AstroBoy Online Forums

The problem is that Sony still thinks the only people interested is children (little boys especially hence all the cute stuff removed) and you never see an anime aimed to be sold for children come with the uncut Japanese version. If we could get a hold of Sony's contact information perhaps we could all tell them how wrong they are and how much money they're missing out on.

If we could get a hold of Sony's contact information perhaps we could all tell them how wrong they are and how much money they're missing out on.

I highly doubt this would work. Of course you could write to them all you want but Sony would just laugh at it and delete it faster than they spend $ on marketing.

Sometimes companies like these will have "free talk" or market research with audiences where the audience usually fills out a questionnaire with things like "what do you like to watch?" "how old are you?" "what is your gender?" and "what would you like to see more of?" But this is really rare.

I'm so sad Anime Sols failed. If they had been as successful as I'd initially hoped they could've sublicensed this series from Sony and offer the definitive set of our dreams. A lot of hopes and dreams died with that site.

It is a shame about Anime Sols in general principle. I wanted to help them out but never had the money for it. Personally, I still think we should be pressuring them to sub-license this to Funimation. They did wonders for One Piece after all.
But you are right Earthshine. Sony is an arrogant company that refuses to listen to the very audience they wish to sell to. Which is why I'm so mixed. I want to support Astro Boy, but I don't want to support Sony because they don't seem to really care about it.
But I think there's a fault on our side too. From my point of view, we're a very (for lack of a better word) subdued fanbase. When Sailor Moon got a poor dub in the 90s its fans started the "Save Our Sailors" campaign and it took time but we got the series rereleased uncut on DVD and now on blu-ray. When One Piece got dubbed by 4Kids, the fans outraged and in time were answered with a Funimation rerelease. What are we doing? We're just sitting here quietly lamenting. Any suggestion to fix this gets shot down under the belief; "That won't work" so nothing changes.
Sorry for the rant. I really had to get that out ^^; And I wish I knew the first thing about getting such campaigns started or I'd be leading it XD

I also think that part of the problem lies in not enough people caring about it. Certainly, not enough people who can do something care about the cause...

yeah, I know we're a small fanbase but I think so was Sailor Moon back in the day.
Thanks for understanding

Sailor Moon has gotten huge, though. Magical girls are a popular genre...

Whereas here we are, with no massive hordes and with little to no fandom overlaps for people within it to do anything, or in most cases, even know how to get started, or have friends from other fandoms that care enough to help. :T We're too small, too meek, are not as relevant as we need to be, and no one else who could possibly help us would, for any and all of these reasons.

Sailor Moon is huge now. And maybe even then a bit bigger than we are currently, but I recall it being small back in the day. In fact, the original run of Sailor Moon didn't even get to finish in the beginning. We got Sailor Moon and half of Sailor Moon R, then it suddenly stopped and we had to wait several years for the rest of it to get dubbed and air. And as we waited, what was dubbed just popped up on random syndication channels (often out of order) So much like 2003 Astro Boy, Sailor Moon must've been considered a failure at the time and the rest of it only came to us due to fan demand.
I don't know, maybe you're right. maybe we are a small and meek fanbase, but it feels like we've given up before even trying.

Hence the "meek" descriptor. Also, Sailor Moon came out in the early days of the Internet, I believe; or at least, the Internet as we know it now. Websites were simplistic and ugly, and computers ran on dial-up for the most part (in fact, idk if there was any alternative at the time; I know DSL and broadband popped up somewhere along the line, but...). These days, with the way the Internet is now, fandom thrives upon it. And clearly, there must have been a big enough fan base for it to take off somehow...

Whereas the 2003 rendition of Astro Boy never garnered enough attention to take off properly. It blew up on the launch pad, at least in the US and most everywhere else that got a heavily edited and cut dub. (A lot of them seem to be based on the English dub, miserable soundtrack substitutions and all- can't really speak to the characterization tho; but I recall that most foreign versions I've heard had Astro sounding a lot better than in our dub.)

You are right on this. This is the advantage Sailor Moon had Astro Boy sadly did not. While Astro Boy did get its whole series dubbed (minus one episode obviously) barely half of them aired before the show got yanked. Where Sailor Moon while not finishing its original dub, all that was dubbed aired and aired multiple times. On different networks even. So yeah, it's very likely Sailor Moon had a bigger fandom even back but it never felt like it from my point of view. Never felt to me like it was an actual hit until Toonami picked it up and finished the Sailor Moon R arch. I could be wrong though.

Still though, I wish we were a more active fandom. We don't need to be bigger to be more active. At least I don't think we do.