Baki sentai redub

[AzureCrow]

Looks like sentai is redubbing the Netflix Baki series with their own Houston cast for the home video release https://twitter.com/sentaifilmworks/...204833280?s=21
It’ll be very hard to live up to the powerhouse cast we had with the Netflix dub in my opinion.

[Hayworth]

I don't want to give a huge company like Netflix too much of the higher ground here, but how little money is Sentai spending on this thing if recording a new dub from scratch is the cheaper option?

Honestly curious to see how this turns out. I think the Studiopolis dub set a pretty high watermark and I've cooled a lot on Sentai in recent years... but there are a couple characters I think could've come out better in English, so I think it'll be worth checking out in theory. At the very least, we get a dub that doesn't have Mignogna in it

[PacoSlimee]

Sentai released a clip of the redub

[SNaG]

Originally Posted by PacoSlimee

Sentai released a clip of the redub

Here's the cast list too.

Not into Sentai's Baki. What made Shimazaki and Troy so good in the role is that they were extremely confident yet fairly underplayed. In that scene in particular it really establishes how Baki is on a completely different level from those mooks. Yet I personally think Blake Jackson is overacting in that clip and completely defeats the purpose of that scene. I will admit that Blake sounds younger than Troy but I personally don't give that a huge advantage. (Especially when they cast Jay Hickman as someone who is the same age.... that's a choice...)

It's such a weird business strategy. No one is forcing Sentai to take this show and redub it. And this one is especially weird since Baki is now co-produced by Netflix so I'm sure the next season will have the Netflix cast. I'm not a huge fan of their work but there are other shows they have in their catalogue they could focus on. What on earth is their endgame with this and Hero Mask?

[millicent]

Originally Posted by SNaG

It's such a weird business strategy. No one is forcing Sentai to take this show and redub it. And this one is especially weird since Baki is now co-produced by Netflix so I'm sure the next season will have the Netflix cast. I'm not a huge fan of their work but there are other shows they have in their catalogue they could focus on. What on earth is their endgame with this and Hero Mask?

According to Justin Sevakis, Netflix has some ownership of their dubs and want 50% of production costs to use them. Sentai (when they were ADV) literally used to not pay their walla groups, so there's no telling how much cheaper an in-house dub would be from them sadly. I'm totally with you though. Netflix putting so much money into their dubs has had great effects on the LA scene IMO, so I agree wholeheartedly on how disappointing it is that the regular degular anime licensor aren't following in their footsteps.

[SNaG]

Originally Posted by millicent

According to Justin Sevakis, Netflix has some ownership of their dubs and want 50% of production costs to use them. Sentai (when they were ADV) literally used to not pay their walla groups, so there's no telling how much cheaper an in-house dub would be from them sadly. I'm totally with you though. Netflix putting so much money into their dubs has had great effects on the LA scene IMO, so I agree wholeheartedly on how disappointing it is that the regular degular anime licensor aren't following in their footsteps.

Thanks for that source, it's good to see some numbers.

While that kind of """explains""" Baki, this implies that producing a new Sentai dub is cheaper than licensing a non union Bang Zoom dub, as Hero Mask was made before the Netflix union dubbing agreement was put into place.

But nope, it's all Netflix's fault. Heaven forbid we have dub actors actually earn a decent wage.

[millicent]

Originally Posted by SNaG

this implies that producing a new Sentai dub is cheaper than licensing a non union Bang Zoom dub, as Hero Mask was made before the Netflix union dubbing agreement was put into place.

Wait, that was a non-union BZ! affair?! I know they used to do those, but I was just assuming it was a union thing like Baki. That is indeed a troubling thought.

[IMB]

It is what it is. The original dub isn't going anywhere. It's unlikely this will have any impact on future seasons of the show. I don't believe SAG offers royalties for dubbing work, so had Sentai bought the existing dub, that money wouldn't have gone to the actors.

Sentai is doing this because ... well, what else would they be doing? New shows are gobbled up by multinational megacorps. They lack the finances and reach of Netflix, Sony and Warner. Unlike Nozomi or Viz, anime is their entire business. Sentai isn't a turn-key operation run by a skeleton crew working from home that can survive on small volume (ala Discotek). They own production facilities and have full-time staff. They need to find work to keep things going. That's why they're dubbing shows they previously didn't, doing home video work for Crunchyroll and grabbing second window rights to Amazon and Netflix shows. They don't have many other options. They can afford to throw some money at things people would deem a bad idea because a) they have few others choices and b) much of that money isn't even their's.

The problem they'll face in the future is that those are all temporary fixes. There are only so many shows in their catalogue worth dubbing. Amazon has been done with acquiring anime for a while now, so there's a very hard end point to that library - which Sentai is quickly approaching. By this time next year, Crunchyroll could be a Sony subsidiary and even if they aren't, between Discotek, Funimation and Viz, they clearly didn't get the most popular shows. That really only leaves the Netflix stuff, which we'll have to see how that plays out. Making new dubs for them a) keeps their in-house studio working and b) gives their release something unique versus firing up Netflix again. The biggest issue I can see there (beyond cost of content) is that their news dubs are likely to be limited to physical media, which is an ever declining maket. If Netflix product becomes the majority of their output, what is Hidive going to stream? I guess the same stuff they're currently streaming.

I do think there's a possibility they benefit from Sony buying Crunchyroll. Netflix will not pick up the slack and license 40+ shows a year. There are plenty of genres they've shown little interest in. That means without a competitor bidding on shows, the cost of licenses will drop. Maybe to the point where Sentai could start acquiring new shows again. Or even have the Japanese production companies prop them up to help facilitate bidding wars.

[drakh]

Originally Posted by IMB

Sentai is doing this because ... well, what else would they be doing? New shows are gobbled up by multinational megacorps. They lack the finances and reach of Netflix, Sony and Warner. Unlike Nozomi or Viz, anime is their entire business. Sentai isn't a turn-key operation run by a skeleton crew working from home that can survive on small volume (ala Discotek). They own production facilities and have full-time staff. They need to find work to keep things going. That's why they're dubbing shows they previously didn't, doing home video work for Crunchyroll and grabbing second window rights to Amazon and Netflix shows. They don't have many other options. They can afford to throw some money at things people would deem a bad idea because a) they have few others choices and b) much of that money isn't even their's.

It's kind of eerie how similar their situation is to the one ADV faced as licensing costs skyrocketed during the 2000s DVD boom. Then they accepted an investment from Japanese conglomerate Sojitz which came with a bunch of anime licenses. But the releases underperformed and Sojitz pulled their support, leading to the collapse of ADV. Admittedly ADV had also made a bunch of risky investments in other areas, like magazine publishing, producing original animated movies, and even trying to get a live action Evangellion movie off the ground. Sentai at least appears much more cautious with their spending.