Funimation Goes Godzilla Style on ADV and Geneon
Jul 4, 2008
Well, never fear if you cowering in your boots about the demise of Geneon and consequently, the fate of your favorite anime series. According to ANN, Funimation has picked up the rights to
"manufacture, sell, and distribute "select" DVD titles in North America. Those titles include Ergo Proxy, Hellsing Ultimate, Black Lagoon, Black Lagoon: The Second Barrage, Karin, Kyo kara Maoh! Season 2, Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, Elemental Gelade, Fate/stay night, Kamichu, the live-action Ninja Vixens work, Paradise Kiss, Rozen Maiden, Rozen Maiden - Träumend, Shana, Shonen Onmyouji, The Familiar of Zero, The Story of Saiunkoku, When They Cry - Higurashi, and The Law of Ueki."
Hot on the heels of this news is the fact that Funimation has also picked up the rights to the following ADV series:
- 009-1
- Ah! My Goddess: Flights of Fancy
- Air Gear
- Air movie
- Air TV
- Blade of the Phantom Master
- Comic Party: Revolution
- Coyote Ragtime Show
- Devil May Cry
- Guyver: The Bioboosted Armor TV
- Jing, King of Bandits: Seventh Heaven
- Jinki:Extend
- Kanon
- Kyoshiro to Towa no Sora (once titled as Shattered Angels by ADV Films)
- Le Chevalier D'Eon
- Magikano
- Moeyo Ken TV
- Moonlight Mile
- Murder Princess
- Nerima Daikon Brothers
- Pani Poni Dash!
- Project Blue Earth SOS
- Pumpkin Scissors
- Red Garden
- Sgt. Keroro 1st & 2nd
- Tokyo Majin
- UFO Princess Valkyrie
- Utawarerumono
- Venus Versus Virus
- The Wallflower
- Welcome to the NHK
- Xenosaga
(ANN)
So, while this seems to be good news, to me it's also kind of ominous. If ADV or Geneon couldn't make enough profit off these titles, will Funimation be able to? It seems to invite a charge of hubris, at least to me. Maybe Funi has bitten off more than it can chew. Could this be a case of a company walking into a candystore and filling up their pockets with licenses and then realizing they only have one mouth to stuff it all in? And also, how are they going to handle the releases? I would suspect as boxsets.
I really felt bad for Geneon when they went down. They had good titles and almost always did quality work on their shows. They are sorely missed. ADV, on the other hand, has come to define everything wrong with the anime and manga business. They do crappy dubs with the same core group that they've had for almost the whole time I've been watching anime. And don't even get me started on their manga division. Where is Gunslinger Girl? Yotsuba? Cromartie? They don't respect their customers. In some figurative respects, they spit on them as well. I don't think that a lot of these companies know how to compete or market very well. At this point, they are becoming more and more irrelevant. Tokyopop comes to mind as well. But they still have time to change their fate.
So I guess I'll give a cautious hooray to Funimation for the time being but reserve judgement over whether this is the Second Coming until I see what they do with the product.