Monster (Generic anime discussion thread)

[SeijiSensei]

According to ANN, Funimation will begin showing Monster and four other series on its American cable television channel this spring. Apparently Viz has been shopping the title around for some time now, along with NANA, Honey and Clover, Buso Renkin, and Hunter X Hunter. In February Viz "indicated" that its plans for the release of Monster would be made public "very soon."

No mention was made of whether the televised release would be dubbed. At the moment all the shows on The Funimation Channel are dubbed. The current episodes cycle quickly; looking at the schedule a new episode of, e.g., School Rumble is aired every day. That tells me that, if they are being dubbed, they must be pretty far along in the process, since the entire show would need to completed just a few months from now. Of course they could adopt a much slower release cycle (weekly?) for these new titles.

I've wondered how Monster would be packaged if it were released in R1. At four episodes per DVD, we're talking about some 20 disks, or some $400 total. We can hope that Viz learned a lesson from Hikaru no Go, or that it can be convinced by Funi, so that we see denser releases collected into just a few boxsets.. Depending on how they're priced, Funi's download-to-own option, even with Microsoft DRM, could be the better choice.

While everyone is talking about Crunchyroll, Funimation is quietly putting together an impressive portfolio of titles that they are offering in innovative ways. If region-locking begins to fall, Navarre/Funimation could be well positioned to become the dominant global distributor of anime.

[SeijiSensei]

I seem to be the only person posting in this thread, but if you've watched Monster, you should take a look at this:

[Woopzilla]

Oh wow, haha. That's awesomely done.

I just love the intro music to Monster. There was another video that put it alongside the Death Note intro, worked so well.

[SocialSecurity]

haha, that was marvelous.

I wonder if this topic should be revived once it is put back on US tv (SyFy) this year?

[strategos]

WOW. So it has finally arrive the day this epic series get license. I st6ill haven't watch it completely. Was going to do it soon. I got many friends that will be very happy to hear about this. But what is this Funimation and viz alliance?

[SeijiSensei]

First box set will be available in early December for $60 retail, $42 pre-ordered from Amazon with free shipping for those of us with "Prime" accounts. Now I have something to put on my Xmas list.

In usual Viz fashion, we get just 13 episodes (325 minutes) on four disks, so the entire series will span six boxes and cost about $250 at this pace. They could eliminate one of these boxes just by pushing the episode count to 15-16 in the remaining installments rather than packaging it in "cours." We'll see.

[Albafica]

Gné? Monster wasn't licenced in USA? In France, Monster was telecasted (entire serie) a long time ago. I thought that an anime must be licenced in USA before it is licenced in France .

Anyway, Monster is an awesome show, my best anime ever. Dub version is really good, and DVD box are fine.

I search an anime like Monster, I didn't find it.

[SeijiSensei]

I'm not too surprised that Monster was licensed in some European countries and not here in the US. The setting and story probably felt a lot more familiar to Europeans than it would to Americans. France, in particular, also has a tradition of serious animation than America generally lacks.

BTW, the price of the pre-order for the boxset at Amazon has already fallen to $33. Amazon hasn't cut the price on the forthcoming box for Ghost Hound that much though. Ghost Hound is still a better buy at RightStuf, though neither place has discounted it as much as they have Monster. Maybe because it's more recent? What makes this price difference especially ironic is that GH, unlike Monster, won't be dubbed.

[Harrycombs]

I'm very glad that this series is airing on the SyFy channel and the dvds are coming out in the US. Hopefully with an official English release, more people will see this masterpiece.

Will the DVDs also contain subs along with the dub?

[SeijiSensei]

From the Amazon page I linked to above:

Product Details
* Format: Animated, Box set, Color, Dubbed, DVD, Full Screen, Subtitled, NTSC
* Language: Japanese, English
* Subtitles: English
* Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only.)
* Number of discs: 4
* Rating: Unrated
* Studio: Viz Video
* DVD Release Date: December 8, 2009
* Run Time: 325 minutes

[SeijiSensei]

Looking ahead at my cable program guide, the entry for next Monday's premiere of Monster lists only the Japanese voice actors! The Amazon entry I quoted above does say the DVDs will be dubbed, and it's hard to imagine SyFy and Viz showing the series on television here with subtitles. But, who knows? We'll find out next Monday.

[SeijiSensei]

Nope, it's going to be dubbed. You can preview the dubbing here:

http://www.manga.com/titles/monster?ref=latest

I'm not particularly impressed with any of them, especially Eva and Runge, who both sound much too young. I had hoped they might have recruited some English-speaking Germans for the German roles, but the actors just have those generic accents we hear in all R1 dubs. Johan comes as close as anyone to the originals, soft yet ominous.

[Harrycombs]

The dub seems to be good enough. I'll definitely rewatch the series in it.

[ChibiGoku]

I think you guys might want to see this.

[Harrycombs]

I just watched episode one.

I was very disappointed that the ending theme was it removed, but I can live with it. What I hate is that they changed the soundtrack! I just checked! When "Drift Mind" is supposed to play when he makes the decision to save Johan, The Seeds of Times plays instead. The original song fit much better. Every time "Part" was supposed to play, it didn't. I didn't remember the song that plays when it says "Dusseldorf" at all from the series, and this is where Part is supposed to play. The new song was very happy sounding, and Part is quite ominous, as if to build up immediately that the show is going to be a tragedy.

The new soundtrack is quite disappointing.

I do think the voice actors so far have almost all been on par, if not better, than their originals, which is fantastic. If only there weren't extra commercials and the modified soundtrack.

I wonder if the DVDs will have the original soundtrack, or this new one.

[Bob Lennon]

I'm not too happy with either the dub or the dubious music choices, but hey, anything that gets <i>Monster</i> more popularity can't be bad.

[Rungelunge]

I have seen French and Spanish version of Monster and they have the SAME backgroud music as the american version. It's different than the japanese TV version in the first half of the series only and there is no vocal on the Endings.
I only need to confirm if the Japanese DVD version are also like that or it's something only for 'out of Japan'.

[Albafica]

Oh! They changed the soundtrack? I didn't know . I realize that
ending is different (no words) but the soundtrack no.

[ChibiGoku]

Someone got the boxset a little early. Apparently, from the one report we got, the BGM is also changed on the Japanese audio track as well. Someone else confirmed that the Japanese R2 release had the same audio as the broadcast edition, so this just brings up more questions than answers, really...

The ending song also appears to still be the instrumental track, which isn't too surprising.

[SeijiSensei]

In a recent ANN podcast, representatives from VIZ announced that they no longer hold the license for Monster. You'll notice it is no longer available at Hulu either.