the way, is when the subtitles display automatically on the Japanese dialog track and there is no option to disable them. Most people, I think, probably never notice this, but when someone does it's almost always an issue.
But since a few people have asked me recently, I thought I would post a list of current BLURAY releases that I am aware of that have 'locked' subtitles on the Japanese language track:
Arakawa Under the Bridge and Bridge x Bridge
Black Butler S1 and S2
Blood: The Last Vampire
Darker than BLACK S2
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood Series and OVA
FMA: Conqueror of Shambala Movie
FMA: Sacred Star of Milos Movie
Katanagatari Part 1 and Part 2
Princess Jellyfish
Sekirei and Sekirei 2: Pure Engagement
Shiki Part 1 and Part 2
Again, remember this only applies to the BD version of these titles.
Also, the upcoming NIS release of Ghastly Prince Enma Burning Up should be included in this list once it streets in September. I would like to note that NIS has always been upfront with fans about this issue, while Funimation, well, not so much. For Funi's stuff, even I usually don't know for sure until the title actually comes out.
If you know of any that I missed, please post them here and I'll add them to the list.
1 comment:
Locked subtitles seems like a perfectly reasonable solution to help lessen reverse importation. I won't pretend to know how effective it is, but it's certainly a much better alternative to Kadokawa's "solution" of basically giving fans outside of Japan the finger. For me personally, I just won't invest in the DVD format anymore. It's way too out of date, and the shows look awful on HDTVs.
BluRay players are dirt cheap these days, and most people own HDTVs now, so there is no reason why BluRay shouldn't be the standard format for all new anime releases on physical media at this point. It's understandable for older shows to show up on DVD still, but not the new stuff that is being blocked from high definition release.
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