Geneon in turmoil after deal with ADV Films is canceled
- Thread starter Paul
- Start date
I find Dentsu's handling of this appauling, really.
They should have stopped letting Geneon produce anything a long time ago, so if they did really want to stop Geneon's production altogether, they at least wouldn't have all these unfinished series.
It's beyond me how they can't at least have pushed all the last volumes of their current series to be released by the end of the year - or something, at least. I mean take a look at Kyo Kara Maoh, only a few volumes left to releast, out of 18, and it's going to be ended at 15/18. Likewise for all their other releases of course, and with the Hellsing OVA, and Geneon putting a lot of money into its production - I don't see how they are just going to give up on it. Of course they aren't, I don't know why I just said that, but yeah - they should hand over all their materials to another company - that can finish the releases - preferably in the same format (like ADV did with the second season of AMG:TV).
So basically, there isn't really any new news here, just what was expected - but a month earlier than we thought. Now the waiting game begins to see how this is all going to pan out.
I can't believe this has only just been realised now, to be honest. It was not in the 'public eye' so to speak, that Geneon was potentially going down, even though the signs were there - the fact that they stopped releasing CD's at the start of the year, and of course with d-rights pulling out of their investment. I just wish people had been more informative on what might happen, earlier. Not on this forum, I guess, on AnimeOnDVD and such. A number of people on there now say "Person X hinted to me that this might happen" blah blah. Either they're making it up to make themselves look good, or they didn't think it was in the interest of everyone else - who buys Geneon's products.
This is thoroughly a shame, Geneon have been one of the best, if not the best anime distributor in America, and have continued that up to this point, so I really do wish that all their employees that worked so hard to interact with the community (in America), and put out such great releases, and of course everything else they did - all the best.
Rest in peace Geneon as a distributor.
They should have stopped letting Geneon produce anything a long time ago, so if they did really want to stop Geneon's production altogether, they at least wouldn't have all these unfinished series.
It's beyond me how they can't at least have pushed all the last volumes of their current series to be released by the end of the year - or something, at least. I mean take a look at Kyo Kara Maoh, only a few volumes left to releast, out of 18, and it's going to be ended at 15/18. Likewise for all their other releases of course, and with the Hellsing OVA, and Geneon putting a lot of money into its production - I don't see how they are just going to give up on it. Of course they aren't, I don't know why I just said that, but yeah - they should hand over all their materials to another company - that can finish the releases - preferably in the same format (like ADV did with the second season of AMG:TV).
So basically, there isn't really any new news here, just what was expected - but a month earlier than we thought. Now the waiting game begins to see how this is all going to pan out.
I can't believe this has only just been realised now, to be honest. It was not in the 'public eye' so to speak, that Geneon was potentially going down, even though the signs were there - the fact that they stopped releasing CD's at the start of the year, and of course with d-rights pulling out of their investment. I just wish people had been more informative on what might happen, earlier. Not on this forum, I guess, on AnimeOnDVD and such. A number of people on there now say "Person X hinted to me that this might happen" blah blah. Either they're making it up to make themselves look good, or they didn't think it was in the interest of everyone else - who buys Geneon's products.
This is thoroughly a shame, Geneon have been one of the best, if not the best anime distributor in America, and have continued that up to this point, so I really do wish that all their employees that worked so hard to interact with the community (in America), and put out such great releases, and of course everything else they did - all the best.
Rest in peace Geneon as a distributor.
Well, I expected this when the 2 companies split. And throughout the luck we wished them, they still couldn't hold themselves together. 
I wont stop buying ADV stuff because of this. It's just unfortunate that a big name business has disolved, so I have to research other brand names to listen out for. (Not that there aren't other groups I've hear of, just dont remember well.)
I wont stop buying ADV stuff because of this. It's just unfortunate that a big name business has disolved, so I have to research other brand names to listen out for. (Not that there aren't other groups I've hear of, just dont remember well.)
Gawyn said:This should not affect MVM's Geneon licences at all since they are licenced for UK release and do not concern Geneon US at all. All of the ones they currently own are completely dubbed and such in the US so there is little-to-no possibility that the raw materials will not become available either.Sakimori said:Paul said:
As far as titles midway through release they had yet to release the rest of Rozen Maiden.
Whatever the ramifications, it is not nice to see something like this happen.
Wrong! MVM licensed their Geneon titles from Geneon USA. They and Geneon have both said so on several occasions. If Geneon's titles were to lapse then MVM and Madman would lose their licenses too.
However, according to a post at AoD from a former Geneon employee, Geneon USA will continue to sell their titles to Europe and Australia. Geneon USA will continue to exist, Dentsu have explicitly said that in one of their press releases. It's just all their releases are going out of print in R1 (or have been cancelled).
Whether we'll see their shows coming out from someone else, is an interesting question. That assumes their contracts allow them to sublicense to another R1 company.
Right now, I'd have to say that a lot of Geneon's obscure and slow burning stuff may fall through the cracks. Just looking at their ANN page, they've released Fighting Spirit, Gankutsuou, Gungrave, Haibane Renmei, Master Keaton, NieA_7, Paranoia Agent, Samurai Champloo, Serial Experiments Lain, Texhnolyze, XTV and Zipang. It would be tragedy to see any of these series just disappear.
