Anime Central 2001

ACen 2001: Synch-Point

The newest company to enter the anime market, Synch-Point, is part of Digital Manga. DigiManga has been in existence since 1996, and has released several English/Japanese manga series on CD-Rom to the Japanese Market.

Backed in part by Broccoli and its shareholders, Synch-Point is "a company that has a lot of communication with Japan."

Synch-Point has taken a daring step to do everything "in-house", including dubbing of their two titles, Furi Kuri (FLCL) and I'm Gonna Be An Angel (Tenshi ni Narumon).

FLCL is a 6-part OVA series created by Gainax last year. It is being co-produced for an American release with Production I.G The American release is expected to have more than 1 episode per DVD; the Japanese release only contained 1.

Tenshi ni Narumon is a recent 26-episode TV series by Studio Pierrot, centering around a young girl named Noelle and her zany "monster" family. The first volume will hopefully be available in time for Anime Expo.

Since many of Synch-Point's employees are former Fan-subtitlers, the question arose if Synch-Point will include honorifics in its subtitles. The official answer is "Maybe". The Synch-Point representative suggested that two scripts may be on the DVD, a very accurate script including honorifics, and a localized script that is a bit easier to understand. English dubs will also be produced for both titles.

Synch-Point admits that neither title is really "thought of as mainstream", but they obtained rights to these series because "we really wanted these titles to work. We wanted to bring something a little different to the US."

For now, Synch-Point has their hands full with their first titles, and have no new licenses to announce. Synch-Point initially looked at Love Hina, but Bandai acquired the license while it was still under internal deliberation.