I recently checked again into Central Park Media’s current bankruptcy case and found some new documents from the past month: a Stipulation for Payment of 11 U.S.C. Section 506(c) Expenses and a signed order by presiding judge Shelley C. Chapman approving the sale of the “Anime Channel” trademark, the text of which was basically the same as the Order Pursuant originally submitted in April. Chapman signed both orders on May 3rd.
The Stipulation contains details about CPM’s relationship as a debtor to Bank of America. BofA had lent CPM “approximately $888,651.40″ and holds a lien against them because of that – as of the Stipulation’s filing, CPM owed $924,722.56 inclusive of all accrued interest and fees. The net proceeds from the Anime Channel trademark sale will be distributed to BofA because it was part of CPM’s Estate Assets (basically all their accounts, intangibles and inventory).
BofA then agreed to be “bound by the terms of 11 U.S.C. § 506(c) to pay the reasonable, necessary costs and expenses…of preserving, disposing of, or attempting to dispose of the Trademark subject to BofA’s lien” with the costs not to exceed 40% of the gross proceeds from the sale. If costs did surpass 40% of gross proceeds from the sale, BofA and the Trustee would “attempt to negotiate a reasonable increase to such amount” of the costs. Both parties agreed that the costs will only be payable from the gross proceeds from the trademark’s sale and no costs will be owed if the sale is not approved by the Court.
I hope you don’t mind me not reporting this last week when I first downloaded the documents because frankly, this is not a fast-moving case, the company’s already folded and the subject matter is very dry. I’m mainly doing it because I haven’t seen anyone else digging around for this information.
This afternoon, someone I follow on Twitter retweeted a link to a Mania/AOD thread where someone posted seeing Monster on Syfy’s October schedule. The series will start airing during the channel’s Ani-Monday block on October 12th at 11pm with two-episode-a-week pace. The timing makes sense since Viz announced at their Comic-Con panel that the first box set would come out in December.
This news makes one of my 2009 predictions come true: the one about a “new” anime debuting on American cable TV. Technically, it could make its American premiere on the Funimation Channel as part of a deal with Viz announced in April. It may have already done so – I haven’t checked the VOD/PPV listings in a while. But since not everyone gets that channel and Syfy is part of many basic cable/satellite packages, many including myself would consider October to be its “true” US premiere.
By the way, the 17th volume of Naoki Urasawa’s manga will come out on October 21st and its 18th & final installment on December 16th.
I recently got a new digital camera that shoots 720p video to replace the one I lost at Anime Expo so I figured I’d use it to cover the omgitscoming.com counter reaching zero at noon yesterday and see what changes would happen to the related Nagi-sama Fanclub site. It had been widely speculated that both websites were part of Bandai Entertainment announcing a license for Kannagi and that’s what it ended up being. What was unexpected was a coordinated launch on ANN’s video service and the first of two DVD volumes available for purchase from Amazon Marketplace (through user storefronts operated by BEI and Shawne Kleckner of TRSI – a bit odd!) & Right Stuf only.
As I was offloading the first video onto my hard drive, I noticed some tweets about further details so I did a 10-minute follow-up video where I looked into those particulars, scoped out the subtitling on ANN’s streaming service, and took a very short survey about the T-shirt offered for preorders of the 2nd volume. (Sorry for accidentally moving the camera up during the survey – the other 2 questions were about what size and from which store would you likely preorder: Amazon or RightStuf.)
In the press release accompanying this announcement, Bandai president Ken Iyadomi said:
This is our way of answering the challenges of a changing marketplace to see how streaming episodes helps DVD and we are making both available at the same time to beat bootleggers who are hurting the industry just as much as the illegal downloaders.
North American anime companies have suffered unexpected heavy returns from general market retailers in recent years but if we can sell moderate quantities exclusively online where no sales returns exist, I believe we can acquire more anime for the US market to be released in this pattern. This is a very different business model and a new challenge.
Not bothering with retail stores like Best Buy on the initial release seems like a smart strategy for something like Kannagi that may have a small potential and I’m guessing the two-pack release in 2010 may feature an English voice track similar to the later release of Gurren Lagann, another Aniplex title, although I’m not willing to bet on it. [UPDATE 7/18: Turns it will not be dubbed, according to Dir. of Marketing Robert Napton.] Iyadomi’s mention of “moderate quantities” is an acknowledgement that such properties will likely not be huge sellers while “beat[ing] bootleggers” calls to my mind the speed to market strategy. The 7th episode of Kannagi premiered in Japan on November 15, 2008, so eight months is not a bad time gap.
Meanwhile: the domestic DVD release of Kurokami, the series Bandai aired dubbed on small-reach ImaginAsian TV as part of a simultaneous broadcast, remains in limbo. All the episodes are currently available for streaming on YouTube and Crunchyroll, though, so I guess there’s not too much of a reason for them to hurry. [UPDATE 7/18: BEI said at their Otakon panel that plans will be detailed in the near future and that it will be their title to be released on Blu-ray as well as DVD. So they did remember.]
Friday (today) is day 1 of Otakon and Aniplex has a TBA panel at 2pm (all times ET) as well as an Industry panel right after it at 3pm in the same room. Bandai is having their panel Friday night 9-10pm, which overlaps with the final third of the MELL concert that starts at 8pm. (If I were there and had to choose, I’d go with the concert and then think about possibly catching the end of the panel if I wasn’t tired.) I wouldn’t be surprised if something Haruhi-related came up (asosbrigade.com) either during their panel or later in the weekend. Also: director Yutaka Yamamoto’s panel is Friday morning at 11am.
