R.I.P. Geneon.

[elwen]

To be honest, I never liked your new name (Pioneer just sounds more inspiring), and I absolutely despise what you did to the names in Saiunkoku Monogatari. But all the same I was looking forward to collecting that and Shounen Onmyouji, and Seirei no Moribito whenever that came out.

I don't think it was the fansubs that killed you, but then again, I don't really know anything about such things statistics-wise or otherwise.

I hope your orphaned series find good homes.

[I might update this later with more background when I'm better able to sort through relevant news links. In the meantime, perhaps this and this will suffice.]

Comments

[mergle.livejournal.com]

!
Excuse me while I go order Haibane Renmei. And what of Saiunkoku has been released. (All...1 DVD of it.)

[mergle.livejournal.com]

Okay, done.
I agree - I liked the name Pioneer much better.

My Saiunkoku plan had been to wait for the box set to be released and then go on sale on TRSI (so that I could do the ethical thing without breaking the bank.)

[ctrl-a.livejournal.com]

I was wavering on Saiunkoku re: whether to start getting them now or wait for a boxset. (BTW, the second disc should still be released on time, I think.) I feel kind of bad for people who bought the collectors' box -- then again, I thought the box was butt-ugly and awkward. D: Shounen Onmyouji, though, had a nice box, and no screwed up names. Hong! *mutters*

[ctrl-a.livejournal.com]

Along the lines of my response to jyasu below, and since you've ordered the DVD, I thought I should warn you: Geneon changed Shuurei's family name to "Hong" (Chinese for red). So in case you hadn't seen that already, brace yourself.

[toriru4ever.livejournal.com]

They will be back as Phoenix enterprises :D
lol *i Just made that but would be a fitting name*

[jyasu.livejournal.com]

Not that it matters much now, but what were they doing to the names in Saiunkoku? I'm not surprised they did a poor job there -- one of the fansub groups made me cringe on names as well.

(Now contemplating whether I should buy up a few box sets of Haibane Renmei for the benefit of people I still want to expose to that series...)

[ctrl-a.livejournal.com]

This is my obviously very biased account: so there are two families named Kou (red and yellow). They were worried that viewers to be confused. So they decided to change one of the families' names to the Chinese equivalent. Now, which one do they choose? Not, of course, the family that has one character whose full name gets mentioned maybe twice. No, of course they go with the main character and her family. Meet Shurei Hong, Shoka Hong, Reishin Hong, etc. etc. When all they really needed was Kijin Hwang.

They also use Seiran Si and Ryuki Shi to mirror the different kanji for those two names, but that's much less of an adjustment phonetically and just in terms of prominence in the series.

I saw the "Hong" thing on the website (http://saiunkokudvd.com/) before the DVDs came out and prayed they would come to their senses, but such was not to be.

[maoware.livejournal.com]

Maybe this is a refocusing effort by the HQ guys. After all, I don't know why a 20B$ advertising firm (Dentsu) has an Anime distribution arm...

[ling84.livejournal.com]

Dentsu's an advertising company? o.O And all along I thought they were affiliated with anime in some way, seeing as how they've got their name at the beginning and end of Bleach and Naruto in words that are even bigger than Studio Pierrot (the animation studio).