Strike whilst the iron’s hot, I suppose? Maybe I’m just getting a comic in before WAH throws something together with the perspective of someone who is actually familiar with the show in question.

Not that unfamiliarity with the property doesn’t mean that I’ve not been following the whole Vampire Bund editing fiasco with, admittedly muted, interest. There’s plenty of crazy speculation going on relating to why, exactly, Funimation has ended up with the show in the catalogue in their first place – the unifying cry of a lot of fandom has been “why license it if they’re going to have to edit it?”, and in a world where in manga exists in English, even if they paid for the show prior to it going into production, they should have known what they were getting themselves in for.

The fact that Vampire Bund and BakaTest (which, honestly, was the more initially interesting part of the announcement to me) are both Media Factory properties is probably not insignificant – that they were told that they could only buy BakaTest if they picked up Vampire Bund as well isn’t beyond the realms of possibility. Admittedly, I don’t really think that BakaTest is so big a property that it’d be worth paying for what’s a new, therefore probably pretty expensive, license just to get it – it’ll probably sell well, I don’t think it swings either nerdy nor mainstream enough to do particularly spectacular numbers.

The other theory that’s being thrown around is that the show’s been picked up because IT’S GOT VAMPIRES IN IT! Because, you know, Twilight and all that stuff is kind of popular right now. This is leading into the reasoning behind why they might want to edit the thing – they want to go wide with the show (IT’S GOT VAMPIRES!), and the last thing Funimation would want is for some tweeny girls parents to see it and kick-up a publicity shit-storm. Anime really doesn’t need that kind of attention.

Whatever the case, though, I can’t see this any being anything more than a public relations nightmare for Funimation. For a long, long time they fought against the reputation earned from the TV edit of Dragonball – to this day, the less well-informed Internet denizens decry every licensing announcement with shouts of “They’ll cut it to shreads!”. Having managed to shake much of that reputation off through years of decent releases, the last thing they should be wanting to do is actually play up to that reputation. Even if they never edit anything ever again, it’s going to be at least a year before people stop bring it up constantly. The kind of people who do that are probably aren’t the bulk of Funi’s sales on any individual title, but they are the people who buy a great percentage of everything they put out. Plus, it’s the kind of thing that makes fabulous justification for fansubs for many a person. This is how you lose people.

Honestly, I have to wonder if any number of projected sales is really worth them actually releasing the show – it’s a bit late now, but even if they had to pick the series up to get BakaTest, I do wonder if they’d have been better off just burying it and forgetting they’d ever picked it up. They’d save the dubbing costs, and no-one would have been any the wiser. As it is, they are doing nothing but alienating their most loyal customers. I’d have questioned Vampire Bunds ability to sell in great quantities anyway – by nature of being SHAFT it’s mainstream appeal is limited, and whilst there’s not really been that much talk about it amongst English fandom (at least where I frequent), what I have seen has been as highly polarised as any other SHAFT production, perhaps even more-so. Once they dub the thing (and they will, since Funi make a point of dubbing everything), I’d question their ability to break-even on it now that they’ve effectively killed the release in the eyes’ of it’s core audience.

Even they do manage to ride the Vampire wave (which, honestly, may well have played out it’s course by the time they can actually release DVDs of the show) and go “wide” with the release, is any number of sales really worth the kind of long-term damage this kind of move could cause? It’s not like Vampire Bund is a 100+ episode monster they could bank on for some time to come – it’s a short show. Potentially damaging sales of their more otaku releases across the board really can’t be worth it.

Which, really, is kind of my position on this – VB wasn’t really on my radar, so the release doesn’t effect me regardless, but I honestly can’t fathom how this situation came to pass. I just can’t see the logic behind this being a good decision…