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Funimation's Escaflowne Dub Casts Sonny Strait, Colleen Clinkenbeard

Fairy Tail's Erza Scarlet, Fullmetal Alchemist's Riza Hawkeye) will play the princess Millerna Aston. Strait is also directing the English dub.

The project also achieved its second stretch goal at US$250,000. The campaign will now include foil print on the Kickstarter-exclusive chipboard box at the $65, $125, and $155 levels, and the art cards will be upgraded into a saddle-stitched booklet.

The campaign previously voice the cat-girl Merle.

The campaign will reveal a new voice actor for the dub at every US$10,000 mark. As of press time, the campaign has raised US$252,447. The campaign will end on March 31.

The company plans to release the director's cut of the series in HD on Blu-ray Disc, including scenes that were not available when Jocelyne Loewen played Hitomi, Van, and Merle, respectively, in Bandai Entertainment's dub.

Funimation will also make a new matching dub for Shōji Kawamori.

The rewards for the campaign include pre-orders of exclusive Kickstarter editions of both parts of the release, featuring 13 episodes each of the HD complete uncut version of the series in Japanese with English subtitles as well as the new English dub. The Kickstarter edition also includes exclusive art cards. Other rewards include digital wallpapers, on-disc credit listings, pre-orders of Escaflowne: The Movie, theatrical-sized posters, the series' soundtrack, and collector's edition box sets that feature an art book and an unannounced exclusive item, among others.

One backer who donates US$5,000 will receive a tour of the Funimation office, a bag of Funimation merchandise, and a chance to do voice work that will appear in the new English dub. This reward has already been claimed.

The campaign's remaining stretch goal includes an invitation to meet director Kazuki Akane at an exclusive VIP party at a major U.S. anime convention for US$500,000.

Thanks to Adam for the news tip