Toon Zone Talkback - ADV Films Dissolves; Parent Transfers Assets To Other Companies

Boris pretty much sums up my feelings on ADVision's demise. Regardless of the stupid mistakes they made contributing to the oversaturation of anime and whatnot, they were one of the foundation blocks of today's anime industry in the west. It's really asinine to celebrate the failures of what are generally a bunch of fellow anime fans like ourselves that wanted to bring over lots of great anime titles to the states and started a business to do so. Mistakes were made, but at least they tried. I like having DVRAB that I can watch with good dubs on my nice big TV and ADV is one of the many anime companies now long gone that helped facilitate this. ADV acquired and produced good anime content. It's really sad to see them go.

I hate to preach to the choir, but this is just another nail in the coffin for the western anime industry. Like I've said before, buy your anime and manga! If you don't want to see another anime company go, please support them. Support the fine men and women who create all this great content - from the VAs to the translators to the subtitlers to the animators to the writers and artists of all of our favorite manga and anime. Don't let our hobby die, and don't support the damned fansub pirates who steal from the source of our hobby in Japan.
 
Update: Section 23 Films is taking over ADV's catalog.

http://animecornerstore.blogspot.com/2009/09/adv-films-shuts-down.html


Credit goes to Zeether on the FUNi forums.
 
aww too bad i really loved ADV dubs.

i hope that FUNI or whatever have the new lisaces use the old VA's if new media come for their animes.
 
Eh, I understand what part they played in the history of the industry, but I've never really been interested in their properties, and the only title of theirs I've ever wanted to buy is the Sonic OVA.

Which, considering the only copies I can find anywhere are going for $100+, there's no way I'll ever own THAT. I don't even think ADV still owned that license.
 
Indeed. They may have made poor business decisions, but they were still anime fans, just like us, not some evil, faceless entity bent on destroying the U.S. anime market. They just got too overzealous and thought the bubble would never burst. That's why I'm a bit taken aback when I see people say the equivalent of "Ding dong, the witch is dead."

BTW, wasn't ADV the first anime company to do commentaries for DVRAB? I don't know that for sure, but the first anime commentary I ever listened to was from ADV (IIRC, it was on Divergence Eve in early 2005, but I believe there were many on other DVRAB before that). And including commentaries has become more commonplace nowadays, especially for FUNi.
 
So it finally happened. And here I was thinking those CPM rescues would lead to something. Oh well. I don't have much to say, since I've accepted this has been getting ready to happen for the past year, and I've said many things about it in that time. We now bid ADV our final farewell, and thank them for the great things they've done. Sure, they've made mostly bad decisions recently, but I don't see any reason to say I'm disappointed, since this news is obvious proof of that fact. Oh well, there were good times and bad times, but they're all over now. With another company down, we look again to the hopeful future that FUNimation controls.
 
Well ,to be honest, when they were first launching The Anime Network they were kind of annoying with how in-your-face they were with the marketing, but that's really a small sin all in all. Good ot hear their new name is getting some of the stuff they had been sitting on out the door finaly. Maybe we'll get lucky and some of the new/old folws will be showing up at the Cons again.
 
Speak of the devil. Frequent ADR Director David Williams (most recent job: DVD authoring for ADV's Grave of the Fireflies re-release) will be at Anime Weekend Atlanta in a couple of weeks. ADV (not AEsir, Section23, or Sentai Filmworks) is also listed to be one of the dealers at the con.
 
Whew, well, there's that at least. Good to know that no titles are being lost over this.

EDIT: Also, Anime Network Online isn't going anywhere.
 
That would be because Dave has/had a licensing agreement to use the ADV name for his own shop and to rep for ADV at cons. He's not with ADV anymore, he was an independent contractor who works for them and run his own shop.
 
And maybe they could appear in Bleach...

(sigh)

I always enjoyed ADV dubs because they do obscure anime, so having obscure voice actors do mainstream stuff...seems just way too weird.
 
People need to realize that the less anime companies there are, the more in danger it is to our hobby. It's not good, it's definitely not good when we're down to like 2, maybe 3 companies now distributing anime stuff. There's definitely a legit concern that one of these days companies like Funi and Mediablasters either close up shop or cut down their anime focus drastically and focus more on live action genre stuff. Bandai currently barely releases anything anymore. Viz? Great if you like edited kid's anime. Animeigo? Cool if you like 1 anime release every 10 years.
 
I'm actually quite happy about this. I haven't been following them (or any other anime company for that fact) since late 2005, but in the late 90's/early 2000's, ADV Films flooded that damn market (and that was during the anime boom).

When companies like Bandai, Funimation, Pioneer at the time announced 5-8 new license acquisitions during the biggest convention in Anime Expo, you get ADV with TWENTY new licenses. The worse part was 16 of those twenty would be no name titles that got low to stellar ratings in Japan.

The ego of the founders were beyond anyones as well. I mean, building a library of mostly third-tier anime titles just to say that theyre the biggest animation company after disney? starting subsidiaries and projects at their own whim? ADV Manga, ADV Pro, ADV Toys...seriously? Same thing happened to ADV Manga, they licensed a bunch of no name titles that no one bought, which eventually got discontinued. Raising 100 million+ for the Eva movie? ADV acted as if they were a huge corporation.

Looking back at the company's action from 2002-onward, you'd be suprised they didn't fold much earlier.
 
All of Funimations LA stuff is either directly related to anime (DEATH NOTE) or given such a low key release that it's a side project, never intending to take over their main busniess of anime. Funimation and Viz are the big boys here, Viz more so with manga than anime, and they're not going to go anywhere.
 
Aw....ADV's releases used to be practically the only thing I watched on anime, and it was them that I always wished to work for before they started dying a few years back. (Strange, since I'm only 16.xD.) They've released 2 of my favorite anime of all time-Air Gear and Red Garden, both of which I think we're awesome dubs(especially Red Garden-one of the best I've ever seen)-but we all knew this was gonna happen sooner or later.

Bummer....aw, well, it's been fun, man.
 
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