Fullmetal Alchemist licensed by Funimation

CN is going to show it from October, just when the show ends in Japan. That would be the fastest airing of an amime to date, wouldn't it?

I hope Funimation gives FMA the Fruits Basket treatment

Still along this tangent, here in Hong Kong, noticed the other day there are posters dotted along the lobby and escalator walls of the local tube/underground station advertising the series to be shown on the broadband TV cum Animax channel*. Very unusual for HK. This sort of thing is typically reserved for merchandising bonanza of an anime like Beyblade or Pokemon. And to think that FM Panic and Fumoffu have never been shown nor known much by the general public too. Now we have this hard-edged series first.

*Unfortunately, the channel's AV quality leaves a ton to be desired. The picture resolution/pixellation is worse than your worst VCD/Nth gen VHS tape. Audio is mono. Subs are hard-subbed in Chinese only. Can't even see them catering to local Cantonese speaking audience only I'm afraid as there is no dub. Wonder what the subscription rate is like.

That is the gold benchmark.

AFAIK you are right.

Wouldn't that be Fullmetal Alchemy? If I'm not completely mistaken Alchemist is Renkinjutsushi.

I know we all knew this was coming, but I was downloading the fansub for episode 14 last night with BitTorrent and I couldn't figure out why I didn't have the full file this morning. The first thing I did was check AnimeonDVD and there it was. I bet the people downloading the most recent episode were probably horrified to find out that the files got shut down last night.

I'm definitely going to be picking this up when it comes out. I just hope that Funimation is liberal with the episode counts and I hope Cartoon Network doesn't mangle the hell out of it.

Actually, sonchou's torrents were still up about an hour ago. Anyway, given it's popularity, it won't be hard to get existing FMA fansubs from real P2P

I appreciate the gesture, but I'll just wait until it comes out on DVD now. Once its licensed for the US, I'm done. Thanks anyways.

Luckily I was able to get the latest episode before the torrents were removed. Now the withdrawl begins.....

I got through ep 30, and was going to download 31 yesterday, but decided to wait until Anime-Keep put theirs up, but it got licensed first. ^_^

Inu-Yasha Feh!!

Wonder how long it will take for the releases to get to ep 31? If it's like the manga volume releases, it could be a couple of years! *_*

The Fruits Basket treatment was sorta an experiment... failed. ;p Seems consumers are more sensitive to price/DVD than price/ep. Don't expect FUNi to try that again any time soon.

Besides, if CN airs it (despite what IGN says, it's not definite until CN announces it - remember Gundam Zeta and GitSAC), the consumer demand for it will increase. Typically, less demand -> more eps/DVD to entice buyers, so more demand -> don't expect 6 eps/DVD when enticement not needed. (There wasn't much built-in demand for Fruits Basket, more obscure and shoujo anime; s'why it got 6 eps/DVD.)

Laters. =)

Stan

Really? Fruits Basket is pretty popular at the moment what with the manga coming out and all, I was under the impression the DVDs had been selling fairly well too.

Andrew H