Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Are OVA Episodes Seldom Licensed?
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Zendervai
 Posts: 201 |
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Guess that means the occasional show where the OVAs are just there in the licensed box set means that the OVAs were included in the show license. Although from what I've seen, they seem to mostly be fanservice OVAs.
What I see happen normally though is that the North American companies normally only go for OVAs if either the show was a big hit or if the ending is in the OVAs, like with Kokoro Connect or Buddy Complex. Or it's an older show, like with Vandread having the compilation films. |
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SleepyDave
Posts: 28 |
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Actually it happened in Germany a few years ago, that a single OVA was published on DVD, which was the HOTD OVA, two or three years after the anime series release. The price was around 19€, you get a three Episode Volume mostly around 20-25€ depending on the publisher.
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explosionforgov
 Posts: 80 Location: United States of America |
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If I remember correctly, all of the One Punch Man OVA episodes were licensed. What are the odds of seeing those on Toonami? I know it's going to take a long time for Season 2 to be animated, but a lot of fans who don't understand the animation pipeline keep spamming their Facebook page, angrily demanding that they air it already. I think airing the OVA's might quiet them down a bit, or at least take up some space between one show ending, and the other beginning.
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Aura Ichadora
 Posts: 2302 Location: In front of my computer |
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Sadly, it's those regulations as to why we may never see the Fairy Tail OVAs over here. Despite it being a very popular series - and certainly a big seller for Funi - it just might not be worth the struggle to try and get all of them over here for an R1 release.
I still get slightly annoyed when I think back on how Funi got the rights to the Tsubasa OVAs, but not to the connecting xxxHolic ones, but I know they have stated before that xxxHolic was a terrible seller for them so I'm sure that was a bigger factor than possibly not being able to get them. |
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Morry
Posts: 756 |
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"Quasi legal."
 Either delusional or ignorant, it's hilarious the same.
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WingKing
Posts: 617 |
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In fairness, Sentai did that with the "Anzio Battle" OVA for Girls und Panzer, which they just released last month (and it's like $12 for the one episode). But it is obviously extremely rare to get a release like that.
It seems like most of the time those are shows where the home video licenses were acquired well after the show was finished. It's probably easier for the licensing company to try to get already-existing OVAs included in a package deal than it would be if they had to go back and renegotiate for extra content beyond the original license. Like we got the OVAs with Toradora, and NISA licensed that show about two years after it aired in Japan. Same with the upcoming release of Hyouka, five years later - we're getting the episode 11.5 OVA with that one. Last edited by WingKing on Wed Apr 26, 2017 12:34 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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prime_pm
 Posts: 2368 Location: Your Mother's Bedroom |
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Well this accurately explains why the one D-Frag OVA episode that actually gives Sakura a reason for existing was missed from the Blu-Ray set. They nerfed her character so bad on TV.
Oh well. Youtube it is. |
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mangamuscle
Posts: 2658 Location: Mexico |
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In one hand, everything is negotiable. On the other hand, series like Setokai Yaduindomo where you have a cour worth of OVAs already produced are quite rare. I can see why Crunchy does not make any effort at all to get one or two OVAs (sometime this are specials less than 24 minutes in length) since for the same effort they can get a one or two cour of episodes. I do hope someone at crunchy realizes that with the Setokai Yakuindomo movie soon to be released they should get the OVAs as an extra season previous to the movie. |
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Mc-Taz
 Posts: 111 |
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As the article's graphic showcases, the To Love Ru OVAs have been absent from a US release for quite some time now, and they are exactly an essential bridge as Justin mentions. Two new prominent supporting characters get introduced in them, and you're expected to just know who they are by the time Motto (season 2) begins. Granted, their relationships to the main characters are easy to grasp, but anyone going solely by the US disc releases are missing a part of the picture.
This has me wondering though, since Seven Seas recently announced they licensed all of To Love Ru and the Darkness Manga as well. Could it possibly have been included as a part of their deal, which could potentially open up the opportunity for a sub-license to Sentai for a disc release? I certainly hope that is the case. Sentai hasn't been shy about getting OVAs out on single disc or separated releases in the past, as a previous reply points out with regard to the Kokoro Connect and High School of the Dead releases. I'll also add on to that the OVA shorts that were released for Girls und Panzer, which were originally a part of the Japanese Blu-ray sets. Then there was the case of the mysterious disappearing OVA when Funimation released Shakugan no Shana on Blu-ray. The OVA was originally released (and dubbed) when Geneon released the show a second time as a complete box set with Funimation handling distribution. The OVA was tied to the first season, but apparently got released with the second season Blu-rays in Japan. When it came time for Funimation to release their second season sets on Blu-ray the OVA was no where to be found. I wonder if it was just some weird licensing hiccup that couldn't be resolved, and they ended up having to leave it out of the set. I'm really hopeful that eventually it won't be so difficult to bring over OVAs as standalone releases. If Sentai can license all of Legend of the Galactic Heroes, being a massive OVA project that probably took them a lot of time and effort to acquire, I can't see how these other titles could be any more difficult to nail down. Perhaps they just aren't as big of a property to be worth the time and money to invest in, barring out random oddities in licensing occurring. |
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mgosdin
 Posts: 1302 Location: Kissimmee, Florida, USA |
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At 38 minutes approx the GUP Anizio OVA is roughly 1 1/2 times a single episode, Sentai also licensed the other GUP 15 minute OVA's and released all 6 of those on a single disk. So, it is doable but I suspect that they didn't have to deal with a substantially different group to get those licenses. Everything, including Anime, tends to be more complicated than what we are comfortable with. Mark Gosdin |
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Angel M Cazares
 Posts: 5506 Location: Iscandar |
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Sentai has released stand alone OVA episodes of High School of the Dead and Girls und Panzer, and I did not see much blow back. If that is what you are implying. And speaking of Sentai, they did eventually released the OVA's for the World God Only Knows. I imagine they could do the same for To Love Ru. Even with all the issues involved in licensing OVA's, to me R1 publishers have done a good job getting them, especially Funimation. |
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DmonHiro
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Quasi legal or not, to most of us who want to see that OVA the legality is irrelevant.
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xchampion
 Posts: 370 Location: Idaho Falls, Idaho |
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I've been thinking about this recently too. I had to go find the ova's for Prison School and Is it Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon on these "quasi legal" sites myself because they weren't licensed by Funimation or Sentai. I hate doing that to be honest. I do know the Prison School ova was released with vol.20 in Japan so Justin's answer aligned up perfectly why that didn't get licensed. It is what it is, but it still stinks.
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Megiddo
 Posts: 8360 Location: IL |
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I've noticed a large decline of OVAs, the traditional OVAs at least. See, the two kinds of OVAs that Justin describes are not what I would describe as OVAs. The first category are what I would call a BD/DVD special. They're additional content that's on the actual TV anime discs or a re-release box set. The second category are what I've always called OADs, the bonus animated disc content tied to a (much higher priced) volume of the source material (manga, LN, etc).
An OVA to me is animated video that is sold independently from anything else, be it the TV anime discs or the source material or whatever. The GuP Anzio release is an OVA. I believe these are much more rare nowadays. |
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CatSword
 Posts: 1489 |
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I remember years ago Green Green's OVA (unofficially episode 13, "Erolutions"), the best episode of the series, got cockblocked from any sort of R1 release because of it being full-blown hentai.
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