The second wave of announcements appeared on the official Basara Matsuri website this morning. Headlining the announcements is the first music guest: T.M. Revolution. I was reasonably sure he'd be appearing but it's good to have confirmation!
As for the other guests, Okamoto Nobuhiko (Shibata Katsuie) has been added to the list of seiyuu who will be attending the event. The first group of Butai Sengoku Basara 4 stage play actors has also been announced:
Yamaguchi Daichi (Date Masamune)
Matsumura Ryuunosuke (Sanada Yukimura)
Kubodera Akira (Oda Nobunaga)
Taniguchi Masashi (Akechi Mitsuhide)
Amano Kousei (Ashikaga Yoshiteru)
The next ticket lottery will begin accepting applications on Friday 10th October and this time it's open to the general public. Basara Matsuri is getting a lot of media attention already!
Sengoku Basara Judge End sells poorly on home video, people act surprised
The first week sales for Sengoku Basara Judge End have now been revealed and it's suddenly being discussed by the wider anime community for all the wrong reasons after having been thoroughly ignored during its actual broadcast.
The first week total sales were 569 copies on DVD and 669 copies on Blu-ray for a total of 1,238 copies, a substantial drop from the previous Production I.G. adaptation. Please note that these statistics don't include exports or shops which don't report their sales, but they're still interesting for comparison.
I think anyone seriously expecting the show to do any better than that with its budget and the amount of promotion it's had would have been crazily optimistic. I know the actual content has proven divisive but the bigger problem that Judge End has faced is that hardly anyone seemed to know it was even airing outside of the hardcore audience. Many of the buyers were probably more interested in the bonus radio CDs than the show itself.
I'd be interested to know how well its merchandise is selling in comparison. Speaking of which...
Even more Sengoku Basara Judge End merchandise is on the way
The CafeReo website has updated to show a generous amount of new merchandise planned for late November.
Sengoku Basara Judge End triple keyrings (two designs, ¥880 each):
Sengoku Basara Judge End die-cut stickers (four designs, ¥350 each):
Sengoku Basara Judge End pouch (¥980):
Sengoku Basara Judge End Japanese teacup (¥980):
Sengoku Basara Judge End reflective keyrings (four designs, ¥650 each):
Sengoku Basara Judge End face towels (four designs, ¥1,500 each):
Cover artwork is revealed for the newest Sengoku Basara art book
The Gekijouban Sengoku Basara -The Last Party- Official Illustration Collection II should be on its way to fans of Production I.G.'s anime adaptation very soon, and the cover has started to appear on online shopping sites. It's quite plain considering that the book is supposed to contain rare illustrations, so I guess we have to wait a little longer to glimpse what's inside.
I'm going to be honest, and maybe I'll be scolded heavily for it but, unless the inevitable FUNI dub has Stephanie Sheh returning as Kasuga and Laura Bailey as Ichi (or actually has a husky voiced woman voicing Kenshin- I don't mind Greg's Kenshin, just seems too masculine a voice for the gunshin methinks) I think I might skip the disc release. There's just not a lot of reason for me to buy it if only to rewatch it dubbed. I enjoyed it and all, but if I want to watch it again I can just stream it over Funi's site. I mean, I can't really blame the Japanese for not buying it in droves.
ReplyDeleteI... do wonder how they'll handle Sorin though. His English VA is a relative unknown and doesn't have much to her name so she might be hard to wrangle in. Could just use Funi talent I guess. Probably easiest since she has such a minor role. Will probably also mean no Kyle Hebert as Muneshige... aww... :(
It's not a bad anime per se, after all I did say I'd recommend any SB fan to watch it... but the production values are blatantly low so a home video purchase may seem pointless as you could probably get the same quality through legal streams.
Since it has sold so poorly in Japan I wonder if it will get an English dub at all. I would enjoy that if it happened though because imo the previous ones has had fun dialogue translation. I agree that they ideally should keep the old voice actors but change for Kenshin and most importantly ditch Vic Mignogna heh.
DeleteWhile I will admit I am not the biggest fan of the series' English dub (mostly due to a few poorly cast characters*) I think FUNimation will probably try to dub Judge End in spite of its poor reception, for consistency. They'll probably want to bundle it up with the Production I.G. episodes in future and it will look cheap if the 'third' season (argh!) doesn't match the others.
DeleteI think it would benefit greatly from a set of detailed liner notes to help newcomers figure out what's going on, so I hope they put a little effort into the release even though they didn't give it much promotion while it was streaming :(
Tenkai's dub voice was hilarious, that strange, unscary laugh! One of my friends will be very sad if Judge End's Sourin doesn't have the same memorably insane dub voice, too :D
More seriously, I think that Muneshige's dub voice was pretty darn good even with my colossal bias towards the Japanese actors, so it will be sad if they can't match it for his handful of lines. The actor retained the spirit of the Japanese performance perfectly without it sounding forced.
One thing that always bothers me when I catch a few lines of the English dub is that I find Yukimura's slightly archaic speech patterns really weird; I'd blame the voice actor but I think it's actually the fault of the script and direction, both in the game and anime. Perhaps it's because I'm British. It might sound great to people who didn't grow up surrounded by stiff, slightly archaic English themselves. For me, there's something about the nuances of his speech which sound unconvincing and make it difficult to understand him as a character - which is a shame when his Japanese voice is the cutest thing ever.)