UCLA’s Asia Pacific Arts online magazine (which former aO writer Bryan Hartzheim occasionally writers for, though he didn’t do this one) features an interview with the dub actors, writers, and director. Normally I don’t find much very interesting in these kinds of interviews; people just talk about what makes their roles fun or different or whatever and that’s kind of it.

But this time mentions something really interesting: the dub for Blood+ was apparently on a “fast track,” and the writing was all done while the show was still in production in Japan, which means that the dub writers didn’t actually know what was going to happen in the series.

Interestingly, they also talk about fansubs– and very positively:

I think it’s great as long as they can enjoy the show…. So if this brings something to them and if they can feel like part of the show doing that, go for it! You see, it gets it out there and I don’t think it detracts from what we end up doing because we bring something different to it.

…Of course, these guys are doing a show that’s airing on Cartoon Network, and one that wasn’t aired until long after the original series finished…

Still, interesting read.

Neither Sony nor Warner Brothers are companies who make the bulk of their money selling anime DVDs to North American fans. And yet, both of them are releasing anime these days: Sony’s Blood+ release is finally on the calendar, and Warner Bros is releasing Appleseed EX Machina now.

Each has made some…interesting choices when it comes to these releases. Let’s see how they stack up.

SONY: ANN has received reports that the first episode of Blood+ is a bonus feature on a couple of other Sony discs, notably Loch Ness Terror and 30 Days of Night (the latter is a vampire flick; the former a low-budget horror B-movie). Grade: I’d love to see anime advertised to a more mainstream audience, but this is a great first step. B+.

Warner Bros.: According to Anime on DVD, Warner keeps having errors in their press releases and packaging. Apparently a poorly-worded release caused a scare that the movie might be released without Japanese audio at all (which turns out to not be true), and the Blu-Ray disc packaging also has a misprint as to what type of audio the Japanese track is (it’s Dolby Digital 5.1, and claims to be Stereo). Not a big deal to me, but still pretty lame. Grade: A whopping D (at least it turned out to have Japanese after all.)

ICv2 reports that ADV Films has officially selected Blu-Ray as their high-def format of choice, and that their newest titles will start showing up on BD as early as this spring.

You know, it occurred to me when I was reading the article…they talked about who all was putting out what shows on what formats, and they mentioned Sony’s Tekkonkinkreet and Paprika Blu-Ray releases. I wonder if Blood+ will come out on BD? Hmm.