I have pretty mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I'm glad that Tsubasa has been licensed by a company like Funi. That almost guarantees our chance of getting a subbed DVD release now. This will also mean that a lot more people will have more access to Tsubasa than before, which means more popularity for the series, which may hopefully mean that more people will be attracted to fansites like Capturedwings.net or more Tsubasa fansites may start to popup. On the other hand, I'm both surprised and kind of disappointed that Funi licensed it of all people and that they licensed it so soon. Funi has become as strict as ADV is about downloading their licensed anime, which means we most likely won't get anymore Tsubasa fansubs or rips of the official DVDs when they're released. While I realize that it's unethical as an anime fan for me to download a licensed anime, that's really the only way I can watch anime most of the year. The only time I'm allowed to buy anime DVDs is either Christmas or my birthday, so the rest of the year the only way I can watch anime is either by watching the limited number of dubs aired on TV or download anime. I use Christmas and my birthday as an opportunity to catch up on collecting my anime DVDs, which means it'll take me a long time for me to catch up with Tsubasa if I can't download it. I guess I could start reading the manga again. I wasn't going to because I was watching the anime too, and so far the anime and manga have been pretty much the same, but since it looks like the only way I'll get to catch up with Tsubasa is through the manga, I guess I'll start reading it again.
I was also surprised that Funi were the ones who licensed Tsubasa. I was really hoping it would be Geneon. Geneon has had experience with Clamp anime before, including CCS, so they have a better idea of what Clamp fans have come to expect of their releases. Plus, if it was Geneon, I could still download the DVD rips when the series was released on DVD, and I was hoping they would use the Bang Zoom VAs from the second CCS movie dub again for Tsubasa, if they dubbed it. But Funi has had no experience with Clamp anime before and Tsubasa is a series that features characters from other Clamp series, so it came across as a real shocker to me that Funi licensed it. There's no doubt in my mind that Funi will be able to do a good job with the series, but I still would have prefered Geneon. I wonder since Funi has an upcoming Digital Cable anime network, could they possibly air Tsubasa? That would be interesting to see Tsubasa being aired on TV if they did. I wonder if Funi will license XXXholic, too...
My main concern right now is that Funi will hopefully put a decent number of episodes on each disc and sale the DVDs at a decent price. When Funi was distrubuting the uncut Yugioh DVDs for 4Kids, they only released three episodes per volume, which is a ridicilous number of episodes for a long series like Yugioh. I just hope that they don't do the same thing with Tsubasa. I probably will buy the official DVDs when they're released because I love Tsubasa so much and that's probably going to be the only way for me to see it now, but it's not going to be the same anymore to not be able to watch the latest episode of Tsubasa almost a day after it's come out in Japan. That was the first time I was able to experience anime in that way and I had a lot of fun posting in the episode discussions, too. One can only hope that somebody will still fansub the remainding episodes and then take them down when the official DVDs are released, like what's happening with the Naruto fansubs. I guess this means there won't be any fansubs of the Tsubasa movie when it's released which means we'll have to wait even longer to see the movie. That really makes me sad because I was really looking forward to seeing the Tsubasa movie and now we'll have to wait forever to see it because Funi licensed Tsubasa so soon. At least I already know what I'm going to put on my Christmas Wish list next year....Tsubasa DVDs. ^^
