[EVA] ADV Films shuts down

[V V]

"Most importantly, will Neo-ADV still retain NGE TV? I am dismayed they don't have 1./0/1/1, even for obvious reasons.
RJN"

Neo-ADV won't give that up so long as they draw breath.

It's their cash cow, they all know it.  If they lose Eva, all hope they had for being a "company" and not a "liquidation" are gone.

Well actually, Media Blasters doesn't do alot but that's because they don't spend alot; they never overspeculated; they sort of have a policy of "aim low, earn low" which keeps them functional...but also assures they'll never be a major factor (i.e. "potential Rebuild of Eva buyer") unless fortune falls in their lap (Moribito)

Now as for the industry as a whole, the major distributors left are:

FUNimation, Viz, Bandai, Media Blasters, The Right Stuf International

There's a handful of minor companies that are nonfactors (Disney only buys Ghibli films, AnimeEigo is around but stopped dubbing anime and moved on to live-action imports, 4Kids is apparently being sold off and who knows what form it will take, and Tokyopop is having problems)

....is The Right Stuf International more of a distributor or a clearing house? You mentioned that TRSI would handle a liquidation like CPM/ADV

As I said, Media Blasters won't dominate.

Of the big 3, Bandai has all sorts of reports of layoffs and internal problems and frankly I wonder if their Japanese parent company will pull another Geneon and yank the plug on them.

Viz actually controls more manga than FUNimation does, and some major (usually manga-related titles) i.e. Naruto, Bleach, Death Note

Nonetheless, I think the "new Leviathan" of FUNImation might be a good thing: the problem is that the normal business model is "competition is good, a monopoly is bad"....but instead, we've got the anime companies competing against fansubbing:  you can't wait nearly two years to release major movies like Rebuild of Eva.

Nonetheless I do think we need at least two major anime studios to at least keep dubbing competition up (if only one company makes official dubs, they don't even have to try to make good ones)

I don't know.  I kind of like to think that the remnants of ADV will bounce back -- Sentai/Section23/Aesir/Valkryie/Seraphim --- ...okay its a good catch all to be just "Neo-ADV" so I'll stick to that...I just hope they'll do something.

Problem is it seems like when the bubble burst in 2006, the entire anime world just shut down.  Just froze down.  There wasn't much new Eva stuff coming out, sure, but the entire industry knows EXACTLY what went wrong:

1-Geneon and ADV overspeculated to death, then the bubble burst
2-at the same time, internet downloading/fansubbing became a serious problem, and the industry is doing NOTHING to stop it

They've known exactly what the downloading problem was, it's just that no one has made serious attempts to stop it.  It's crazy: I've read editorials on ANN made in *late 2007* which explained EXACTLY what was wrong, and what should be done about it....and for two years, no one has had the energy to do much of anything.  


Again, ADV is gone, but they're up to something, and change is what was needed now...not just sitting around waiting to run out like CPM did.

-- V

"I'm pleased to meet you and I hope you guessed my name, but what's puzzling you, is the nature of my game"

--- On Thu, 9/3/09, Harold Ancell <hga at ancell-ent.com> wrote:

From: Harold Ancell <hga at ancell-ent.com>
Subject: Re: [EVA] ADV Films shuts down
To: "The english-language evangelion mailing list." <evangelion at eva.onegeek.org>
Date: Thursday, September 3, 2009, 12:53 AM

At 07:23 PM 9/2/2009, V V wrote:
>You know a lot about this.

Well, a lot about corporate governance; as for ADV, only
what I've been reading in the usual sources (granted, I also
have been buying their products since that very first DHY tape).

>Sorry yeah I was kind of lightly saying "dummy company" when I meant more like "Dummy name" (i.e. everyone at Section 23 worked at ADV, the name changed, etc.)

I'm sure it's more disruptive than that.  They're getting
paid from a different company, they probably have a new health
plan, probably new offices (whomever the current ones are
being leased from is probably an unsecured and out of luck
creditor), etc. etc.)

>Anyway, the big questions are:
>
>1-what will be the fate of Ledford and Greenfield, the original founders/leaders?

Do we care?  As long as the various parts of Neo-ADV function well?

As long as they keep cranking out NGE V1.0 product ^_^?

Whatever negative things I might have thought about Ledford,
converting ADV's tailspin into this controlled crash (which at the
very least he had to cooperate with) is a truly impressive feat.

Greenfield?  He's had no ownership (I wonder what the story
there is) and he hasn't had much to do with the inner workings
of the company for a long time, right?

>2-will a new, revized, "Neo-ADV" (like Neo-Zeon) rise up out of this, or are they just burning off inventory?

They clearly aren't doing (just) that.  For one thing, you don't
need much of a company to do that, especially if you hire The Right
Stuf to do a liquidation.

Plus the various players are all saying the right things; we'll
find out soon enough if new product shows up on the shelves soon,
as promised.

>I don't seriously think they'll get back to where they were;

No, Funimation has that mantel now, for what it's worth.  And
the US anime bubble coincided with a world-wide credit bubble,
we aren't going to see a return to those conditions any time
soon, if ever.  It's been noted that Japan's first lost decade
coincided with the sort of rapid greying of their society that
the US is about to experience.  That really changes consumption
patterns and is thoroughly deflationary (which is bad). 

>but what are the chances they could at least work their way back to say, a level like Media Blasters?

Fair, I'd say.  Heck, what has Media Blasters been doing in
the way of anime lately?  A Blade of the Immortal license
announcement in June, then you have to go back 11 months for
more titles.  I gather they're alive, but it wouldn't seem
they are particularly in the anime business any more....

Neo-ADV seems to be a lot more healthy, as long as they can
keep their head above water; it's not guaranteed their new
titles and back catalog (minus the Sojitz/ARM titles) can
keep them alive ... we'll find out presently.

                                        - Harold
-- 
Evangelion mailing list - To unsubscribe, visit
http://eva.onegeek.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/evangelion