The Sentai Filmworks panel at Anime Boston was hosted by David Williams who ran through the fun of what the company is working with and what they have in the pipeline to come. Fans of the simulcast series No. 6 are going to get some big love down the line as they’ve picked up the home video rights for it, will dub it and release it on DVD and Blu-ray. The show will also get some extra love for the Japanese language fans as each episode has a Japanese commentary and they’ll be included and subtitled, which is a heck of a lot of work since raw scripts are almost never available for these and have to be done by ear. This set is planned for an August release.
In addition to that, Sentai announced that they’ve picked up the streaming rights for Kids on the Slope and Mysterious Girlfriend X. Similar to past experiences, you’ll see it on different sites and the numbers these do will influence whether they get further rights acquired.
August will also see the release of the second season of The World God Only Knows as well as the DVD/BD release of This Boy Can Fight Aliens. Add in Clannad After Story on Blu-ray in July and it’s a good summer from Sentai.
They also noted for K-On! fans that with the second season release that they’re doing, the shorts that fans were looking for to be on there won’t be as the Japanese are not licensing them out.
One of the questions I asked at the panel was how the company intends to try and deal with certain series they’re licensing, like Familiar of Zero F, in that the previous seasons are not licensed and it could be daunting or off-putting to new fans to try it. Paraphrasing the answer, but essentially he said that they hoped the point would be moot by the time the recently simulcast series is ready for a physical media release, giving hope that the previous seasons will indeed be picked up and released.
