Whether through sheer incompetence or outright negligence, after two years of production time and over $731,000 in crowdfunding money, fans have still yet to see the fulfillment of the Kickstarter campaign for an English-language dub of the original 1985 Dirty Pair – and at this point, it’s a wonder if they ever will.
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Launched in October 2021 by the now-defunct anime video publisher and distibutor Right Stuf. Inc. through their Nozomi Entertainment production arm, the ‘Let’s dub the Dirty Pair series!‘ campaign sought to accrue $275,000 in order to properly dub each of the series’ 24 episodes.
To this end, the campaign promised backers that “a little over 75% of the project funds will be used for the dubbing, production expense, and for rights clearances,” while “15% will be used for the production of the materials, media, and packaging, and the remainder will be overhead, working capital, fees to run the project on the platform, royalties, and a little something for our hard working staff (though no word was given on how they would use the remaining approx. 10%).”
“Aside from the English dub, all other production work will be completed in-house,” they further explained. “We already have all of the source materials required in order to do this production, and have the approval to do this Kickstarter project from the Dirty Pair production committee.”
(And in particularly unfortunate bit of copy that did not age well given the current status of the project, amidst Nozomi Entertaiment’s various assurances regarding their production of the Dirty Pair dub was a promise to “document in the ongoing project updates how the production and approval process works, and be transparent about its status”.)
To the surprise of few, between the series’ overall popularity and the admittedly impressive backer rewards (which ranged from a complete dual audio DVD/Blu-ray set consisting of every Dirty Pair anime production and all of their respective Japanese and English dub tracks, to light-up character standees, to a full-on cosplay costume of a character of the backers’ choosing), the campaign quickly blew past its initial funding goal, all in all closing its doors with a total of $731,406 to put towards bringing the original animated adaptation of Haruka Takachiho’s eponymous light novel series to dub-preferring audiences.
And though the dub’s production started off on a strong foot, with Nozomi Entertainment both regularly updating backers as to their progress and even managing to bring Dirty Pair OVA Yuri voice actress Jessica Calvello and ADV Films’ Dirty Pair: Project Eden Kei voice actress Pamela Lauer back to reprise their respective roles (with the latter even coming out of full-blown retirement to do so), things slowly but surely started going off the rails when, in August 2022, it was announced that the Sony had purchased Right Stuf Inc. and all of its subsidiaries and planned to merge their operations with those of their already-owned anime arm, Crunchyroll.
Addressing this ownership change in a campaign update, Nozomi Entertainment assured backers that “everything for this project is still being handled by the Nozomi team, and nothing about the dub or the Blu-ray release will be affected by this acquisition.”
To make matters even more uncertain, despite that same month being the originally scheduled release window for the aforementioned Blu-ray (and thus the unofficial ‘completion date’ of the overall dub), it eventually came to a close with the Dirty Pair dub nowhere to be found.
In recognition of this missed window, Nozomi Entertainment eventually informed backers that the production delay had been caused by scheduling conflicts regarding its cast. However, they did not provide any alternative release plans.
And sadly, it seems they never would, as though they would continue to provide semi-regular status updates, following the May 2024 announcement that “all the audio materials are now complete!”, the company went completely radio silent regarding the dub’s production.
As to where the project currently lies, while official details remain unknown, a cursory investigation returns less than reassuring results.
Per Anime News Network and MediaOCD (a disc production company best known for their work on Discotek’s various releases) founder Justin Sevakis, “digging through LinkedIn, several producers that were working for Right Stuf are no longer with Crunchyroll as of June”.
Summarizing the entire situation, Sevakis added, “Their last update was end of May. So either it’s completely finished, or CR has decided to junk it all. WHO KNOWS”.
Unfortunately, while this is assuredly disappointing news for Dirty Pair fans, it also does not bode well for mecha enthusiasts, as given their handling of the sci-fi series dub, it’s unlikely they’ll pull through on their previously promised Blu-ray releases of Macross Frontier and Macross Delta.
