Chris wrote:bullethead wrote:Contract negotiations may still be ongoing. There's a hell of a lot of material to deal with and Gundam BF's announcement throws a spanner in the works too. If Sunrise demands that the licensor try to get BF on TV, that slows things down as the licensor tries to get a rights deal that leaves them enough money to actually pursue the TV deal.
Let's not kid ourselves here. We're probably beyond the point of seeing Gundam broadcast on TV ever again in America. Streaming a show like ZZ on Daisuki is a much lower barrier for entry and not as significant an investment as broadcast if it ends up failing.
Honestly, if Funimation does get the rights to Gundam, I can see 00 or one of the 90s Gundam productions showing up on Toonami since Jason DeMarco has expressed his desire to get Gundam back on the block. I'm highly skeptical about Gundam getting back on daytime CN or Toonzai, but I can't discount the possibility entirely, since Bandai does have a lot of leverage it can use. For example, Bandai makes toys for CN's Ben 10 series, which is why every episode of Eureka 7 on Toonami had a Ben 10 ad show up first during the first commercial break - the ads were probably part of a deal to extend AS's license long enough for the broadcast run to finish.
That said, you're right about Daisuki being a less risky investment, but on the other hand, look at what they've put on there so far from the Gundam catalog - Zeta, ZZ, Seed Remaster, and Unicorn. Two are older Tomino shows that might alienate western viewers, a remastering of show that did better in Canada than the US and never really hit big, and the fairly popular OVA that will never get on TV due to episode length. Putting all of these on a streaming site is a no-brainer, because there's no chance they'd get on TV
ever, even with Toonami's revival and success. It's the ultimate safe play and doesn't really give us any insight into what Bandai's long term strategy (or lack there of) might be.
