The company as we knew it is dead. I for one am not surprised.
Seriously, this is a tactic in my opinion to boost the chances of selling off the fragments. Many fans believed that the Sentai Films deal, which is more or less ADV's top dog's new company, would save them. This has obviously proven false.
I believe this is an attempt by John Ledford to make assests easier to sell off. (Not that ADV/Sentai was doing anything much with the Amusement Park Media dub production part of the company anyway.) It may also be an attempt to cut down on taxes. Since any move costs loads it will likely add to costs overall so don't expect big savings for them. (They're all living in Sentai's backyard!)
Essentially, while I hate to be the bearer of bad news, ADV as we knew and loved it died before that first Clannad sub-only set came out. While this move won't affect all of the company's anime licenses, expect a few series to be conviently in the hands of another company when Sentai gets around to doing something.
Long live the fragments! Various licenses, production capability and holdings will be spread among AEsir Holdings, which has "selected" programming from ADV's library and some other worthwhile stuff, the SXION 23 home video distribution company will do the books (or cook them) for AEsir while Valkyrie Media Partners has acquired 100% of ADV's Anime Network television unit, about the only profitable part of the old company nowadays, while Seraphim Studios takes on the gathering dust Amusement Park Media. (If you believe in angels, clap your hands, maybe we'll getting a freaking dub out of them!)
The companies are Houston based (guess Ledford doesn't want to move too far away) but, hey, once you're pre-packaged for bite-size sell-off. . . does it matter?
Some, probably most, of the old employees are now with the new SXION 23 but word is not everyone will be carried over. This is an effort by Ledford to make the parts of the company as sleek and neat as possible so any dead weight or just non-essential personnel are toast. (Heck, essential personnel are screwed too in the long run.)
Ninja Edited In: Interesting news: According to this blog post by Robert of the Anime Corner Store, Ledford is the one not showing up again!
I also think it's worth mentioning that John Ledford is not part of the new company.Wow, he's already getting out?
Again, in my personal opinion, this is an attempt to make the company more attractive to buyers. Even if I'm wrong, the management isn't changing so the same old bad ideas will keep being floated.
This is why I said dropping dubs was a bad things folks! It's a sign of weakness!
Bye-ni!
I wasn't too suprised at this news myself. I thought ADV was heading for closure just based off of the manga/website. It just looked like a company breathing its last. At least the licenses (Most of my favorites went to SXION23) were salvaged for the most part. So its kind of sad, but people should have seen it coming a mile away.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if any other companies are going to follow suit. I'm honestly looking more towards Media Blasters and Bandai for a possible "reorganization" or closure. While everyone is struggling, they have made more decisions that may find themselves in ADV's shoes soon if they aren't careful.
A cautionary tale indeed.
In my opinion, Bandai is the most likely to see major change in the future. Media Blasters isn't strictly an anime distributor so they have a lot more options. Bandai's parent company in Japan however has already been making moves that suggest, to me at least, that they plan to stop being involved in anime production with the exception of Gundam series. (Again, personal speculation.)
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ReplyDeleteI'm sorry but your way off the mark. ADV/whatever they are calling themselves now and Sentai have said that Clannad sold really well, and made them a nice profit. Now would it have sold better with a dub? Yeah probally, but would it increase their profits? Doubt it. It might have even cost them money. Same goes for the rest of their newer stuff. The real situation is that dubs are not profitible for anyone who's not making Naruto or DBZ money. ADV and Sentai has been doing much better now that they cut off the dubs (personally I think they could manage some dubs on their more mainstream shows, and lets hope they do just that, but first they'd have to license some new shows!). Back in the Sojitz area they dubbed EVERYTHING but I highly doubt much of it made them money. But they kept doing it anyway. I'm very thankful for them giving us all those great dubs over the years. And the fatc that they stopped (for now) giving us new dubs is no reason to dislike them. Why should we forget the great things they did for us in the past? The fact that they got rid of dubs is helping them, not hurting them. And I say more power to them. We don't need another Geneon.
ReplyDeleteThis is reality we live in. And in real life dubs cost money, and with DVD's selling less then 3000 copies a series, it's impossible to dub everything. I know it's hard to swallow. I'm a hardcore dub fan too, but let's live in reality here, where dubs cost money to produce, and aren't a magical additive that raises sales with no negative side effects. Persoanlly I want everything to have a dub, I don't really watch sub-only shows. But I understand the situation. And seeing how things have been going, it looks like they are doing this for the tax reasons you stated, and because of Sojitz. It has nothing to do with selling off the company.
I am not at all trying to be rude, and I am very sorry if that's what you think after reading this.
Hello, you haven't updated the blog in awhile. Will you ever get back to it?
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