Oh Funimation. You were so quick to send out cease & desists when your precious simulcasts were in danger. Yet during the second episode of Tokyopop’s “America’s Greatest Otaku” (I’ll save my rant on that for another time), a pirated clip of Sora no Otoshimono was shown in Funimation’s own dubbing studio. It was shown online that the subtitle’s text and font style matches exactly to a sub group that re-styles subtitles from Crunchyroll streams.

Funimation has yet to make an official statement on this matter, but an employee who wished to remain anonymous stated that the company occasionally uses “unofficial” copies of a series if the acquisition of the original source material is delayed. They claim it’s legal, since Funimation holds a distribution licence for the series in the US.

While the legality of this matter is left to be confirmed, the fact that Funimation uses pirate subs of series that they licensed for their dubbing sessions definitely puts a tarnish on their image. I wonder how they will spin this info when they (eventually) release a statement.