As you're all probably aware, Crunchyroll has seemingly begun to license Minky Momo. Yesterday, it was only available in some regions of the world, but today it's been made available in North America as well.
The first thing to say is that the subs on this Crunchyroll release seem to be 100% original, not rips/copies of our subtitles or anyone elses' - the comments in the sub files seem to imply they were supplied by the alleged rights holder who licensed the show to Crunchyroll, a company named "GONZO". We haven't been able to find any more information about them.
So, the second thing, and the point of this post, is to outline what we're gonna do. Historically, when a show is licensed officially in North America, we would immediately drop it and scrub the show from torrent sites. However, right now, the group stance is to keep going with the show until there's an official license announcement of some kind.
Why? Right now, there is no official confirmation that Momo has actually been fully licensed in North America. It's also unclear as to when, or if, more episodes of the show will become available on Crunchyroll. Fifteen episodes just seem to have suddenly appeared on Crunchyroll, with no announcement or fanfare, which when combined with the sketchy and unclear history of Momo's licensing, seems suspcious.
Should a more substantial and official licensing agreement be announced, or if we were to be contacted by Crunchyroll, we will cease work on the show immediately. However, for now, we felt it was important to make the group stance public. If you have any viable and verifiable information about this licensing situation, please join our Discord or email us.
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ReplyDeleteThank you for continuing!
ReplyDeleteWith the Shitshow Crunchyroll is providing at localizing anime shows with their "unique spin/own" Dubs or Subs right now, i hope you will continue this show out of sheer protest. The maliciousness and narcism over there is disney level IP/Brand destruction. In the long run it will harm the quality of animes and minimizing potential profits for the studios/mangakas.
ReplyDeleteI can understand ceasing work on the project if you are directly contacted by CR or "Gonzo" provided they are actually a legitimate license holder but otherwise I strongly disagree with the decision to halt work on releasing episodes. If the license is legitimate who's to say they won't stop short or what if the show gets entirely wiped in less than a year due to similar legal issues that took place when William Winckler briefly had a distribution deal in 2015? I know you feel it's murky territory to work on something that's officially licensed but I think it's important to remember that regardless of legality you are doing a great service for the community, companies like Crunchyroll and a lot of other modern media publishers want us to perpetually pay them to own nothing, they HATE the idea of us having a huge collection of DRM free video files sitting on our drives. If it truly is a decision made out of nothing more than the fear of legal repercussions, keep in mind there are several much more aggressive fan projects out there that still haven't been challenged by license holders, I truly believe the only reasonable fear to have is the innate curse that comes from being within close proximity to Momo but surely you're already in too deep so why stop now?
ReplyDeleteIt'd be more than understandable if you were to call it quits in the midst of these new events, nevertheless I thank you for your hard work.
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