Toei’s U.S. Online Anime Effort

Since Toei is trying to make another inroad to the U.S. anime market, I thought I’d check out the free first episode of Slam Dunk and Fist of the North Star.

For Slam Dunk, the story centering around high school basketball is not going to be my thing. It did make me chuckle at times, but I have no interest in watching the second episode to see what happens. The shocking thing for me was that the subtitles contained all of the Japanese honorifics. That alone is a major plus for me, but to think that the Japanese would be tuned in enough to realize that the American market has shifted to at least accepting these (with people like me expecting them and the numbers of people opposed shrinking by percentages from what I can tell) boggles my mind. It does prove that the Japanese can do smart things.

With Fist of the North Star, I was more interested in seeing this after seeing it parodied in Excel Saga. Having shifted more focus onto some classic titles (Dirty Pair and Starship Troopers being examples), I might consider paying to see more episodes of Fist of the North Star. The limiting factor is the sheer volume of backlog I already have combined with the fact that at present, only the first 15 episodes are out. Since the series had 109 episodes, do I really want to start a series I likely won’t see officially finished? I’m not sure.

Still, both episodes prove that decent-quality streaming videos can be done for U.S. markets. I’d like to see more classic anime done this way, but we’ll see what happens. (Update 29-Dec-2019 – The links are defunct.)

Slam Dunk 01
Fist of the North Star

Additional (6/15): Looks like these are not going to be streaming as I thought (though the first two free episodes are) but DRM-filled downloads. Not interested in DRM filth.