To take a tangent, I ended up biting on the Bandai sale TRSI in its final hours last night and bought Cowboy Bebop Remix (I’ve only seen bits of the series), the Lucky Star OVA (because I previously liked it), and Hayate Part 1 (almost didn’t get this one). I bring this up because of Hayate‘s packaging, namely, the seven episodes on a single disc that Kannagi looks like it also has. Mania’s Chris Beveridge commented in his review that “[i]t all looks decent but lacks any real sharpness and vibrancy as the colors feel a bit muted” and that “it’s hard to tell if hard to tell if it’s coming from the encoding – which is in the mid range of five most of the time – or the actual source material”. Even though Aniplex provided the production materials to Bandai and I think well of them, I’m hoping that it’s a double-layered disc. (The True Tears and sola sets coming out next month will be spread out over three discs.)
Splitting Kannagi into two seven-episode releases makes some sense (14 halves evenly) but why for Hayate and why on single discs? After the second release in September, BEI will have 38 episodes left and if they continue at seven per disc (maybe a few 4-4 sets), there will likely be 5 more releases for a total of 7 for the first series. They’ve done 5-4 and 4-4 sets with Lagann, Code Geass, and Gundam 00 but all those had English dub tracks and have aired on TV while neither Hayate nor Kannagi have that advantage (yet). Whatever impact TV broadcasts actually have anymore on DVD sales is up for debate.
Remember the misreported story last month about Best Buy getting rid of their anime section? Well, details of the company’s actual plans were revealed yesterday (saw via ANN) and they involve ranking of titles and clearance sales next month.
Once I read the words “A-list”, “B-list”, and “C-list” in the ANN article, I immediately thought back to two previous posts I had written in response to ADV Films’ John Ledford using similar terminology to describe how marketable different anime series are. In this case, the A-list titles will be “around 20 core anime SKUs”, according to ICv2, and would be carried in all locations; those would presumably include Afro Samurai, Naruto, and Dragon Ball Z. The B-list series (“over 100 anime SKUs”) would appear in about half of their 1,000+ stores and the C-listers would only show up in their top 200 stores nationwide as part of “large scale anime assortments”. So something like Baccano! may fall into the B range while Save Me! Lollipop and Indian Summer would likely fall under the C category. A reminder: these categorizations are based on expected marketability and not directly reflective of the quality of the series themselves.
I perused the list of stores ICv2 posted (ANN’s copy has store numbers) that will have 50% off clearance sales March 1st-21st and found two that I sometimes frequent – one in Vacaville and the other in Natomas – are on it so I’ll try to stop by both those in early March to see what’s available (and snag any good stuff) as well as do before and after shots of their respective sections. The ones in Citrus Heights and Arden Fair (Sacramento) weren’t listed so I’m assuming both will continue to carry A’s & some B’s.
There was no indication of a reduction in their online offerings but there may be a decline in how many copies they order as an entire retailer. This move will result in fewer total sales of anime in their B&M stores and pushing more people toward other online-only outfits but it may negligible for the company since the stores that are contracting their shelf space weren’t making an impact anyway. I hope many of those vacated spaces aren’t replaced by plastic instruments…
So just to recap: only the best-selling stores will carry the widest breadth of anime, the middle will carry a more moderate amount, and the least will have significantly pared-down sections – and there will be clearance sales next month.
A 14-year-old Tecumseh, Oklahoma, girl who has been missing since Monday – Deborah Kalai Fourzan – is reportedly traveling to California with a once family friend James “Jim” Reimer and stopping at various anime conventions along the way, starting this weekend with Ikkicon in Austin, Texas.
Some elements that give this story an unsavory twist are that Reimer sent a number of explicit text messages to the girl’s phone, which her mother turned over to police and were used as evidence for a current warrant for “using text messaging to solicit sexual contact with a minor”, and that the convenience store where Reimer works was reported a cash theft Monday afternoon of several thousand dollars. (KOCO)
Authorities advise anyone who sees the two individuals not to approach them, but to contact the Austin Police Department at 1-405-598-9305. Fourzan is 5″2 and weighs 120 pounds. She has blue eyes, pierced ears, a birthmark on the back of her arm, and blond hair, but she may dye her hair black and also use her middle name Kalai. Reimer is 5″10 and weighs 280 pounds. He has brown hair, blue eyes, and a beard, but he may shave his beard off.
Despite the man’s previous behavior, there is a small and possibly irrational part of me – the devil’s advocate part – that thinks maybe Fourzan wanted to go to this journey with him and, less likely, has some feelings for Reimer. (Remember that Reimer is 40 and Fourzan is 14.) I simply wanted to float that possibility even though it may not turn out to be the case. Seriously though, I hope she does not get harmed before this case gets resolved.
Considering the area between Texas and California and looking at AnimeCons.com, possible conventions in their travels include Animation On Display in San Francisco, CA, on February 14-15 (if they can drive to SF in a week); Mizuumi-Con in San Antonio, TX, on March 21 (don’t know why they would go a short distance southwest over a month’s time); Animeland Wasabi in Denver, CO, on March 27-29; AniZona in Phoenix, AZ, on April 9-12; Anime Matsuri in The Woodlands, TX, on April 10-12; KamiKazeCon in Houston, TX, in April 10-12; and FanimeCon in San Jose, CA, on May 22-25.
I recently checked again into Central Park Media’s current bankruptcy case and found some new documents from the past month: a Stipulation for Payment of 11 U.S.C. Section 506(c) Expenses and a signed order by presiding judge Shelley C. Chapman approving the sale of the “Anime Channel” trademark, the text of which was basically the same as the Order Pursuant originally submitted in April. Chapman signed both orders on May 3rd.
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