| Neko-Con -
The Right Stuf |
| Jeff Thompson, producer for The Right Stuf, usually has some lively
and fresh opinions. But when Thompson spoke at a Friday panel discussion,
he started with some sad news. Michael Alben (pictured at Anime Central,
five months earlier), the voice director for the dubbed Record of Lodoss
War and other English-language anime adaptations, had died a few days earlier.
"It's a shock. It hits home. The engineer and I probably were the last
two people to see him alive," Thompson said. The day after a recording
session, Alben was driving to work, stopped at a service station and "just
died," according to Thompson. Alben left a wife and three children. |
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| In the last year, Thompson has changed his mind about the balance of
power between the VHS tape and DVD disc format. "A very scary thing in
the industry is that VHS as a delivery medium is going away very quickly,"
he observed. Thompson said he was surprised at the rise of DVD anime sales
when compared to VHS sales from 1999 to 2000. Dubbed tapes continue to
outsell subbed tapes (Thompson suggested that some subbed tapes sell fewer
than 1,000 units), but he wondered if the sales of even dubbed VHS anime
would continue in large numbers in 2001. |
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| Thompson (seen with Kayt Robarts) also chatted about a couple of Right
Stuf titles. One was Assemble Insert, the short 1980's series about a superpowered
school girl that was a fansubbers favorite that didn't quite make it to
commercial release in North America. Thompson hinted that Right Stuf might
get some other older shows. The other was Flint the Time Detective, shown
on Fox, which "...sort of involved us getting the title so that someone
else wouldn't." |
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