User blog comment:Lemursrule/Bleach 227 english dubbed review/@comment-2129789-20111025210633/@comment-1351982-20111025215449

All the times Bleach has gone on hiatus is due to liscening issues with TV Tokyo. Viz only licences Bleach, it does not actually own the rights to Bleach, the rights belong to Shueisha (Viz's main parent company which owns 40% of the company. Shogakukan owns 40%, and Shogakukan Production Co., Ltd. owns 20%). Viz has a better advantage in getting more marketable licences like Bleach and Naruto, but just because they are owned by Shueshia does not mean they automatically get the rights to what Shueshia releases. A good example is the One Piece, Viz has the manga rights, but not the anime rights. Basically Viz along with their homevideo co-partner Warner Home Video (Time Warner is the parent company of Cartoon Network) can only broadcast and release on home video a certain set number of episodes at a time, a season or 20-30 episodes. They are only allowed to purchase rights to certain episodes in chunks, thats why it takes so long to update old subtitled episodes, because Viz is likely only allowed to upload four a month. Plus it takes a lot longer to dub an episode. In Japan according to recording director Yusuke Morita, they typically record in group sessions (which is not really done in american animation anymore) and an actor records typically 2-4 episodes over a 4 hour voice session and a single episode is recorded usually 2-3 weeks before air date. The dub has to be planned out months in advance and while the recording sessions are about the same length, each actor has to be recorded sepratley to insure that the dub is of the utmost quality and that takes a long time. It takes almost a month just to dub 4 episodes, so typically it takes twice as long to dub a show than if it was recorded like a typical original animation. So it is not Viz's fault, if you have a bone to pick, talk to shueshia and aniplex.