Tokyo and San Francisco – Viki, Inc., the global TV site powered by avid fans, has inked an exclusive deal with Right Stuf, Inc. to stream The Rose of Versailles, a legendary anime title produced over 30 years ago by TMS Entertainment LTD, based on the manga comic created by Riyoko Ikeda, one of the most well-known manga artists in the world.

A sneak peek of the first episode, subtitled in English, will premiere at the New York Comic Con on October 13 with Anime News Network, and anime expert and Tufts University Professor Susan Napier.

This is the first time TMS Entertainment LTD has allowed the series to be released outside of Japan, Asia and Europe, and the first time it is made available for English-speaking audiences in the U.S. and Canada.

The 40-episode series will begin streaming on Viki in December with English subtitles. Viki launched its anime channel in March and now has over 100 anime titles from Japan’s largest licensors.

“Many companies have tried unsuccessfully for years to bring The Rose of Versailles to North America,” said Razmig Hovaghimian, Viki CEO and Co-Founder.  “We’re honored TMS has entrusted Right Stuf and Viki to bring a true Japanese treasure to our fans.”

Viki also announced that it is launching a YouTube Anime channel with Tezuka titles, providing hundreds of hours of free anime with English and other language subtitles. One unique point about this feature is that Viki is using the YouTube API to automatically pull in essentially user generated subtitles/captions (in this case, from the Viki community)– something which one can’t currently do on the YouTube platform.