ADV Films Shuts Down

Not sure if this is old news, but did you guys hear about ADV Films going out of business?

Definitely news to me; I never even knew they were in trouble what with all of the Evangelion DVD sets they keep coming out with. I was wondering why the Anime Network disappeared from my On Demand and this probably has something to do with it.

I heard they'd sold a number of licenses to Funi and others.

Not surprised, they've been bleeding red ink for a long time. The Anime Network and Newtype USA were very expensive blunders.

Hmm. I bought the Evangelion Platinum tin just last week - evidently it was too little, too late...!

Well, for the sake of information here's an analysis of the situation from ANN:

[LINK]

By all accounts, it seems to be more a corporate restructuring than an absolute fatal collapse - as venerable as it is, we're losing the ADV Films label, but ADV properties themselves are being distributed amongst other companies owned by the same holders - it's a shell game.

Of course, for us our main interest is "what happens to ADV Manga?" and with that, of course, the GSG English license. No information seems forthcoming on that, unfortunately.

It's almost a given that ADV has lost the rights to publish Gunslinger Girl. Their President noted in a 2007 interview that most of the titles they had licensed in 2003 and 2004 had expired and that manga licenses were very short term and required regular publishing to keep active.

So I expect what happened is ADV lost the rights after publishing Volumes 1-3 and had to buy them again to release Volumes 4-6 and then subsequently lost them again.

So we're only honking off Dengeki Comics.

It seems that partnership with Sojitz really killed ADV. One of the LLC's that bought some of ADV's assets has the rights to You're Under Arrest season 2, I hope that comes out but...I wonder if they'll be able to find the english cast.

Well without Sojitz ADV probably would not have been able to license everything they did.

Of course, with ADV Films now dead, that means getting Volume 2 of Ghost Stories to complete my collection will be a pain. I paid almost as much for the final volume of Kanon from ADV films as I would have paid for the box set from Funimation (when they took over the rights).

Is this what you are looking for, Kisk?

That would be it. And only $7 (which is twice what I paid for each of the others, but still not bad).

If I can't find what I want on Rightstuf, I usually look around on Amazon and E-Bay. Sometimes on the two sites, I can find stuff that's much cheaper than what you have to buy it for on Rightstuf. I was able to get the final Tenchi Muyo OAV volume in an E-Bay auction bidding $26 on Tuesday, $7 cheaper than what I would have to pay for it on Amazon.

I'd heard they'd been in strife for awhile (a fair bit of the anime/manga industry seems to be that way), but that's news to me.

...

I'm praying that ADV will lose their license to the Gunslinger Girl Manga, so someone else can start printing the series.

Revolving Chi wrote:I'm praying that ADV will lose their license to the Gunslinger Girl Manga, so someone else can start printing the series.

I'm positive they lost it years ago.

Funi might pick it up, but I have a feeling it's going to be down to us to release it in English as free scanlations via the web.

Ah I saw this on MyAnimeList

http://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=111547

Looks more like a corporate restructuring than a shutdown

Nuke is Good wrote:IOne of the LLC's that bought some of ADV's assets has the rights to You're Under Arrest season 2, I hope that comes out but...I wonder if they'll be able to find the english cast.

Title: YOU'RE UNDER ARREST SEASON 2 COLLECTION 1
Running Time: 325 min.
Age Rating: TV PG (V)
CAT: SF-YUA201
UPC: 814131011206
Published by: Sentai Filmworks
Distributed by: Section23 Films
Pre-Book Date: 10/6/2009
Street Date: 11/3/2009
Format: DVD
SRP: $39.98

This should be episodes 1-13 and then the next collection will be 14-26. I'll watch it subbed, so I don't care about the dub.