Star Blazers: Space Battleship Yamato 2199 Heads to the UK on FunimationNow!

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The cult classic adaptation of the Yamato franchise is now available in legal streaming form.


A couple days ago distributor Funimation announced they would be bringing the long lost-in-limbo anime series Star Blazers: Space Battleship Yamato 2199 to their services. They even confirmed that it would be made available with a simuldub (in other words an episode in English dub form added weekly).

Star-Blazers-2199-1.jpg


Today we can confirm that the series will be available for the United Kingdom and Ireland region alongside the United States and Canada. The series will begin streaming starting 8th November 2017 at 21:00 (9:00pm). The show page is available here.


The year is 2199. The human race has been crushed in their war with the Gamilos, driven into underground cities by the invader’s assault. Scientists estimate they have only a year left. The young officers Susumu Kodai and Daisuke Shima receive a mysterious capsule from a ship that made an emergency landing on Mars and return with it to Earth. It contains humanity’s last hope: the planet Iscandar on the other side of the Magellan Galaxy has the technology to defeat the Gamilos and restore the planet. The space battleship Yamato is entrusted with this task, but they have only one year before humanity ends.

The reason we call this a ‘long lost-in-limbo’ title is because of how it was being distributed. While the show was never licensed for the UK prior, Voyager Entertainment in North America acquired the license and released only parts of the series on Blu-ray & DVD in subtitled form. The rest was never released and the previous sets went out of print as a result. There were some good news however, as the entire series have been made available with English subtitles on the Japanese Blu-ray sets including the Movie. Unfortunately, the sequel Yamato 2202 does not offer any English support.

Assuming Funimation holds the home video rights as well, we could also expect Crunchyroll to stream the English subtitled version at some point.

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It's basically an animated version of the Battlestar Galactica 2004 television series, which I was also a huge fan of. Yamato 2199 is in my top five all-time favorite anime.
 
Its a real shame that 2202 doesn't come with English subtitles on the Japanese release like 2199...otherwise i would have bought it like i did 2199.
 
Yeah, I was really miffed when I found out 2202 wasn't going to be subtitled. I'm still buying the JP singles for the 2202 series though, already have the first two that were released so far - the slipcovers on the 2202 set are even more gorgeous than the slipcovers on the 2199 singles, so I had to get them. Maybe I'll try my hand at adding subtitles to them at some point...

And with that, I finally hit 50 posts and went from Completely Average High School Student to Brigade Leader, so I'm much happier now - I've been out of High School for almost 40 years, and I was an honors student, thank you very much! - so the title just didn't sit with me too very well... :p
 
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I hope Crunchyroll can make the English subbed version available because I don't watch dubbed anime and I really want to watch this (I assume all new additions to FunimationNow will all be dub only now).
 
I hope Crunchyroll can make the English subbed version available because I don't watch dubbed anime and I really want to watch this (I assume all new additions to FunimationNow will all be dub only now).

Yes, it is sub-only on Crunchyroll - I just watched the first episode moments ago. I do own the JP Blu-ray sets, so I can watch the series subtitled anytime, but it's been a while since my last viewing, and I wanted to check out how it looks on CR. The HD video looks great!

Sorry to hear you guys only have access to the dub over there... A dub is only useful for me if I'm going to show an anime to any of my friends who are illiterate, lol... ;)
 
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Yes, it is sub-only on Crunchyroll - I just watched the first episode moments ago. I do own the JP Blu-ray sets, so I can watch the series anytime, but it's been a while since my last viewing, and I wanted to check out how it looks on CR. The HD video looks great!

Sadly it's only available for the United States and Canada. Like Garo -VANISHING LINE-, the dub is available to us but not the sub.
 
Sadly it's only available for the United States and Canada. Like Garo -VANISHING LINE-, the dub is available to us but not the sub.
I guess I'm not going to be watching this anytime soon now :(. I wonder if Funimation only got the streaming rights for the dub in UK? Perhaps the sub version is not licensed in the UK? Hyouka is another example of dub-only streaming for the UK (and one of the reasons why I preordered Anime Limited's Collector's Edition). I hope this is not a trend for Funimation catalogue titles now they're concentrating on dubs now.
 
