Hell really must have frozen over, as FUNimation Productions's Lance Heiskell jokingly said when he revealed that his company had acquired the license to distribute Kodomo No Omocha in the United States.
On April 4, 2004, exactly eight years and one day after the first Kodocha episode aired in Japan (and almost 10 years after the first manga chapter appeared in Ribon magazine), FUNimation announced that it expects to release Kodomo No Omocha in the United States by the Spring or Summer of 2005. The announcement was made at Anime Boston 2004.
I confess to not being familiar with FUNimation's work, but I've heard only good things about its release of Fruits Basket (their only other shoujo title as far as I know), a very sentimental and funny series directed by Akitaroh Daichi, who also directed Kodocha. But as anyone familiar with Kodocha knows, it presents a bigger challenge than Fruits Basket due to the endless cultural references, the fast pace of the dialogue, and the emotionally erratic nature of the show. Many people (myself included) thought Kodocha would never be licensed because of these challenges, but a good Kodocha sub is definitely possible, as "Kodocha Anime" showed when it first introduced English speakers to the series with its fansubs. No fansub group has finished subtitling Kodocha, so this is definitely good news for those eager to see "the missing episodes" and to own the series subtitled on DVD.
