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ShoPro Entertainment, Inc. which recently announced its upcoming merger with VIZ, LLC to form one of the entertainment industry's most innovative, comprehensive manga and animation licensing and publishing companies, announced today that it has secured from worldwide licensors, TV TOKYO Corporation and Shueisha Inc., the television, home video and merchandising rights to Naruto for North America and Latin America. The appointment of ShoPro Entertainment as Master Licensor was facilitated by TV TOKYO Medianet, the licensing arm of TV TOKYO.ShoPro Entertainment, the San Francisco based affiliate of ShoPro Japan, plans to introduce a dynamic roll-out strategy that will leverage the strong manga and entertainment brand into a broad licensing and marketing program. Narutos television broadcast partner and key licensing partners will be determined shortly.
"We are ecstatic about Naruto! It is a great privilege to be bringing such an outstanding property to the Americas," said John Easum, Senior Vice President of ShoPro Entertainment. "Naruto became an explosive hit in Japan after it was first launched in Shueishas Weekly Shonen Jump magazine in 1999 and it continues to be an enormous success. Naruto has also established a very large American fan base through the US manga series published by VIZ. We anticipate a huge success."
First introduced into the Weekly Shonen Jump magazine in Japan in 1999, Naruto quickly became Japans most popular ninja manga. In 2000, Naruto was expanded into a series of graphic novels and is currently in its 26th volume, with nearly 49 million copies sold in total in Japan. Weekly Shonen Jump, published by one of Japans largest publishers, Shueisha Inc., is considered the worlds most successful comic magazine with over 3 million copies printed weekly in Japan alone.
Since 2003, the Naruto series has been serialized in the US edition of the monthly Shonen Jump, and published as a graphic novel series by VIZ, LLC. At retail, Naruto consistently ranks as one of the top graphic novel titles in the US and one of the most popular titles serialized in SHONEN JUMP. The manga has also been published in most major markets in Europe and Asia to great success.
Targeting tweens and teens, the Naruto animated series, produced by PIERROT CO., LTD. debuted in Japan in October 2002 on TV TOKYO and quickly established itself as one of TV TOKYOs highest rated animated series. Today, Naruto is considered one of the most popular animated series in Japans history and has achieved immense success not only as a manga and TV title, but also in the realm of licensed categories such as toys, trading card games and video games.
The story of Naruto takes place in another world where ninjas are the ultimate power. In the village of Konohagakure live some of the stealthiest and most respected ninjas in the land. But 12 years prior, Konohagakure faced a fearsome threat - a nine-tailed fox demon, which terrorized the village and caused massive destruction before it was finally defeated. The Hokage, the village leader and most powerful ninja, was able to subdue the fox by sealing its soul inside the body of an orphaned baby boy. Now that boy, Uzumaki Naruto, has grown up to become a ninja-in-training, learning the art of ninjutsu with his classmates Sakura and Sasuke. The trio of student ninjas study under the instruction of their teacher, Kakashi. With Kakashi, the group faces a series of dangerous and daunting tests and challenges. Through their adventures, the young ninjas learn the importance of friendship, teamwork, loyalty, hard work, creativity, ingenuity, and right vs. wrong.
The key characters are Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura. Naruto, shunned by the village because he bears the taint of the fox demon imprisoned within him, is a rascally orphan who has grown into an attention-seeking troublemaker. Although his preoccupation with playful pranks leaves him struggling to graduate from Ninja Academy, he's determined to become the next Hokage. Sasuke, the top student in Narutos class, comes from the prestigious Uchiha clan. Sasuke is driven by a secret desire to win revenge against a mysterious person who wronged him in the past. And the smart and studious Sakura is
the brightest of Narutos classmates, but she is constantly distracted by her crush on Sasuke. She hopes to some day win Sasukes heart if Naruto doesnt get in the way.
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The story of Naruto takes place in another world where ninjas are the ultimate power.
hehe
and also
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!
