Funimation and Railgun

Funimation is still dicking around with Railgun’s release – after now officially 2 years since announcing they licensed it, still not a single word about it. I thought maybe at AX they’d say something, but no. The last time they EVER mentioned it they continued giving the same excuse of not having the resources yet from the studio, but this is so unbelievable at this point it’s just retarded.

First off, there’s no way there was no agreement or contract that had mentioned a time at some point, there’s NO way you’d hand over the very likely over $150k+ (based on those old price listings for other stuff on ANN awhile ago and the huge popularity of the series) Railgun costed to get the rights to it and just say oh okay take your time – and STILL BE OKAY WITH NOTHING over 2 YEARS LATER. Oh and wait a second – this isn’t just the 150k+ that they had to spend on Railgun, this is the likely EVEN MORE money that they ALSO spent for Index at the same exact time, which is not out yet either. Unless the entire point was simply to sit on the licenses so nobody else could get such popular titles, this makes no sense. And that’s the case here very likely.

I refuse to believe that Funimation as a company would sit idly by while the Japanese take their money and give them NOTHING IN RETURN FOR IT FOR YEARS – not even a peep of an explanation, and not even a single question from funi to them about the status (as far as any of the ways to contact them have ever mentioned). This “we haven’t gotten anything from them to work with” excuse is such an obvious way of saying they have just been sitting on the license like the dicks they are otherwise you’d be hearing plenty of complaints from Funi and possibly lawsuits. There’s no way you hand over that kind of money and don’t question why you haven’t received what you paid for after a certain amount of time, let alone after years. And given their excuse went almost verbatim “we don’t know, we haven’t heard anything or gotten any of the resources” since the licensing announcement to extremely recently, it’s clearly bullshit. You haven’t heard anything? I doubt anyone could believe a business – let alone in such a shitty industry – would just toss around hundreds of thousands of dollars like nothing and when they get nothing in return just say “ah fuck it, whatever” without even a single question asked.

However, Index makes it a bit more interesting (for once) – it got announced at the same time and after all this time has FINALLY shown up with some subbed episodes around online (not fansubs, the ones from Funi and their godawful “Bug Zapper” to boot, it’s like they really hired Commie to do the localization) the past few months or so. This means clearly they at the very least have the required material for that and have had it for quite awhile…yet even Index hasn’t seen a single sign of being purchasable even since the first sub-only episodes were uploaded officially.

This means that even if you ignore all that stuff I just said, they have pretty much given proof they are simply sitting on titles they don’t want other companies to be able to get. It’s even more clear when you realize these two ENORMOUSLY POPULAR series are basically the ONLY ones they have sat on for such a long time without any given reason – and yet they somehow wonder why they are in court under suspicion of monopolization. There are a lot of reasons for that, but the simple fact they make sure others who will actually release a product CANT GET IT and then don’t actually release it themselves either and just make sure the license is taken also makes you wonder. Because of the fact they’ve subbed and uploaded these episodes of Index, it’s a fact they do indeed have at least Index’s required stuff and have even done the work, and yet again after 2 years now they still haven’t made a single hint at ever actually releasing it. It also means they’ve had it for awhile, translation might not be the hardest thing to do, but translating, localizing, subbing, timing, etc, while easy very clearly took them awhile to do somehow. Even if you assume they didn’t get the stuff they needed till they released that first episode, the other few that are available came out slowly afterwards, not immediately or even weekly. Hell, after starting and releasing the first subbed episode officially on their site and others, they STILL haven’t even got halfway through it months later. Which means they’ve probably actually had both these series “resources” for a long ass time now, and either the PR team is a bunch of fucking liars or are being fed bullshit by the higher ups.

Aside that, they did mention intending on dubbing it at some point if I recall – however this excuse doesn’t apply here as they were claiming they didn’t even have a single episode or piece of material to work with at all for all this time, you can’t dub something you don’t have. Plus even dubbing a show does not take two fucking years from the time of licensing.

Another note is that sometimes the Japanese companies don’t allow the licensors to release stuff till x amount of time has passed to avoid reverse importation – and I get that…but again, the excuse here was NOT that, it was “NO IDEA!” And even if it was that, Index and Railgun have been available in Japan for so fucking long now that it’s not a factor anymore.

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I won’t pretend I know the ins and outs of the industry on some deep level or how the business is run and maybe some nerd who sees this can explain why I’m wrong, but I do know for a fact that even Funi wouldn’t throw that money around and not ask a single thing about why the FUCK they haven’t gotten anything yet after this amount of time; and “we haven’t heard anything” is not the same as “we can’t say at this time”. They straight out said they have NO FUCKING CLUE and haven’t even bothered to ask about it after all this time, not that they just couldn’t explain why for whatever reason. This might be a fuck up that’s magically reoccurred over 15 times now with me personally and even more with others when contacting Funi or their reps, but I highly doubt the PR crew is THAT retarded, not to mention the more relevant people that are sometimes able to be contacted saying the same “i dunno lol”.

If Funi has just such unbelievably large amounts of money that they simply don’t care about a missing $300,000+ and don’t even care to question the recipient on it, then clearly the anime industry is fucking saved because it’s apparently very lucrative and doing just fine to the point that they are even more mindless of their finances than just about anyone else – given very very very few people, not even millionaires, would just be fine with spending money on something and never getting it or at least a reason why they still haven’t gotten it.

Also, I decided to YET AGAIN ask one of Funi’s public faces what the fuck is up with this (their twitter), I literally did just now so we’ll have to wait and see if they still give the same bullshit excuse or – very unlikely but hopefully – give some sort of status update that relates to it fucking being available any time before yet ANOTHER year passes.

And you know what really bothers me, I actually kind of like Funi. They do license a shit ton of awesome and amazing shows and allow collectors like me a way to buy them without spending the amazingly high japanese prices – and also make it so more people can get into more and higher quality shows. Plus, they have done a lot of really great dubs. So it’s not so much that I’m against Funi regardless of me calling them dicks and such, it’s just that how they are treating railgun has always pissed me off and the fact that yet another year has passed without a single change in that regard just made me angry all over again

Oh and Index is shit, it’s just black-haired-naruto shounen battle babby crap. Railgun is great though.

Why do I care so much and why do I always bitch about this? Take a guess.