At the time it took them more than 3 years to do the first 51 episodes. and i'm not even sure if the second season is done . there were months between releases at times. no wonder people didn't care ... MOst(99.9%) weren't aware that the show existed.
Yeah, the slowness of fansubbing definitely hurt interest in it. Don't know why more people weren't interested in subbing them, but I wish they were.
I ended up giving up waiting very quickly and just started watching episodes RAW.
Lucky, the show isn't plot intensive enough that you can't afford to miss something said the first time. And a lot of things are communicated through tone and body language.
I wouldn't play a Tales game in Japanese only just because the games are all about plot and it would spoil the experience just to even miss one sentence in Japanese. Knowing what's going on is key to the experience.
But with Fushigiboshi no Futagohime, I didn't feel like I was missing out to watch things RAW. And, after couple times watching, I figured out what they said just out of my rudimentary understanding of the Japanese language, and context. There's a lot of Japanese words I know, but would miss if I weren't to pay close attention. And I noticed that after about 3 times watching, I basically know what they said even though I don't have subs.
-Their focus
-The time they got to get enough fans.
Magical girl shows don't quite seem to get enough subbers in general.
It's a bit strange how it's such a noticeable genre that people instantly identify it with anime. Even people who aren't familiar with anime have often heard of the magical girl genre.
But the actual magical girl shows aren't that frequent nowadays. One of the most recent high profile examples in the genre was a dark and gritty take, Madoka Magica. And it wasn't intended for traditional Magical Girl fans all that much at all. A lot of traditional magical girl shows struggle to get subs. Even as many quite generic harem anime tons of subs.
I wish the same attention could be lavished on magical girl anime. And in fact, I wish there were more being made.