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ADV Hits A Joker

Even though I was glad the core elements of AD Vision would still function in the form of separate corporate entities, I felt some sadness about the disappearance of the brand early last week. The clock had been ticking for a couple years and yet they’re still not completely shuttered, like Geneon or CPM ended up, partly due to acquiring & distributing new content through Sentai Filmworks & Switchblade Pictures and also having a back catalog that bolsters their Anime Network channel and VOD service.

Some of their fanservice-focused marketing was not so great – they had even trademarked “Jiggle Counter” (TM s/n 78249580) and used it on Burn Up Excess & Plastic Little – but they also put Pop Up Video style “AD Vid-Notes” (Vid-notes: TM s/n 78271566) on a few reference-heavy releases in Excel Saga & Pani Poni Dash and experimented with different methods of advertising: AniMinis (1 episode on 3-inch discs at $6.99 with a coupon inside) and using torrents to distribute promotional materials.

It’s not much of a loss at all since the core business elements remain and only the brand was abandoned but I’ll still miss it. (I’m not going to delve into their defunct manga business because I didn’t have that much experience with it and because it ended up being so mishandled.)

Here are some of the ADV-related posts I written over the past three years:
sampling the ADV Universe content and wrote about its Windows DRM
pointing out John Ledford’s ranking of titles in A, B, and C categories of sellability (and then something Ledford said 17 months later)
exploiting their once-open trailer directory to post a teaser trailer of Kanon, a day before ANN (while in Germany no less!)
posting a renewal letter from Newtype USA I received soon after the announcement that the magazine would turn into PiQ, which also folded later that year
– an expression of hopeful (and naive) concern for the company’s future after news of dropped listings and the lost Sojitz licenses
– a post wondering about the future of Keroro (Sgt. Frog). Funimation picked it up in its slew of license transfers two weeks later.
an episode of Reading Out Loud about the phantom February 2008 release date for Gurren Lagann
– reviews of Red Garden vol. 1 and Pumpkin Scissors vol. 1

P.S. This is one of the more memorable ads I saw from ADV (scanned from Anime Insider, October 2005):

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They shouldn’t need to subtitle this chalkboard shot much, if at all!

When ADV/Sentai Filmworks announced some new acquistions via retail solicitations on Tuesday, I was surprised by a few things. The first was Ghost Hound, a series I only got 3 episodes into and forgot to resume watching despite kind of liking it, and the second was the pricing of its release relative to others that were also revealed.

The first Ghost Hound set will have episodes 1-11 and retail for $59.98 (current pre-order: $45) while the complete set 12-episode release of He is My Master and the 12-episode Clannad After Story part 1 will both street for $40 (current pre-order: $30). Maybe they figure GH has a smaller appeal than HIMM and Clannad and thus estimate lower expected sales, necessitating a higher price point to recoup acquistion costs. Perhaps being a Production I.G. project also has something to do with it.

Kiba previously ran on Toonami Jetstream and 33 of its 51 episodes are currently available to be watched on Anime Network Online by Premium users with new episodes going live each Thursday. $60 retail ($45 pre-order) for the whole set (Oct. 13th) sounds like a good deal to me as a consolidation of two previously released 26-episode sets at $50 a piece but I imagine it will a re-packaging of those two sets (Bandai’s Anime Legends bricks come to mind). I saw about half the series in anime club a few years ago and enjoyed it so I’ll look into this.

I have no opinion about the other “new” acquistions, Popotan and Sugar: A Little Snow Fairy, except I may rent the Geneon discs eventually just to see what either are about.

Links
Clannad After Story set 1: TRSIRACS
Ghost Hound Collection 1: TRSIRACS
He is My Master Complete Collection: TRSIRACS
Kiba Complete Collection: TRSIRACS
Popotan Collection: TRSIRACS
Sugar: A Little Snow Fairy Collection: TRSIRACS

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When I began composing this in the afternoon, I thought it would be just another collection of news items baked into a Potluck post but then a few more things came to light this evening and the above image suspiciously gained more relevance.

UPDATE 1/18 12:37AM PST: AnimeNews.biz has issued a retraction to their story about Best Buy and how they shelf anime in their stores. Instead of removing sections entirely, they are “in the process of realigning the anime section of each store depending on title popularity”. I have accordingly adjusted that portion of this post.
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While researching a long post a few months back, I came across an advertisement inside the final issue of Newtype USA for Gurren Lagann volume 1 from ADV Films carrying the now phantom release date February 26, 2008. Twelve pages later was a four-page feature and fifty pages after that was a review of vol. 1, which had been declared “DVD of the Month”.

TTGL was intended to be ADV’s next big action success and the initial dub cast had already been revealed in January (as well as a loud announcer trailer) but it got caught up in the Sojitz licensing fiasco and fell into licensing limbo. Bandai snapped up the rights a few months later and has proceeded to handle it very well, swiftly putting out sub-only nine-episode sets to please the big fans and hybrid volumes in double-single bundles just like how they began releasing Code Geass on DVD.

In this episode of Reading Out Loud, I read the featured article and the review (along with the sidebar to the review) as well attempt to project how the rest of ADV’s roll out might have gone in contrast to Bandai’s current effort (while repeating some of the background info I gave above). After the jump is a timeline of the series’ development and some tangentially related stories. Also: a chart of the voice actors I listed off during the final segment.

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Download MP3 (26m 44s)

Music Used:
“Ookami ga Kita!!” (from Gurren Lagann BEST SOUND)
“Mawatte Mawatte Mawatte Mawatte Tetete…” (BEST SOUND)
“Douda! Ore no Trumpet wa Sugoi Darou!!” (BEST SOUND)
Giant Gorg opening theme (YouTube link)
“Nessa no Areno wo Nukete dai Gurren Dan ga Iku no da” (BEST SOUND)
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The confirmation that ADV will distribute Clannad in North America as well as some previously unrescued Geneon titles in Tsukihime and Mahoromatic hit late Sunday night and is a big news item to begin the week with, but don’t forget that it was CEO John Ledford’s interview with ICv2 that spawned said news.

Long-time readers might remember that Ledford mentioned ranking titles as A, B, and C in a May 2007 interview with ANN and said that “most people buy their A titles and they download their B’s and C’s” due to the prevalence of fansubs. Now 17 months later and after overseeing his company’s strategy shift, he calls the high-profile content ‘anime events’ that still sell well and the former C’s are now classified as ‘super-niche’ titles that are reliable due to their core fanbases, their low upfront licensing cost, and the cumulative ‘long tail’ sales. Nozomi has been keen on with putting out sub-only sets of fan favorites including Marimite and Aria in recent months and doing well at it while Media Blasters has been producing hybrid releases with slightly broader appeal (e.g. Rurouni Kenshin, Berserk, Genshiken) for years. By the way, Chris Anderson’s original Wired article is four years old this month.

Unfortunately, the middle of the road titles (formerly in the B range) remain financial gambles for R1 licensors, according to Ledford:

Where things get tricky is in between the big hits and the smaller niche titles. Series that are strong but may not be world-beaters. Viewership is larger than ever, thanks to the Internet, but fans just aren’t buying DVDs like they used to. And when the costs stay the same, you’ve got a lot of solid, quality productions that end up running in the red.

That’s why right now the best business to be in are the hits and the ‘super-niche’ titles. Anything in between can kill you.

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