Would also be a good block to show Outlaw Star and Tenchi Muyo again.
Im not helping the situation am I 
So my little cousins make me watch Yu-Gi-Oh with them when I babysit, shut up. I'm making them play Magic.
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So my little cousins make me watch Yu-Gi-Oh with them when I babysit, shut up. I'm making them play Magic.[/QB]
A wise move 
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Vise the Stompy had this to say about John Romero:
A wise move
They made some pretty good decks out of some boxes of cards, even if it's all pre-Mercadian Masques. My Delraich deck still pwns them though
Well, it's fucked.
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Kael was listening to Cher while typing:
Naruto will be too cut up on Fox or Cartoon Network/Toonami. Needs to be picked up by [adult swim]. This would be a good time to pick up on Friday and do another Midnight Run thing again.Would also be a good block to show Outlaw Star and Tenchi Muyo again.
i approve.
Disclaimer: I'm just kidding, I love all living things.
The fastest draw in the Crest.
"The Internet is MY critical thinking course." -Maradon
"Gambling for the husband, an abortion for the wife and fireworks for the kids they chose to keep? Fuck you, Disneyland. The Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is the happiest place on Earth." -JooJooFlop
At least it wasnt funimation.
I mean, they've been handling FMA pretty well, depending on your point of view.
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Vise the Stompy had this to say about John Romero:
Naruto has offically been licensed.
Thats gunna make Starduck over at ANBU really happy. His hatred of the more rabid Naruto fanbois ("Narutards" as he calls them) is legendary. He'll finally be able to tell the all to "get ducked!"
On a more serious note, I dont particularly care whether the show ends up on Fox, Cartoon network, Nickelodeon, or even Discovery Channel... Provided it comes out on DVD so I can buy it and add it to the collection, it'll be all good.
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/dev/null stumbled drunkenly to the keyboard and typed:
Wait.... VIZ? FUCKING VIZ PICKED IT UP?!?Well, it's fucked.
What's so bad about VIZ? I know I read a lot of VIZ manga. The only anime I've seen by them was Ceres: Celestial Legend and I was pretty impressed. Explain your hatred or be vanquished. Mr. Gainsborough fucked around with this message on 02-15-2005 at 10:14 PM.
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Mr. Gainsborough spewed forth this undeniable truth:
What's so bad about VIZ? I know I read a lot of VIZ manga. The only anime I've seen by them was Ceres: Celestial Legend and I was pretty impressed. Explain your hatred or be vanquished.
Viz Manga, from what I've seen of it, isn't bad.
Viz Entertainment (the anime division), at least in the 90's, generally sucked. Of course part of that could have been the licensing of such great things as 'Fatal Fury', which was little more than fan service to the video game addicts (and I will admit, I bought the boxed set because it was cheap, and I did like the games). If memory serves when I went to buy 'Ogre Slayer' I was informed that Viz was not doing a sub'ed version of it, although they may have one now or have it on DVD.
If they've cleaned up their act, then this may be a good break for them. I haven't seen anything really that I **wanted** from Viz in general.
I was warned that 'Fatal Fury' was just glorified boob-bouncing fan service with a few semi-decent action sequences to link them together... And they were mostly right. 
Someone had a sigpic of the female leads chest bouncin' crazy style for awhile.
Speedsubers (IE : Dattebayo) will continue to produce fast, low-quality subs as always.
ANBU will stop all work subbing Naruto. Their policy is to stop subbing a series when it becomes licensed.
AOne, however, has stated that they will continue their work on the series. Until such time as they start to receive C&D letters from Viz, anyways.
Kakashi will be dubbed by the same fucking guy that did Spike, and his name will be changed to "Kevin" so it doesn't sound so japanese! I can just see it now. Maradon! fucked around with this message on 02-16-2005 at 02:56 AM.
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Kael had this to say about Knight Rider:
Why does everyone say that Dattebayo is low-quality anyways? I never liked ANBU-AOne myself, they changed some things that should have stayed Japanese (technique names, honorifics).
