The big anime conventions in the US always yield some juicy news (as opposed to the Canadian conventions, in which the major licensors hardly have any presence at all). The most common announcements are when a popular anime series is confirmed to be headed for a North American release. Of course, when something like that happens, the groups who have been supplying fansubs need to stop distributing that show so that it’s no longer available for free over the Internet anymore.

Usually, I’m not all that excited when a show gets licensed, since most of the time I only download a few episodes just to check out a series and see if it’s appropriate to show to my anime drawing class, so I don’t really get attached to most shows. There have been a few exceptions, though. Well, I just read a very big announcement concerning a show that I’ve seen every episode of, and even though I downloaded the entire series for free awhile ago, I couldn’t be happier that it’s finally been licensed.

The show is called “Jungle wa Itsumo Hale Nochi Guu“. Quite the mouthful, I know. It translates to “The Jungle was Always Nice, then Along came Guu“, or “The Jungle is Always Sunny or Hungry“, and it’s about this strange little girl who comes move in with a mother and son who live in the jungle. But it’s really about the son, who has a hard time dealing with the fact that everyone and everything around him is so weird, and he’s the only one that realizes it. It is one of the funniest shows I’ve ever seen. If you love a good laugh, you’ve got to check this show out. And now that it’s been licensed, it’ll be much more accessible to everyone. Unfortunately, the licensor, AN Entertainment, says that it’s not coming out until 2005, so we’ve got a bit of a wait. But I’ll be buying each and every volume when it comes out!

I hope that all of you leachers out there who are downloading your anime are doing the right thing and buying the official versions of the shows you’ve been watching for free once the official DVDs come out. And this ain’t the 90’s anymore, so no more of this “They’re going to ruin it!” crap. Buy it. Support the art that you love, and make sure that the people who worked so hard on bringing it to you get paid. It’s only fair.

Sayonara.