Bandai Entertainment is Dead!

Just Passing Through

Just Passing Through

The Wildcard
They are an ex-distributor as of February, and are laying off most of their workforce to become solely a licensor...

No more DVD, Blu-ray or Manga...

Existing titles will still be distributed..

But Nichijou, Gosick, and Turn A Gundam have been cancelled. :(

ANN

What does this mean for Beez?
 
How horrible, this is pretty much the death knell for those missing Gundam series. It was obvious they'd been struggling for a long time, but I'd hoped they could cling on.

R1 is getting very low on actual distributors these days.

R
 
Just realised...K-ON! was licensed by Bandai T_T. So unless another company picks up season 2 and sends it to Bang Zoom for dubbing...oh dear.
 
This is sad news.

Just Passing Through said:
What does this mean for Beez?
Click to expand...

While this will affect popular shows like Gundam or other anime, recently Beez have licensed shows that have nothing to do with Bandai (e.g House Of Five Leaves, Tatami Galaxy, Sound of the Sky).

However I will have to admit that we haven't seen a new Beez license in quite a while, I hope this news isn't one of the reasons.
 
just realised, we're now down to Funi, Sentai, NISA, and Media Blasters

bar funi, Sentai are "kinda growing" in terms of popularity, media blasters get the odd titles, but NISA never even heard of them :/
 
Well, this came outta nowhere.

Pretty much leaves Funi and Zombie ADV (with occasional Nasesico from Right Stuff), doesn't it?
Media Blasters are an uncompany as far as I care on the the account of them thinking Dokoro Chan deserves a dub whilst GaoGaiGar Season 2 doesn't.

That said, I can see Beez being no more before years end.

Sucks for Gosick though, that was a genuinely well done show that filled that wait for Moffat's Sherlock nicely. Turn A was never really going to happen, I think.
 
So that's both the Gurren Lagann manga and the DVD release of Nichijou gone to pieces. That's just typical, especially as in the Gurren Lagann manga there are just about to start the second half of the series with the grown-up Simon.
 
Wow. Fantastic.

So, we can pretty much forget about the second half of the original Gundam getting released, as well as the rest of Gundam Unicorn (especially on DVD).

Way to go, Bandai. I now feel like I've wasted my money.

I'd wondered about Turn A. There were trailers for that on the Gundam DVDs I bought before Xmas, claiming it would be out in 2011. But it's been a no-show.

I am somewhat unhappy.
 
I just said:
Wow. Fantastic.

So, we can pretty much forget about the second half of the original Gundam getting released, as well as the rest of Gundam Unicorn (especially on DVD).
Click to expand...

Ah. After looking around online, apparently the second half of the original Gundam is still getting a release. Unicorn (on DVD, at least) has a question mark over it.

Turn A needs to be picked up by someone else NOW, though.
 
Media Blasters haven't been in the best of health lately either. Funimation has been in rerelease hell for most of 2011, and Nozomi/NISA occasionally come up with something lovely but pace themselves. Sentai/S23 are definitely the most interesting licensor in the US these days.

Given that the struggling companies have had some really brilliant titles in their stable (00, Geass, K-On, Star Driver etc) but still failed, yet LEs from NISA, AniplexUSA and Funimation are selling out regularly, I wonder if we'll see more experimentation with LEs over there to appeal to the shrinking group of buyers.

Really pleased that at least Bandai managed to tie things up without dropping anything halfway, however annoying the lost upcoming series are. Though I guess I'll definitely not be seeing the rest of Hayate no Gotoku (not that I expected to, as it seemed to sell terribly badly).

Edit: Unicorn's blu-ray release should be fine, it's only the compiled DVD version which is going to sink. And of all of the lost Gundams, that one is probably not so unlikely to be picked up elsewhere since it's new, shiny, successful and already has English language assets for the blu-ray anyway.

R
 
Jesus only into the second day of the year and already we get this piece of **** news.

One question isn't sunrise studio owned by bandai? Does this mean that all sunrise stuff will never come out over here. Damn that would mean no more gundan ever again...... just asking because the only company that carries sunrise stuff over to the west is bandai.

Well bandai US were really expensive so they only have themselves to blame. If they did more half season boxsets instead of singles they might have made more money!
 
Ryo Chan said:
but NISA never even heard of them :/
Click to expand...

They are the company that make the Disgaea games. Nippon Ichi Software America. They started expanding into anime a couple of years back. They did:

*Toradora
*Kimi no todoke
*Arakawa under the bridge
*Wagnaria
*Pandora hearts
*Persona
 
Bandai weren't that expensive. They always did an Anime Legends set when the time came, and a lot of their catalogue stuff went straight to sets. Hayate no Gotoku and K-On were missteps (probably expensive to licence?) and the loaded 'singles' for Geass/00 put some people off, but they were hardly the most expensive company in the US.

I imagine the botched K-On and Kurokami releases hurt them.

Don't see why we won't get future Gundam (or other Sunrise) series since with Bandai Entertainment out of the way the other companies can grab them, though I'm not sure Age will be picked up for DVD anyway, since it's a different demographic and not one that has traditionally rushed to buy DVDs in the US.

R
 
Rui said:
Edit: Unicorn's blu-ray release should be fine, it's only the compiled DVD version which is going to sink. And of all of the lost Gundams, that one is probably not so unlikely to be picked up elsewhere since it's new, shiny, successful and already has English language assets for the blu-ray anyway.
Click to expand...

To be honest, this isn't a whole lot of reassurance for the board's resident Gundam nut. :(

Those Blu Rays are horrendously over-priced. The deal is even worse if (like me) you're one of the percentage of folks who still don't have a Blu-Ray player.

I also wonder how much money Bandai are going to demand for their licenses. I've heard the phrase 'They ask for too much' in connection with Bandai a few times. I fear that, if this is truly the case, that could sink some of their franchises in the West.

Right now, I am EXTREMELY frustrated over this development. I'm going to take a little while to compose my thoughts and then I'll post a thread to discuss my tangential observations.

...

'Tangential.' I like that. :p
 
Wait..so, we may not be getting that K-ON boxset? 0.o I don't really know much about this sorta thing, so what titles will be affected? :/

Sucks to see another Anime distributor gone though :(
 
We in the UK will still probably get a K-On! box set. The second series, however, is in doubt. There probably won't be a USA K-On! box set any time soon but that is unlikely to affect anyone here much :)

The only outright cancellations are the three unreleased shows in the first post.

HdE: Having to buy a blu-ray player and pay a little more (Unicorn looks particularly lovely on blu-ray and I consider it worth every penny!) is still less of a problem than with the completely lost shows, IMO.

R
 
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