Madman Entertainment has been erased.

[Just Passing Through]

And the Sony edit continues, destroying anime history without a second thought.

Anime Merch & Figures‎ | Anime Shop | Crunchyroll Store

Shop a large selection of officially licensed anime figures, manga, collectibles and home entertainment at the Australian Crunchyroll Store! Find anime merch from popular series such as Dragon Ball, My Hero Academia, Demon Slayer, Chainsaw Man, Sailor Moon, Naruto, SPY x FAMILY, One Piece...

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That's what you get if you try to find Madman anime now.

 

[Dave1988]

Jeeeez crunchyroll literally taking the lot.... Lets just hope nothin happens to crunchyroll or the industry is finished

 

[RadFemHedonist]

I agree with what you're saying but using the word "holocaust" is a bit, uhhh... probablyilladvised. Please don't take this as me being big heccin' angery at you - I'm honestly not and I do know that the Nazis and other fascist and so forth groups have attempted to destroy important historical stuff so I'm not denying it's an actual problem. (Also if you are Jewish I might be out of line here as I'm not though I am bisexual and disabled so I would likely have been targeted as well).

I did a google, you are right that it's unsettling and concerning but at least the second google result is the Wikipedia page for Madman

Madman Entertainment - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Crunchyroll Store Australia - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

But perhaps I am missing the forest for the trees somewhat here if the broader point you are making is that the monopoly that Sony now has on the industry is not gonna end well, and I absolutely agree with that. Might come back and post more thoughts later. Is the Madman anime page at least archived and easily accessible to the public in that form? (If the answer's no then yes that is definitely bad). Also without meaning to imply that I'm markedly on one side or another of the international vs. local debate, it seems pretty sucky to have all these companies from various different countries taken over by one bigger conglomerate

 

[Just Passing Through]

I agree with what you're saying but using the word "holocaust" is a bit, uhhh... probablyilladvised. Please don't take this as me being big heccin' angery at you - I'm honestly not and I do know that the Nazis and other fascist and so forth groups have attempted to destroy important historical stuff so I'm not denying it's an actual problem. (Also if you are Jewish I might be out of line here as I'm not though I am bisexual and disabled so I would likely have been targeted as well).

I did a google, you are right that it's unsettling and concerning but at least the second google result is the Wikipedia page for Madman

Madman Entertainment - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Crunchyroll Store Australia - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

But perhaps I am missing the forest for the trees somewhat here if the broader point you are making is that the monopoly that Sony now has on the industry is not gonna end well, and I absolutely agree with that. Might come back and post more thoughts later. Is the Madman anime page at least archived and easily accessible to the public in that form? (If the answer's no then yes that is definitely bad). Also without meaning to imply that I'm markedly on one side or another of the international vs. local debate, it seems pretty sucky to have all these companies from various different countries taken over by one bigger conglomerate

I did think twice about my word choice, but little 'h', I stand by it. One thing, I'm old, and I'm not comfortable with groups 'owning' words. And if I walked on eggshells everytime someone used that word, I'd never watch The Princess Bride again.

Sony bought Funimation, and Funimation Crunchyroll, and went on a rebrand rampage. This is all Sony. And more people that I have noticed that in the US, the Crunchyroll release slate has been getting increasingly anorexic of late, while CR go on a buying spree for licences. It's clearly a move to control the catalogue by making anime a streaming product alone, and ending the physical media model.

They are essentially erasing an existing, and admittedly niche fanbase in exchange for an easy buck. Young-uns with just enough disposable income to fuel their phone addictions, watching cartoons on small screens.

 

[N-11]

"Destroying anime history" man you guys sure love overreacting. It's really not that deep. And yeah I really wouldn't use holocaust in this context. It's literally just a rebrand.

Completely disagree with this take, Madman/Madman Anime have been around for 27 years and have been the main distributor for Anime and Manga content in Australia and New Zealand. They also made AnimeLab which was the biggest Anime streaming service in Australia and New Zealand, which was so big that even Funimation gave up trying to break into the Market and moved all of their titles to Animelab. (Later Animelab merged into Funimation after the Aniplex buyout of Madman) They are the whole reason for Anime being in Australia and New Zealand so Sony rebranding them is destroying Anime history, maybe if your not Australian you might not fully understand the impact Madman had of the ANZ market and the replacing of the home grown Australian brand for some American one is sad to see and pretty disrespectful to all Aussies.

