Michael is Low on Hit Points

Shikabane Hime has been licensed by Funimation. Now what...?

• Posted  October 24th, 2008 at 4:46 PM ET
• Subjects  Shikabane Hime
• Tags  short editorial, rant
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  1- Shikabane Hime licensed [unknown]
  
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If you haven't heard, Funimation has acquired Shikabane Hime: Aka for North American release. They promise "high-quality, English subtitled streaming episodes." Why do they even bother with terming it high quality? We all know that's bullshit. "Through video-sharing partners YouTube.com" means it's as low a quality as you can get. And the alternative to that crap?

Well you can download the episodes for an honest price. Sounds good! Of course, they all come packaged with that oh-so-lovely DRM that treats paying customers like thieves. There's also no mention of the actual resolution of the files anywhere that I could fine on the site. I have an inkling they won't be anywhere near HD. Of course, I'd love to be proven wrong here.

The files themselves are WMV's, only to be played in Windows Media Player. I'm sorry, but what the hell industry are you working in!? The standards today are AVI and MKV; get with the program. Most anime viewers stay as far away from Media Player as possible. As for Mac and Linux users, you're out of luck. Nice job Funimation.

Here's the link to their Shikabane series page if you're still interested. Not me though. It's about this time that I start kicking myself in the ass for not taking my Japanese self-lessons seriously enough. I can't wait for the day I'm able to fluently watch raws. Or, you know, the day someone actually provides a DRM-free, HD download in MKV or AVI...