Now that the Under the Dog anime has been financed via Kickstarter, I think it’s time we all take a deep breath and look back on our accomplishments.

For you dirty plebs who don’t know what Under the Dog is, it’s a fantastic anime based around high school girls shooting things. And it was successfully financed via a Kickstarter campaign.

Cuz Persona 3 made suicide cool.

Now, some of you may say “Hey Dark_Sage, if Under the Dog is so fantastic, why didn’t you bring this to our attention earlier? It seems like having one of the biggest English-language anime blogs around (yes, even with my current laziness, we’re far bigger than most) being silent would limit its exposure and interfere with it reaching its funding goals.”

To you, I say “pish and posh”. I’ve had nothing but excitement for this project since the beginning, and since this anime was finally funded, I am going to speak on just what us backers accomplished by opening our wallets.

Keeping Anime Alive

Actual promo art.

Everyone knows that anime is dying. Japan keeps churning out show after show about high school girls doing high school girl things, and relying on the same old plots and the same old characters is completely unsustainable.

Luckily, Gunslinger Girl Noir Canaan Phantom Kite Coppelion Angel Heart Under the Dog is willing to take on the unique concept of giving teenage girls guns and having them fight for shadowy organizations because they’ve been coerced into it.

tl;dr: high school students become assassins for the UN under threats that their families will be killed if they don’t comply

By god, anime could only be saved any more if they were also selling a sexy, otakubait version of the protag in plastic form!

Yours, for only $200.

Fill in anime’s grave, boys. We won’t be needing it anymore.

So what did we pay for?

Well, it wasn’t fleshing out the story to make it relevant and interesting, since the script was already finished 17 years ago.

And it wasn’t for making a TV series, since they already had offers for that, which they declined.

We have offers for a 26 episode TV series. We don’t want to take this because 1) We do not care for TV quality anime 2) We don’t want to be at the whim of the publisher or a Production Committee.

Man, a Production Committtee would be awful. I bet they’d try to shoehorn in some bullshit high school girl fanservice that would delegitimatize the actual high school girl fanservice.

If they made her breasts any more prominent it would be a serious compromise of their artistic vision.

It was…

Once we have an episode, we have better leverage with film investors so that we can be funded for a feature film and retain creative freedom. With an established franchise and fan base and a slick proof of concept in the form of a 24 minute episode. Our ultimate goal right now is to create an UTD film trilogy.

Oh. We paid for a proof-of-concept for what they actually wanted to make instead of the OVA we’re getting. But surely the OVA will be high quality anyway.

Look at those super-high specs. This really is for the fans.

And at such fair prices too!

Anime: so saved

Fuck those dirty fansubbers

And let’s not forget the subs. The UTD committee reached out to the west for money via Kickstarter, so they’re obliged to give us a translated version. And everyone knows professional translations are the best.

Pro subs courtesy of Funimation.

Sure, doubters may point to the fact that anyone with competent translation abilities has better options available than working for peanuts in an industry abandoned by all companies of relevance. But “professional” is a big word, so that means it’s good. And official. But the Under the Dog team originally didn’t understand that.

Good thing some industry guardians were on the watch.

One of the developments that we can talk about right now is that we will be retracting our statements regarding the contentious fansub subtitles.

We have been in communication with a few professional subtitling groups, namely Polymanga and CrunchyRoll, and they have been kind enough to help educate us on the unfortunate degradation of fansub groups, piracy, and their affects on the industry. We would like to ardently thank the Polymanga and CrunchyRoll groups for reaching out and engaging in these conversations with us so that we can all benefit and forge progress together.

If there’s any company authorized to speak on how bad fansubs are, it’s Crunchyroll. The company originally built on providing sketchy, low-quality fansub rips to people who who didn’t know any better, and which now has a staff primarily made of former (and current, but shh) fansubbers. And not just them. Polymanga had some important thoughts to add to the conversation too.

Yes, Polymanga. The French anime convention.

Apparently the French found some time away from converting to Islam to run an anime con and bitch about English subtitles. Lucky us.

A cause for celebration

I think everyone involved in this grand scheme deserves a pat on the back. We did it, guys.

We truly saved anime.