This point also stands for Manga Entrainment which basically had a slow decay because of buyout after buyout after buyout of companies that didn't care much for it until it was eventually killed off entirely by Sony/Funimation/Crunchyroll. Where are most of the Manga staff now? They either left or got fired leaving a shell of a company. The same thing will most likely happen to Madman sadly.

 

[N-11]

As a British fan I really didn't care when they rebranded Manga Entertainment and I still disagree that it's destroying history. The history is still there. Crunchyroll isn't going around removing any trace of these companies existence.

The history isn't there when they have remove all traces of it, The history is the Madman name and branding and they have just got rid of all of that. There isn't any about section anywhere saying "Crunchyroll aus comes from Madman who severed as the biggest Anime distrubtor for Australia" or something along those lines. All it says is "The Crunchyroll Store is here to help you live your best anime life. With the hottest preorders, and crazy convenience, you can count on us to keep you adorned in apparel, plush with plushies, furnished with figures and deep in BD/DVD!"

 

[N-11]

Welp I doubt we can come to an agreement on this. It all sounds like a simple rebrand to me. I for one welcome our new Crunchyroll overlords.

I do doubt we can come to an agreement on this as well so we will just have to agree to disagree.

 

[Professor Irony]

Please do not use ‘holocaust’ in this context in future. Thanks.

 

[awadama]

Actual footage of Crunchyroll:

 

[mikezilla2]

considering madman was almost the only local anime company for me it is very sad to see them go ....

siren went insolvent a long time ago and hanabee is just too Weak ..........

 

[Greboruri]

As a British fan I really didn't care when they rebranded Manga Entertainment and I still disagree that it's destroying history. The history is still there. Crunchyroll isn't going around removing any trace of these companies existence.

I don't think Crunchyroll really care about preserving the history of Manga Entertainment. Upper management would not give a rat's arse about it. They just want to rebrand everything purge all traces of it. Whether or not they are keeping the archive of their material or not, who knows? It's pretty much up to people in fandom to document and preserve as much of that material as possible. It's a bit of shame that you don't personally care because the company played a huge part in UK fandom becoming what is today (for better or worse). I think it's also pretty important to Australian fandom too as Manga's catalogue was pretty much imported verbatim by Siren in the mid to late 1990's. Those tapes were in video rental shops everywhere. There was an explosion in anime clubs in the mid to to late 1990's because of that.

Madman/Madman Anime have been around for 27 years and have been the main distributor for Anime and Manga content in Australia and New Zealand. They also made AnimeLab which was the biggest Anime streaming service in Australia and New Zealand [...] They are the whole reason for Anime being in Australia and New Zealand

Madman ushered in the fifth wave of anime into Australia (after anime on TV in the 1960's, a second wave of anime on TV in the very late 1970's/early 1980's, a third wave of TV anime in the mid 1980's and the fourth wave which was Siren importing Manga's catalogue and anime like DIC's Sailor Moon on TV in the mid to late 1990's). By the time the late 1990's rolled around, Siren had lost the rights to Manga's catalogue (for a second time) and Island's Australian video division, Polygram, had no idea what to do with the label.

Pretty much only Madman took an interest in anime. There was a lot of missteps along the way I think, but when they somehow managed to get SBS TV to play Evangelion on Saturday nights in 1998, that just changed everything. Anime clubs popped up out of nowhere everywhere across the country (three in my city with a population of of 322,000, which I thought was nuts) and we had annual anime conventions in every capital city, also pretty much unheard of as there were none prior to this anywhere in Australia. Prior to this most of the time it was a crappy video room as part of comic book or gaming convention, usually with hostile or indifferent organisers who barely tolerated that programming. Also Madman was pivotal in getting as much anime into cinemas in the country.

In the end Madman had become a monopoly as Siren and Hanabee faded out of existence, but I don't think Crunchyroll is going to be great for anime in this country. The first Crunchyroll Expo Australia was a utter disaster area, so poorly organised it made the news on Channel Nine Melbourne. I think as soon as profits are less than expected (by whatever metric they measure that by) they'll shut up shop here and that'll be the end of locally distributed anime here.