Anime Weekend Atlanta typically isn’t known for a lot of license acquisitions announcements but there’s usually a chance for a couple of things to come through. At the Sentai Filmworks panel last night (after some confusion earlier in the day at an Aniplex panel), Sentai Filmworks confirmed its pickup of the Fate/Stay Night series for release. The show will be coming to Blu-ray in January. The series was previously released by Geneon and is in that odd foreign licensing state where it’s not as directly connected as some of the other works in terms of who does the foreign licensing. The series was animated at 720p and there is a Japanese release of it, but it’s largely considered a bit soft to say the least. Many thought that the Japanese release was an upscale, but it isn’t.
Sentai Filmworks also finally brought out news that they will at long last release Saiyuki Gaiden OVA in January, something that was picked up as acquired back at Anime Expo 2011. This release will be dubbed, DVD only though, but will mark the return of the original cast that populated the series for the ADV Films TV series releases from years ago.
Mardock Scramble: The Second Combustion will also land in January with both formats and include the theatrical and director’s cut edition as opposed to the staggered releases we got for the first release.
Bodacious Space Pirates will see its first half released in January and the series will also be on both DVD and Blu-ray, which means it will be getting a dub as well.
The second half of Persona 4: The Animation will also be rounding out the January slate from Sentai Filmworks in the same configuration as the first where the DVD is bilingual but the Blu-ray is English language only due to licensor restrictoins.
