Daily Archives: Wednesday, December 20, 2006

It’s confirmed: Kadokawa USA is the licensor of Haruhi Suzumiya

From the Anime News Network Forum Topic about the release, someone posted that by adding an extra slash to the end of the address (http://asosbrigade.com//), one can trigger an error in the counter which gives the server directory path.

In that path, one can see that the account that the webpage is being stored under is named “kadousa.” This should confirm beyond any reasonable doubt that it is Kadokawa USA which has licensed The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.

UPDATE: Short Circuited is the genius blogger who discovered this. Congratulations!

UPDATE 2: As the official announcement approaches on Friday, there are 2 and possibly 3 answers that will be officially answersed: What, Who, and How. Two of those we already know, and know we’re going to get: The “what” is the fact that the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya has been licensed. The “who” we have now learned is Kadokawa Pictures USA.

The question we don’t know the answer to yet is “how,” as in who is going to produce the series and who is going to distribute it. The more we learn about this announcement, the more it sounds like Kadokawa USA’s licensing of Full Metal Panic: The Second Raid. I have now begun to think that The Second Raid project was essentially meant to be a test run before their big project: Haruhi Suzumiya. If that’s the case, it is probably likely that Melancholy will get the same arrangement as The Second Raid did, and that is that ADV will produce the series and Funimation will Distribute it.

We may or may not find this out on Friday, though the non-answer I just got from a Funimation representative in the anime news network forum suggests that they know more about whats going on than they’re letting on.

UPDATE 3: The website has now fixed their database error and now works correctly even when extra slashes are added.

UPDATE 4: Here is a screenshot of the error before they fixed it:
Kadokawa Counter Error Screenshot