'The chickens make the jazz hands go away!' by Kara
Monday, July 9, 2007 at 7:43 AM

On the last stage of my summer cold -- being the Cough Loudly and Painfully Stage. It sucks enough when you wake yourself up coughing. But to wake yourself up coughing and then be in a lot of pain? Not cool. I'm just glad I was well enough to get out to see the Co-Writer with the Longest Hair rock the autocross. I have my usual morning mug of Earl Grey, but it sucks when you can't taste it. I shoulda saved the teabag and just boiled some water.

Apparently the forum thread on the complaints re: Victorian Romance Emma having no dub track has reached critical mass. So much for my theory about it having a tiny fan base.

A few releases are going to sub-only (including one I'm still feeling rather schadenfreudic about), and while I don't know as it's a 'trend' per se, I do like that we're seeing it. I'm not against dubs, but as I've said before, I'm against the overblown dub industry. Time and money really could be saved (again, as I've said before) by dubbing only the stuff that'll be marketed to mainstream media.

But, as we see above, a lot of people take offense at this. While we've got the problem of people thinking that licensing shows is a bad thing (and that they're getting cheated as such), we've also got the problem of dubs driving up production costs, thus driving up retail unless the show is wildly and madly popular (which isn't that large a group, believe it or not).

This is because we have a new problem -- merchandise has become greater than DVDs.

Say a group of Ouran High School Host Club fans (and I insist there is nothing wrong with that show; it's not the show you think it is) went into a dealers' room. Say it got licensed -- it isn't yet, is it? Or say they went to a Suncoast, seeing as you can get merch there, too. Confronted with, say, a DVD starter boxed set and a ton of swag from the show ... they are more likely to buy a whole set of keychains of all the characters, totaling up to the price of the DVD. Am I right? I'm right. Because they've got fansubs already, and don't understand the Fansubbers' Code. (Hell, though, some fansubbers don't understand the Fansubbers' Code.)

Mainly, though, I'm wondering ... if these people are so desperate and pissy re: having a dub track, why will they keep the fansubs if the DVD with the dub track is 'too expensive'?

If you have been, enjoy!