Is anyone else concerned by what this means for the future too? Undoubtedly, it suggests that less anime will be licensed, and this lack of future movement will impact on the UK industry which obviously depends on the latest and great series being produced in America before hitting the our shores.
Is anyone else concerned by what this means for the future too? Undoubtedly, it suggests that less anime will be licensed, and this lack of future movement will impact on the UK industry which obviously depends on the latest and great series being produced in America before hitting the our shores.
I should imagine genons more popular titles will be snapped up fairly soon maybe cheaper but they maybe more expensive though i don't except any older lesser known titles to be re released for a fair while.
Actually what happens to the lisences do they just expire or they auction them of or what?
Actually what happens to the lisences do they just expire or they auction them of or what?
MTW said:
It totally depends on what Geneon want to do with them. They will expire at a certain date - specific to each title - whether or not Geneon wants to renew the license is up to them, of course, they can sell their licenses to other companies as well I would assume. I don't know if CPM's licenses expired before some got "license-rescued", like Slayers (I think it was CPM anyway), but if it hadn't expired, that means that licenses can be bought.
I'm just assuming here, I don't know for sure. I just think it'd be silly for the license to be set on one company. I guess it depends on what the license agreement is, to some extent, as in what Japanese company the license is bought from. I would think that Viz would get all Shounen Jump titles, but that theory proved wrong because Funimation got Black Cat. So I guess it's just up to the license holder what they want to do.
That probably didn't help at all, I feel like I'm going round in circles.
Hybridchild
School Idol
Guys you may want to check this out fully before assuming the worse, according on ANN, AoD and Dentsu themselves Geneon is stopping production and marketing to focus on its license portfolio, this has been the plan for months before the ADV deal (in fact it was the reason for the deal) its mearly a change in focus and business practice, they will be sub contracting production, marketing and distribution of their titles to other companies, much like Kadokawa USA handle things.
Companies operating like this are quite common in the music industry and was how ShoPro operated before they where taken over by Viz. To be honest given the decline of the anime industry in the last few years im surprised more companies dont do this as it cuts costs by up to 50-70% in some cases.
It's safe to say they will be releasing their more popular titles through other companies, again like Kadokawa, and they probably will eventully restart licencing shows, however some of their lesser known or less profitable titles are inevitablely going to be overlooked but it's not a total loss and could be much worse.
Companies operating like this are quite common in the music industry and was how ShoPro operated before they where taken over by Viz. To be honest given the decline of the anime industry in the last few years im surprised more companies dont do this as it cuts costs by up to 50-70% in some cases.
It's safe to say they will be releasing their more popular titles through other companies, again like Kadokawa, and they probably will eventully restart licencing shows, however some of their lesser known or less profitable titles are inevitablely going to be overlooked but it's not a total loss and could be much worse.
Espy said:
You say that, but they were cutting costs for quite a while before all of this latest saga unfolded. Geneon used to frequently make use of New Generation Pictures, but recently, with a few notable exceptions, they have been using cheaper dubs, such as that for Karin and Shonen Omyoji, dubbed in Singapore by Odex.
Fellistowe
Kiznaiver
Hybridchild said:
I'm completely agreeing with Hybridchild on this, the letter to the retailers (found on AoD here) only tells us what we knew already, that Geneon were shutting their marketing and production departments. This is just the business side of doing it.
To back up something Danime reported earlier, even John Sirabella (head of Media Blasters) has confirmed on the AoD boards that the sub/dub companies he uses are still working on Geneon titles (which you wouldn't be doing if you knew someone wasn't gonna pay your bill at the end of the contract).
Geneon certainly aren't dead (yet), and I'm certainly not killing them off until I see a press release from Dentsu or Geneon saying they are either liquidating or similar.
The speculation now has to be what licences they are going to choose to hold on to (and who are they going to subcontract them to for production and distribution), and which ones they will sell off to other distro's.
Media Blasters seem to have been dropping big hints that we may be seeing some Geneon titles through them, it's just a waiting game again now to see what unfolds....
p.s. And yes, this is a huge shock and blow to the US anime industry, but it's business and things like this happen. Since the Japanese companies started insisting the western distro's actually started paying their licence bills on time I can imagine everyone's got troubles, it's just the smaller companies who are going to bear the brunt first.
Best we can do as fans is look for the positive in any situation, and continue to support the industry as best we can and buy more DVD's
butch-cassidy
Straw Hat Pirate
Very bad news... but I guess there is nothing that can be done other than buy those titles I need from them before they disappear off the market.
Espy said:
Yeah Singapore was once a British colony and thusly Englsish is one of the offical laungauges along with Chinese. Its like they're main manga publisher Chung Yi ((I think its that, or at least acording to Wikipedia)) publishes in English. So yeah I guess they do have English voice actors there.
There are polls on AnimeNewsNetwork and AnimeOnDVD, about Geneon, so I think completing them will be a good help to the industry; I'm thinking they've been created specifically because of what is happening, so if they get good responses things might take a different path to the finish line - a path that might be better than what might happen without a poll.