It is a good time in the fandom. At 7PM on Wednesday January 18th, Crunchyroll added Samurai Troopers to their streaming catalog. All 39 episodes of the TV series are available. Yes this means only the subtitled version (since it’s from Discotek Media’s release). I haven’t seen any news yet if the OVAs will be added to streaming.
There probably won’t be a dub version of the TV series added until Discotek Media can manage to get access to the dub’s license. That’s if it proves worth their while to do so. If they can’t get enough interest to pay back their returns for putting the sub together, they will think there’s no one interested in having the dub. Or they will think that far too few people are interested to make the cost and effort worth while. Note this is my own opinion, and not the opinion nor statement from Discotek Media. Still interest + revenue can only equal continued work on this series going forward.
Regardless this is very good news. It is the first time the series has ever been available for streaming. (At least in the US.) This from a series that never saw a US VHS release. (Remember this series originally aired on TV in 1995.) The first US DVD release didn’t happen until 2002. While that DVD release brought us the release, and dub (!), of the OVAs (YAY!), Bandai stopped producing those DVDs soon after the DVD series set was released. It’s taken until 2015 to have someone pick up the series in some form again for another US DVD release.
As such, this is a day I never thought would ever truly happen. (I’ve pinched and slapped myself a few times, and checked repeatedly to make sure I wasn’t dreaming all this.) This series has a small but faithful following. It doesn’t have the power of some bigger series like Sailor Moon nor Evangelion. So for this series to finally reach this point is a huge achievement.
If you are someone rediscovering this series, or finding it for the first time, I want to welcome you to the fandom. (And well thank you for finding my site.) Feel free to browse here and explore other websites on my links page.
To the long-time fans: We finally made it to this day.
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