I have been watching Media Blasters Twitter feed very cautiously this past week and this has been because of an announcement that has sent shock waves through the English yaoi loving community. This is because they have announced an English Dub of Ai No Kusabi 2012! A new dub is something I use to get excited for, until one dub that was so bad it almost killed an anime for me. That was the disaster of a dub that was Gravitation. Ever since then I have been cautious of dubs of series I loved when I originally watched them in Japanese.
A video sharing a clip of the voices for Iason Mink and Riki the Dark has been released on the companies twitter. It features Todd Haberkorn (Natsu from Fairy Tale and Korekiyo Shinguji from Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony) and Darren Mitchell whose only anime voice credit I could find was for this work. Casting an unknown actor in the role of one of the lead characters is an intriguing choice. In the one clip that has been shared it seems Todd Haberkorn will be an excellent choice for Iason as for Darren Mitchell, I’m not so sure just yet.
Media Blasters has also announced a release of the OVA series on Blu-ray and DVD for December 19 2017. I myself have the previously released copy of the DVD that was released under Anime Works a company that use to be part of Media Blasters that has since, well I don’t know what exactly has happened to them but they don’t seem to exist anymore. You can bet though that once I have the funds I myself will be trying to get a copy of the new DVD release even if the dub is good or not. This is because we still don’t see many yaoi titles get a release in the western market and I want to support the release of more titles like this in the future.
Yaoi Playground 