Menu

Funimation Gnaws on ADV’s Body?While It’s Still Breathing


Funimation announced that they had grabbed all those anime titles ADV had lost back in January. That’s more than 30 series, including Sgt. Frog, The Wallflower, Devil May Cry, Welcome to the NHK, and a lot of others?all thanks to former ADV investor Sojitz, who supposedly took the titles away from ADV and asked Funimation to take ’em. With their recent announcement of getting Geneon’s in-limbo titles, that’s over 50 new anime licenses for Funimation in two days. Yikes.

I know anime fans are all pleased about this, and reasonably so, since they’ll be getting these series after all. But I need my doom and/or gloom?most of these 50 titles are crap. Unless Geneon Japan and Sojitz charged waaaay less than the standard licensing fee for these series?which is possible, since both Geneon USA and ADV weren’t going to be able to sell ’em?I doubt even 80% of these series will make a profit, between the state of anime DVD sales and the low profile of most of these anime. Maybe Funimation got ’em for a song. Maybe. But there’s a reason Geneon was and ADV is having troubles?because they had too few big, popular series and too many small, shitty series. And now Funimation has those same series. Huh.

Also, if you meet any anime fan who believes ADV can come back from this, please hit them. Tell them it’s from me.