I remembered reading that the Funimation DVD
releases for Yu Yu Hakusho will be bilingual
(although those anime news services have HORRIBLE
search engines). The best evidence I could
provide for you are these pre-order links:
Anime Nation, Buy, Planet Anime, and Right Stuf
Now if you're wondering about the licensing issue
with those Chinese DVD's, this is as far as I
understand them.
Hong Kong and Taiwan, according to their laws, DO
NOT recognize international copyright law.
Therefore, companies located at these areas can
steal work from other countries (like Japan) and
release them under their own brand. Here's how
it works:
Anime International, Limited (the Hong Kong DVD
bootleggers) licenses the right to produce and
distribute specific anime titles from Hong Kong.
So they only need to seek permission and licenses
from Hong Kong, NOT from the true copyright
holders in Japan. According to them, these are
their "official" releases and they will stand by
that claim.
The same goes from Son May and Ever Anime bootleg
anime soundtracks from Taiwan. These companies
still need to license specific titles for
copyright, but only in Taiwan (and not Japan).
This is why even a Japanese music distributor
like Avex deemed it necessary to open up Avex
Taiwan in order to protect their properties from
bootlegging.
I am certain that Japanese companies can bring up
some legal action against these Chinese
bootleggers, but it is simply not worth the cost
and expense PLUS any legal ruling would be very
difficult to enforce.
Some may think that Japanese companies are
getting some money by selling licenses to
bootleggers to produce "Chinese" versions of the
anime. But with the bootleg DVD's containing
Japanese audio tracks, I believe that this is
either not the case or something else shifty is
going on.
As far as I know, the ONLY official anime
releases produced by such Hong Kong companies as
Anime International are HENTAI. (It's true.) |