English-Language Versions
In 1980, Roger Corman produced an English-language dub of the first Galaxy Express 999 movie. The movie changed the character names (for example changing Tetsuro to Joey and Harlock to Warlock), and removed approximately 30 minutes of content. Antonia Levi, the author of "Samurai From Outer Space" said that the edited film, released by New World Pictures, was "heavily edited" and that "many otaku consider it too damaged to watch."
In 1986, Harmony Gold produced rarely-seen English dubs of two of the GE999 TV specials, Galaxy Express 999: Can You Live Like A Warrior? and Galaxy Express 999: Can You Love Like A Mother?
The first movie was dubbed into English again in 1996 by Viz, titled Galaxy Express 999: The Signature Edition. Released on VHS, this dub was more true to the source material. Viz also released Adieu, Galaxy Express 999 subbed and dubbed on VHS, although having lost the licenses for the two films, they were never released on R1 DVD by the company. For years, the only official English-language release of Galaxy Express 999 material on DVD were a Korean release of the two movies which utilize Viz's subtitle scripts. The English dubs of both films were run quite regularly on the Canadian channel, Space the Imagination Station, when the station first launched. They were also run in a very heavily edited form on the American Sci-Fi Channel.
Viz later released five volumes of the second Galaxy Express manga, which was the basis for the third film, Galaxy Express 999: Eternal Fantasy. The original manga has yet to be translated into English.
Recently, a subtitled version of the TV series has been released on IGN's Direct2Drive service. Currently, all 113 episodes are available. The streaming website Crunchyroll began streaming a subtitled version on January 9, 2009.
DVD versions of both Galaxy Express 999 and Adieu, Galaxy Express 999 were released in the US June 28, 2011 by Discotek Media. Both DVD's feature the English subbed and dubbed (Viz dub) versions of the movies. Discotek also has a release of the "Eternal Fantasy" movie planned as well.
The TV series was later licensed for a subtitled North American home video release by S'more Entertainment in 2012 as one their first anime releases.
Read more about this topic: Galaxy Express 999
Famous quotes containing the word versions:
“The assumption must be that those who can see value only in tradition, or versions of it, deny man’s ability to adapt to changing circumstances.”
—Stephen Bayley (b. 1951)