Thankfully purchases the JP set a few months before the US release so didn't get stung with having half a set

Still haven't watched it though lol
 
Hyouka is another example of dub-only streaming for the UK (and one of the reasons why I preordered Anime Limited's Collector's Edition).

And for me, an example of why I am not buying Hyouka at all. If I do buy it, it will be the US edition, but there are plenty of other titles out there for me to enjoy that don't make me feel like a second class fan.

(I'll totally buy GARO though because I'm an established GARO nut, even if I'm annoyed that got locked out. Not buying the UK version ever.)

R
 
Not buying the subbed local physical releases because we didn't get subbed streaming in our region seems a tad harsh on the local physical media distributors Rui.

??

It's a remake of the original 1974 Space Battleship Yamato Anime series
I'm presuming GWG probably means that's the easiest way to describe it to people who haven't seen it, rather than what it literally is.
 
And for me, an example of why I am not buying Hyouka at all. If I do buy it, it will be the US edition, but there are plenty of other titles out there for me to enjoy that don't make me feel like a second class fan.

(I'll totally buy GARO though because I'm an established GARO nut, even if I'm annoyed that got locked out. Not buying the UK version ever.)

R

I mean, ALs disc will be just a clone of the US one. Denying yourself a nicer set that will likely work out cheaper seems odd.
 
Not buying the subbed local physical releases because we didn't get subbed streaming in our region seems a tad harsh on the local physical media distributors Rui.

I mean, ALs disc will be just a clone of the US one. Denying yourself a nicer set that will likely work out cheaper seems odd.

I'm in no hurry and US pricing tends to be very friendly if you wait for a sale and are buying other things in bulk. I'm getting Sakamoto a lot cheaper than buying locally, for example, and with fewer primary school grammar mistakes than the UK printing. But I'm not cash motivated at all.

The recent 'trend' of dub-only for the UK (proving streaming rights were negotiated at some point for the UK) but no simulcast/sub is something I wish to discourage as much as I want to stop English language simulcasts that are specifically blocked from the UK. Dub-only is the same thing as no stream at all to me, and the only people who can do something about this are AL, Crunchyroll and whoever Funimation is currently in bed with in the UK. And only one of those companies is likely to care what I think, and the way to make them listen isn't to give them money for doing things in a way that harms me as a customer. Someone has those rights. I'm saying that I'm not dropping the better part of fifty pounds on a CE for a potentially-mediocre show I've never seen in this current era, and I'm telling the anime companies why that is. I'm happy to do that for movies where everyone is in the same boat, but I draw the line at TV shows which other people had the chance to watch in advance.

I have never seen Hyouka and as much as it's beloved in these parts, blind buying a series about yet another doe-eyed schoolgirl doing whatever doe-eyed schoolgirls do isn't worth my while if there's no simulcast. It's 2017. If they want to release anime purely for blind buyers, people in other countries and pirates, I'll stick to titles which immediately appeal to my instincts as a blind buyer alone.

The physical distributors should not be banking on our loyalty and wringing their hands when a title is magically not available in our region (or worse, deliberately encouraging that situation in order to drive blind buys at the expense of the customers). It's their problem too. I want them to sort it out.

(I will be doing the same with Yamato if it gets a UK release too, and given that it's probably rather niche I would imagine it needs every sale it can get.)

R
 
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Fair enough I guess. I've not really looked at things that way since I still barely stream at all (and when I do it tends to be free or one-time purchase) so I'm not hugely invested in whatever the streaming services are doing.

I mean personally I won't be buying or watching Hyouka at all because I don't think I'd be particularly interested in it. Something like Yamato though, which I know I'm probably going to enjoy, I'll just wait and buy on disc.
 
I see the logic, but I'm not sure distributors will. If there was s dip in sales, they'd probably chalk it up to a lack of interest in the shows themselves as opposed to assuming it's something to do with the specific way to was streamed. I'm not sure boycotting a release for such a reason would have any long term impact unless it was done en mass, it just seems like kind of a waste of time and ends up only spiting yourself by getting the inferior US release.
 
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