Piercing Broadcast Television With its Drill
People who came into this topic with knowledge of what I'm referencing should take a look at this.
It's the Sci-Fi channel's programming schedule for July 28, 2008. Mosey on down to the 11PM slot (at least it's 11PM on my screen), and there you see it: 2 blocks of GURREN LAGANN.
This is significant because, well, it's freakin' Gurren-Lagann (GL). But besides that, there's a slight chance that these episodes will be subtitled. For those of you who may not have been following the R1 lifespan of GL, Bandai Entertainment acquired the rights to the show in April after ADV quietly lost them. Bandai is going to be releasing GL on DVD in 2 formats: first, a sub-only, 27-episodes-over-3-sets release starting July 8th (also with a special edition), then a proper hybrid (dub+sub) release in 2009. This would lead me to assume that what they would be showing on Sci-Fi would be the subtitled version...if previous experience didn't suggest otherwise.
Boring rantWhile it's still possible that the show could be subtitled, anime of all types that get broadcast on TV are pretty much always dubbed. DVDs usually come out much much later, with the rare exception of shows that are already out on DVD. To narrow it down to just this company, Bandai in particular has their shows come on TV with DVDs coming out waaaaaaaay later. The Big O first aired on Cartoon Network in April 2001 and the first DVD wasn't released until January '04. For something more recent, Eureka 7 ended the first run of its Cartoon Network broadcast in April 2007, and the last DVD of the show just came out this February. Even right now, Code Geass has been airing on Cartoon Network for 4 weeks and there is no mention of a DVD release yet.
So even though they're putting out Sub DVDs of GL before this broadcast, there's little doubt that they've been working on proper localization since acquiring the title in April. However, April was just a month ago, and I don't know how fast they can do this kind of stuff. And this is one show that really should not be done in a rush. I guess we'll find out come the end of July...if it even happens.
Spin on.
Pic for posterity's sake
