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The thing is, I expect this sort of release with 4Kids and Nelvana. But prior to now, FUNimation truly had my respect with the way they released Fruists Basket, Yu Yu Hakusho, Blue Gender, and Kiddy Grade. Sure, the episode count is low on many of their releases, but I was able to overlook that.
With the success of Dragon Ball and Yu Yu Hakusho - two series' who's English dubs were fairly faithful and lacked name changes or altered storylines or replaced music - I though that FUNimation had proven once and for all, not only to themselves but to other distributors like 4Kids and Nelvana, that anime can succeed on US television without a ton of localization. I thought for sure that FUNimation would, at some point, be able to set the example for 4Kids and convince them not to butcher their dubs and release subtitled DVDs (since 4Kids and FUNimation have a close distribution partnership) but now, FUNimation seems to be completely back tracking.
I used to defend FUNimation to the hilt in every situation against all the haters out there, because I thought they really were a respectable anime distributor. At the very least, I figured if they absolutely felt the need to localize a few English dubs here and there for TV, they'd at least not screw fans over by releasing the subtitled version in order. But now, not only are they localizing their dubs once again, but they're screwing with the fans of the original version. Right now, about the only thing seperating 4Kids from FUNimation is that FUNimation releases the subtitled version... but since they're doing so out of order, it's not doing too many people too much good - you're better off just (searching long and hard for) getting the R2's, cause FUNimation's DVDs might as well just be dub only.
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