Earlier this week, Aksys Games announced that there were no plans to dub the fourth mainline game in the BlazBlue franchise, or the end of Ragna's story: Central Fiction. They claimed it was either that, or delay the game another "6-8 months".

https://twitter.com/aksysgames/status/768505645473542144

This probably wasn't the reaction they expected...

 

+ Souledge94 on August 24th, 2016 at 10:37 am said:

Yes I would wait for 6-8 months for a dub

+ SilentNova on August 24th, 2016 at 10:52 am said:

Personally I would not mind especially if you got a look at the autographs I have collected on the covers for my copies of the other BlazBlue games. Can you please consider it for DLC? I will seriously pay for the English Dub if that is what it takes.

 
+ soul_of_k on August 24th, 2016 at 10:59 am said:

I would wait half a year for an English voice track for Blazblue. I was OK with Guilty Gear not having one as it has mostly not before but Blazblue always had two vocal sets since it’s localization.

 
+ Muntazar on August 24th, 2016 at 11:45 am said:

I definitely would, honestly I am pre-ordering the LE, and when I get it, I’m just gonna shelve it and wait for the English dub.
Please, it s one of my favorite part about this beautiful franchise, I want an English Dub, I would pay $20 for it, even!

 
+ RaveEX on August 24th, 2016 at 12:27 pm said:

I’d pay for a English dub DLC, so pleases consider it Aksys. Same goes for GGXRD Revelator.
 

 
+ Daverost on August 24th, 2016 at 3:05 pm said:

Yes, I actually would rather have waited.

 

You get the idea. Fans have taken to the internet to voice their disapproval, as have the voice actors themselves:

https://www.facebook.com/patrickseitzfanpage/posts/10154563285294875

"I’m disappointed by the news—and I’m especially disappointed to be getting it via tweet. Reaching out to the cast would have been a simple enough courtesy for Aksys to extend. Maybe they think we don’t much care either way, but many of us do. I know I do.

I’ve been Ragna from Calamity Trigger onward. I served as script-adapter and VO director on Continuum Shift Extend. When BlazBlue: Alter Memory got licensed for a U.S. release, I coordinated with Funimation to adapt and direct it out in Los Angeles, so that we could retain practically the entire cast and give longtime fans of the series a dub with the voices they’ve known all along. Granted, my experience with BlazBlue might be a bit more “behind the scenes” than most—but at the end of the day, I’m a fan, too.

Optimists are making a lot out of that “at the moment” distinction in Aksys’s second tweet, hanging their hopes on a dubbed release or at least English dialogue DLC down the line. Sadly, I am not. Aksys has literally nothing to gain by saying, “Nope, it’s never gonna happen,” except inviting a lot of disappointment and ill-will upon themselves in a moment when some folks are already fairly salty—even if they know it to ultimately be the truth. “No plans for a dub release or DLC atm” is the easy let-down, wherein everybody loses hope at their own staggered, gradual pace—or, ideally, just forgets about it with the passage of time.

If the sub-only BBCF sells well in America, it’ll be seen as proof that an English dub isn’t essential—that it’s an expensive frippery, as it were, and that they were right to release a pared-down version. At that point, why commit funds to a dub after the fact when they’ve already got your cash in hand? And if BBCF doesn’t sell well, no one’s going to want to throw good money after bad by dubbing something that under-performed in its initial U.S. release.

All this said, I’m not working with any privileged information here. If Aksys approaches us to dub Central Fiction later on, I will happily eat crow—and do it publicly, when we’re cleared to discuss the dub. But as of right now, faced with a reality I’d never thought to consider—that after the release of a multitude of dual-language BlazBlue titles from 2008 onward, they’re just nixing the English voices altogether—they’re not giving me much reason to hold my breath.

Some fans just play BlazBlue to whup ass, and that’s fine. But for a lot of folks, the story mode—which has just grown richer with each iteration—is a major draw. The mythos and the relationships between characters have been fleshed out in loving detail, and many among you would rather hear those thousands upon thousands of lines being acted out in English than have to read them.

And what a cast we’ve had…! I think our BB English cast is one of the best fighting-game ensembles in the genre, frankly. I’m not saying that as a self-aggrandizing actor, or as one who’s bummed over the loss of a paycheck. I’m saying that as someone who, like you, has spent the last eight years with these characters—cheering their victories, mourning their losses, and understanding the world of BlazBlue more (or sometimes less!) with each new revelation.

TL;DR version: BlazBlue Central Fiction isn’t getting dubbed. I’m sad about it, irate about how impersonally I found out, and not putting any particular stock in a dub happening after-the-fact (though I’d love to be wrong on that front).

After all this time, it hurts to be told that we’re not so central to the fiction after all."

 

They are Central to this Fiction. Let's prove it. Support the dub of BlazBlue: Central Fiction, and let's see Ragna's story end with the bang the voice talent deserves.