Friday, October 03, 2008

Funimation's December Release Schedule Posted!

This will be a quick post for lack of time, but I wanted to post a couple of things.

Funimation sent us their December release schedule this week, and we've got it all posted on the store site now for pre-order.

First, the announcements have answered the questions about what they are going to do with ADV's former unfinished titles, and I know many fans will be a bit disappointed because it appears that Kanon will be the only series they will finish as single volumes and the rest will all be re-released as full season or half season boxed sets. This applies to Welcome to NHK, Red Garden, Tokyo Majin and Pumpkin Scissors. I'm not sure if this is an ADV problem, or if Funimation has looked at the economics and decided they simply could not afford to carry the cost of these licenses while only deriving revenue from a small part of them, but I think it's important to remember that it was not Funimation who let fans down on these titles in the first place, and that without them it's likely they would never have been completed in any form.

Ok, nuff said about that, now on to the list.

The following December releases from Funimation are now available for pre-order:

Air Gear Complete Collection DVD Boxed Set
Xenosaga Complete Collection DVD Boxed Set

While I'm at it, we also managed to post a few new Q1 2009 figures for pre-order, and they are all pretty spectacular:

Full Metal Panic! Teletha Testarossa 1/6 Scale PVC Figure
And finally, we added four more 2009 Import Calendars for pre-order based requests that folks e-mailed in this week:

Death Note 2009 Wall Calendar (Japanese Import)
Masamune Shiro Saber Tooth Cats 2009 Calendar (Japanese Import)

Due to heavy Japanese demand I've posted a disclaimer on the Saber Tooth Cats calendar:

The Japanese publisher of this years Shiro Masamune calendar has designated it for the Japanese market only, and is not offering any unit to direct exporters. We have a partner in Tokyo that we have ordered them through that will transship them to us once it is released, however, the print run of this calendar is strictly limited and retailers will be filling Japanese orders first before our orders will be filled. This means that we probably will not get the amount that we ordered, so pre-orders for this calendar will be filled first come first served. Also keep in mind that we may not be able to obtain enough units to fill all pre-orders, so please keep in mind when ordering that our ability to fill your order will depend on circumstances beyond our control. We'll do our best, but we cannot guarantee that all orders for this particular calendar can be filled.

I'll be back tomorrow with lots more in our regular Friday newsletter. Have a great evening everyone!

5 comments:

Starcade said...

Bluntly, be lucky (and this is to the people who are PO'ed at Funi for full-seasoning NHK and Red Garden...) you're getting it at all.

The titles weren't enough to keep ADV afloat or with Sojitz -- the numbers, probably, didn't even come close to justifying even releasing the final volume in single form. Remember that WttNHK was out of money and that CrunchyRoll had to come in (at what price and with what benefit??) to partially finance it.

It's a tacky move for those who did buy the singles, but, really now... How many people actually have v. 1-5 of either of these series? A couple thousand each??

Unknown said...

I know this question is irrelevant to Funimation, but more like for Bandai, is there a reason why the Code Geass Part 2 LE dates have changed to TBA?

Robert said...

I know this question is irrelevant to Funimation, but more like for Bandai, is there a reason why the Code Geass Part 2 LE dates have changed to TBA?

The October Date came from a ppt they sent out to retailers around mid-summer, but since then Bandai has been doing the usual 4th quarter schedule shuffling. The most likely answer is that they felt the 2nd volume would have better sales if released during the holiday season. We'll see a lot of product re-positioning like that over the next few weeks, and while annoying, is fairly typical.

Starcade said...

One had better hope you're right, Robert.

I don't see much of a future for Bandai Entertainment in R1 at all (or any of the remaining companies) after this Christmas -- with the credit crunch finally decapitating the retail sector, it's only, really, a matter of time before the three major remaining companies have to call it quits.

Navarre is under a buck a share now, and what's keeping it afloat? Funimation??? What if sales disappoint there, as I expect they will...

Robert said...

One had better hope you're right, Robert.

I don't see much of a future for Bandai Entertainment in R1 at all (or any of the remaining companies) after this Christmas -- with the credit crunch finally decapitating the retail sector, it's only, really, a matter of time before the three major remaining companies have to call it quits.

Navarre is under a buck a share now, and what's keeping it afloat? Funimation??? What if sales disappoint there, as I expect they will...


Man, and I thought I was all about doom and gloom... -_^

We've been through downturns in the industry before, and the Anime business tends to be resilient during recessions. Now that there are only 4 real studio's still licensing new Anime (Funi, Viz, Bandai, and Media Blasters) the industry will be healthier going forward. NAVR's stock price is of concern, but as long as they can continue to service their debt load they will be OK regardless. If anything, Funi would be spun off to another company if NAVR needed to raise capital. I just hope Gen didn't take too much of his compensation in stock. J

Anime companies (that are not ADV or located in Iowa) are usually run on their own equity and are not leveraged up to the hilt in debt, so the credit crisis is of minimal concern. We have never had to draw on our bank line in the seven years we’ve had one, so we have not been affected and we run a conservative company so we maintain very strong capital reserves. The biggest problem we have here in the states is a lousy exchange rate on the Yen. A weak dollar makes imported products (and license and royalty payment for the studios) more expensive. Any exchange rate under about 115:1 is problematic for all of us. A strong dollar is bad as well, what we need is a happy medium and a more stable market in which companies can be more confident making forward commitments.