Borders Up For Sale

[riari]

Well, fuck.

Borders hoists for sale sign

I seem to be involved in several industries that aren't doing so well. Figures, huh?

I mean, the anime industry isn't doing all that well right now. Most noticible was when Geneon fell. Bandai Visual (not Bandai Entertainment) just announced they were putting three titles on hiatus to reorganize how they released in the US market. (Okay, well Bandai Visual's take on releases weren't the best, I will admit. At least not for the US market. It would have been fantastic...for the Japanese market. :P )

And the print industry is not in the best of health either.

Though now I think of it, this isn't the only industry hurting right now. Any one else notice that a lot of industries are starting to have problems? (Except for maybe fuel...)

Though in other fun news, Bandai Entertainment just announced the rights for Code Geass season 2. Well, at least I don't have to worry about that for now.

Comments

[metron-ariston.livejournal.com]

Okay, being more than a few years out of the loop, have you got any links to lengthy articles about these things? (Maybe some stuff might be on icv2?)

[riari.livejournal.com]

Anime things...yeah. Other markets are not quite what I have sources for. :> Animeondvd.com is where I get most of my news from, but I can dig up a couple of ICV2 articles too. I'll sum it up a bit for the most recent news.

Bandai Visual putting three titles on hiatus:
Press Release (http://www.animeondvd.com/news/pr.php?pr_view=1306). Most of their releases, with the exception of the regular editions of Patlabor movies, are way above market norms for price and below for episode counts. RightStuf Search Listing (http://www.rightstuf.com/1-800-338-6827/catalogmgr/ubWoduehaToqkEnLCC/browse/search/5/4/0/0/results/desc/asc/50/1) for Honneamise which is Bandai Visual's imprint. The $30 ones may look normal, like the Haruka ones, but that is for two episodes subbed only. Video quality is probably the highest in the Region 1 market though.

ADV: Most latest "crisis" was that ADV removed 34 titles from their webpage one night - all current and recent releases that were supposedly aquired after their deal with Japanese investors Sojitz. They went nearly four weeks without saying anything other than they were working on the problem. Though a rep did talk to ANN: here (http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2008-01-30/adv-films-removes-titles-from-website-update-2). No real press releases for these, a lot of the information I picked up from the AoD forums...which were speculating wildly about why and how and a few posters were "oh, they're dead and the market's doomed."

February 26th brought news, ADV's line up with new release dates for the titles that had missed streetdates. (http://www.rightstuf.com/rssite/main/news/individual/;jsessionid=stXuL60Y+fPvBEdge-wdxQ**?ForumThreadName=FT0000000319&ReturnTo=Main) Everything seems fine right now, all titles are shipping and new releases were just announced for May. Older backordered titles from the 34 pulled from the site are back shipping again from what I heard, so no one will really know what happened except for those involved. There is no news other than no comment and "we know you want them, and we're working on that" (paraphrased) about two titles: Sgt. Frog and fan favorite Gurren Lagen, both rumored to be huge financial investments to aquire.

Just before this, Newtype USA was canceled (http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/11893.html) and remade into a not anime only magazine "PiQ", The Anime Network's linear service was ended (http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/11894.html) and ADV's fan club section was shut down.

Also, Anime DVDs Down 20% (http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/12068.html).

The Fall of Geneon: This one really, really sucked. Geneon cancels all post Nov. 6th releases (http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/11368.html). ADV and Geneon tried to broker a deal that would ADV distribute all of Geneon's catalog (http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/11325.html). My own post about it is here (http://riari.livejournal.com/145593.html), if you hadn't seen it yet. There was a lot of panic buying after that announcement, which I also did because a lot of the popular titles I was collecting were getting harder and harder to find. You can still find some titles out there, but anything printed just before they stopped or that was really popular will be hard to find. Dentsu, Geneon's owners, supposedly are still looking for companies to take the licenses, but its hard for another company to pick up where they left off. Because they will either have to start up where Geneon left off, or restart the series where only a few will buy because they already have Geneon's discs. Hopefully they will make a decision soon.

So the anime industry is okay, but not great, for now, but not forever and will probably make more corrections soon. Musicland going bankrupt (http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/7962.html) hit the anime industry hard, Geneon going under was just as bad as they also did a lot of advertising besides the whole losing a major anime company in the R1 market.

Hopefully this all helps, and was somewhat what you were wanting to know. :>

[metron-ariston.livejournal.com]

Hoo yes, that's what I was wondering about. Thanks muchly, and I hope you haven't gone to as much trouble as you seem to have to find all that. D: I don't know why I'm always forgetting about Anime on DVD when I'm looking for this kind of information.

Ack, and I'm editing because I just realized my first comment came out kind of wrong. I was trying to ask if you thought I might be able to find some of this information on icv2 MYSELF, like, not asking you to do my idle research for me. :O eeeeep

[riari.livejournal.com]

Oh no problem. I've been trying to keep up-to-date on the industry as a fan even though I'm not working in it any more. I knew all of the stuff off-hand but it was better to dig up articles to go with it. So it wasn't extra work really. :>

Actually suggesting ICV2 came in handy because of ADV and other news. ^_^ Some of the news happened in October, ADV's was in late January/February, so digging through the articles helped. Bandai Visual's news was just announced this week. I figured summarizing it in a comment was much better. ^_^

But yeah, AnimeonDVD is a great place for news and the forum goers are generally pretty nice. :> And there's always Anime News Network for anime news and more.