And if you've noticed, they've stopped the translation of techniques and pratically EVERYONE drops the honorifics. Those who understand already hear them, those who don't wouldn't care and would bitch about the extra words.
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Random Insanity Generator had this to say about Tron:
And if you've noticed, they've stopped the translation of techniques and pratically EVERYONE drops the honorifics.Those who understand already hear them, those who don't wouldn't care and would bitch about the extra words.
I guess when I ment "honorifics" ANBU-AOne was subbing Jiraiya as "perverted hermit", not ero-sennin.
I'm just nitpicky I guess
Actually, it really doesn't bother me anymore. I still don't see the the whole "x subbing group is better then y subbing group". Kael fucked around with this message on 02-16-2005 at 11:26 AM.
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From AnimesukiNaruto "licensed" by ShoPro Entertainment
On February 15th ShoPro Entertainment announced it was appointed the main licensor for Naruto in the USA. This has lead many to claim Naruto has been licensed. However AnimeSuki sees ShoPro only as a middle-man and not an anime company which releases anime themselves. As such we're not marking it licensed yet. Please note that this situtation may change at any time. Also the ShoPro "license" means Naruto is now much more likely to be licensed in the US, especially by VIZ.
( to clearify: this means ShoPro can now sell the rights to Naruto to another US anime company and until they'll do, we consider Naruto still unlicensed )
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Maradon! was listening to Cher while typing:
Gosh I love this. Now instead of watching the original, GOOD version, we get to see either a shitty speed subbed version or a shitty, censored, americanized version with shitty voices!Kakashi will be dubbed by the same fucking guy that did Spike, and his name will be changed to "Kevin" so it doesn't sound so japanese! I can just see it now.
AOne will continue releasing GOOD versions, Maradon. Read my post above 
As for the argument between speedsubs and standard releases, Speedsubs have two things against them :
#1 is that most speedsubs have serious errors in translation.
#2 is the quality of compression and encoding that they provide.
The problem is that Japanese does not directly translate into english very well. Even just the word 'hai' can have a huge number of different meanings (I seem to recall someone once telling me that if it had a direct translation, it would be along the lines of 'I have heard and understand you'). The amount of time spent translating, editing, then checking for grammar and the 'flow' of speech can take hours. Most TL groups have multiple editors who each take a look at each sentence, sometimes arguing between each other about the way a sentence should be phrased so that it not only retains its original meaning, but flows well when translated into english.
Most speedsub groups skimp on this.
The second issue is that high-quality encoding can take multiple passes by encoding software. AOne's encoding can typically take over 10 hours to encode. Faster encodes can result in blurry motion, washed-out colors, and you may start seeing blocky images or artifacts on the screen.
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This one time, at Addy camp:
If Fox does, it's doomed.
Remember Escaflowne on Fox? 
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Elvish Crack Piper was listening to Cher while typing:
At least it wasnt funimation.
Can it.
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Cartoon Network today announced several major acquisitions for their venerable Toonami action-animation block. Fan-favorite "Naruto" will join the block in the third quarter of 2005, while "One Piece" will move to Toonami in May. Toonami original IGPX will expand into a full series from Production IG. "The Batman" will see a Toonami airing beginning April 2, ShoPro acquisition "Zatch Bell" will start in March, and nosehair-fighting anime "Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo" is coming in the fourth quarter.
So The good: its not going to Fox or WB
The Bad: It didn't go to the block we wanted
The Ugly: How it will be censored is very much up in the air.
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Vise the Stompy stopped beating up furries long enough to write:
and nosehair-fighting anime "Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo" is coming in the fourth quarter.
YES! Maradon! fucked around with this message on 02-16-2005 at 01:43 PM.
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Densetsu wrote this stupid crap:
Can it.
My ire only needs 1 post to fully describe itself, and you quoted it.
:-p
* Vise the Stompy fucked around with this message on 02-16-2005 at 02:02 PM.
