ADV Closes Its Doors

AnimeVice.com is reporting that ADV, a long time distributor and translator of anime and other Japanese films for the US market has shut down, with the company’s AnimeNetwork.com service and some of it’s licences being transitioned to holding companies.

Previously ADV had run into some financial problems, and had to do some significant layoffs, as well as making  deals with Funimation so some of their licenses (including the Full Metal Panic series) could continue to be released, as they couldn’t afford to pay for distribution through the standard retail channels at that time. However, recently, they had appeared to be doing better financially, as they’d started releasing their own content again, and had begun acquiring new content – notably rescuing Grave of the Fireflies from the ashes of Central Park Media’s demise. So, I’d have to say that this caught me entirely by surprise.

I will be at Kumoricon in Portland, Oregon this weekend (Saturday through Monday of next week), and will be covering it for the site, so I’ll keep an eye and ear out for any possible information about former ADV properties.

2 replies on “ADV Closes Its Doors”

    • I think it’s too soon to predict that. The economy is slowly correcting itself, but probably not fast enough to fix this. A company so dependent on anime would have a hard time these days. The cost of translation and licensing forces the product price points up to the point that many will take illegally downloaded fan translations instead. The history of releasing increasingly more deluxe editions doesn’t help either; in the boom years, some fans buy both, while others wait for the more deluxe version. When the recession hits, those who bought the early editions are less inclined to upgrade, while those who didn’t look for the cheaper, stripped-down edition already on the shelves. The deluxe edition production company is then losing out on revenue streams; they get their cut from the retailers at the time of purchase. The retailer gets money today if you buy two year old stock today, but the distributor got its money two years ago. If anything, this will serve as an impetus for the company that steps up when the economy recovers to offer fewer single disc releases up front, and go for a more balanced product line in terms of normal and deluxe editions.

Comments are closed.