August 2009 marks the first-year anniversary of the TV5 reformat. This local channel of ours had been struggling to keep up with the big two (ABS-CBN and GMA), but since the reformat it has been doing quite well. They have innovative and fresh TV programming which made them #1 in some timeslots. In particular, the anime blocks had been receiving a lot of praise from some of our most dedicated local anime fans. For almost a year, a slew of anime have been aired with less cuts, good dubbing, and impressive lineups. Unfortunately, they can’t keep up with their high pace for too long, and so these past few months have been quite troubling for them.
Remember Toradora? They didn’t finish the airing of the anime. After 12 episodes, they re-aired the first 12 again. Then after a few episodes more (up to 17 I think), they canned the show. The weekly airing of Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood had been stuck at episode 7 for at least two weeks. Finally, Haruhi didn’t finish its airing either, they only showed 9 episodes if I’m correct.
What the heck is happening?
Funny enough, our local anime fan contingent had been struck by their own version of the Endless Eight flu. Reruns and programming confusion abound. Moreover, I think I had a bit of complaint with the Toradora dubbing when I watched a few episodes. In those episodes, they had completely removed the audio track replacing it with their own brand of BGM aside from the local dubbing. Yup, you won’t hear the original Toradora soundtrack in those episodes. That’s a big NO-NO for me, and is worse than cutting scenes for censorship reasons.
In any case, I haven’t watched the anime slot on TV5 since, so I’m only getting this from the accounts of various forumers around the local anime TV scene. Some say that there had been numerous production delays on the side of the channel. I recall Haruhi was announced much earlier, and that they actually delayed the airing because they haven’t finished the dubbing yet. For Toradora, their supplier didn’t give them the complete episodes to show. I would assume the same for FMA. If you ask me my opinion on this… I would immediately raise the “juvenile” flag. This is massively erratic programming, especially for a television business. You don’t make promises you can’t keep. If you need to show a complete series, heck finish the dubbing or acquire all the episodes even before you announce the darn thing.
But I would step back from extreme criticism because I don’t know the whole picture. Besides, for our kind of television business, I think it’s kinda normal to air reruns and cut off shows. Even regular TV series get this kind of treatment after all. For the fact that this is anime, and I’m writing in an anime blog, I would notice these programming quirks. If I were a general TV buff I would notice other series getting bad or worse treatment. In any case, the local TV anime audience must be patient. TV5’s anime crew knows their audience rather well, and for sure they would return these incomplete shows someday.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
[TV5 Animega – Episode 1: The Emerging Tiger->http://bluemist.animeblogger.net/archives/tv5-animega-1/]
TV5 Animega – Episode 2: Endless Eight
At least, they finished Shakugan no Shana, with both seasons, unlike what Animax Asia did with it.
Now we just need them to air To Aru Majutsu no Index. It’ll have a lot going on if it’s going to get past MTRCB though. Religious references and all.
Before the end of the year, I just hope that TV5 will re-air Haruhi and Toradora with the missing episodes in place. If budgetary problems are indeed the cause of the cut-off, that issue will be fixed once TV5 earns moolah (they’ll be sponsoring Cosplay Mania 2009, after all).
The biggest stumbling blocks, apart from erratic management decisions and contract restrictions from the licensor, is the growing aggressiveness of the MTRCB to police the airwaves for “harmful television content”.
Yes, already twice Toradora has been limited to episode 17, which is really strange unless there’s something wrong with the acquisition budget and some production issues.
(We still wonder why some of the BGMs are removed — I believe it had to do with the dubbing issues and the source material — more like the episodes were “finished” (DVD) media instead of broadcasting-grade stuff made for dubbing — because sometimes I think they have to make sure the original Japanese voice track don’t “leak” out of the Tagalog dub by overwriting — “pasting”, really — the BGM with another from another episode.)
ahhhhh…. sana tapusin ang AVATAR:THE LEGEND OF AANG…. kac sayang…. dba mahaba pa un… nakakasawa na paulit ulit!!! sna “paki tapos ang mga nasimulan” ‘wag bitinin ang viewers… alam qng hndi un kasama sa Animega sa TV5… pro napadaan na rin lng aq d2…. sabhin q na dba?? pls… daming fan ni Aang d2 samin…. nakakadisappoint….sna tlga… “PAKITAPOS ANG NASIMULAN” pls…….
halou!!! poh!!! fan po ako ng tv5… especially yung mga animega nyo!!
puwede poh pa request ng anime? kung puwede lng sana..
sana maipalabas nyo yung fav anime koh… GUNDAM SEED DESTINY..
hello po tv5!!!!
puwede po pa request ng anmie? yung… fushigi yuugi ova?
plz lng poh…
kasi fan po talaga ako ng fushigi yuugi!!
thankz po!!!
TV5’s Endless Eight is now over… except for TMHS since based on some rumors, TV5 is planning to air TMHS 2009.
Can I have a blog link exchange with you?
Here’s my link.
orendsrange.blogspot.com