Do Your DVD and BD Releases Get Along?

Note: Explicit language. Don't say I didn't warn you.


After 15 years in this industry, I do have to admit, some people really do complain about the dumbest shit. -_^

Media Blasters Confirms Several License Expirations

John Sirabella of Media Blasters has made a statement updating us on the state of several of their licenses. As of now, Media Blasters no longer has the rights to:

Bakuman
Rurouni Kenshin
Berserk

He also confirmed that while Media Blasters once had optioned to rights to Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei, Squid Girl Season 2, and Moyashimon, they no longer have any planes to release those titles and they are open to be licensed by other companies. Sirabella also said many other licenses they previously had have expired, but did not mention any others by name. We can pretty much guess what those are by what has gone on 'out of produiction' status with their distributor.

Going forward AnimeWorks, Tokyo Shock, and Kitty are the only Media Blasters labels that will continue operations, and that they are going to specifically focus on new Kitty (Adult Only) releases this year. Aside from that they are going to focus on producing and releasing original productions through Fever Dreams, which they have established a studio for in Belleville, New Jersey. He said that previously a "major back accident in Media Blasters warehouse" (WTF is he talking about there?) slowed down the company (oh yeah, that was what it was...), and did admit that he was planning on letting Media Blasters end as a company (umm, we knew that John) to pursue original productions through Fever Dreams, but has now decided to 'rebuild' Media Blasters (apparently around mostly the Kitty label).

Honestly, no surprises here folks. I'm not sure what sort of 'back accident' he's talking about regarding their warehouse, which has been closed for almost 2 years after they sold the distribution operation end of their business to Allegro and outsourced distribution of all the Kitty stuff to the third party warehouse. Since then everytime their active stuff has gone out of stock it has pretty much stayed on the backlist for months at a time. I just figured they were too broke to continue to replicate everything on a regular basis. Last week when we started getting updates on their inventory through Allegro, I thought that might mean some big change was in the works - or a 'going out of business' announcement was going to be forth coming. Apparently not yet. While he does say that they are going to continue to 'aquire and release new titles' I'm not sure what that will add up to outside of Kitty. So as always, we'll have to wait and see what happens.

You know what we say in the biz - Anime studios never die, they just fade away...

Crunchyroll - Pot Sues Kettle

You know, after reading some fan comments over the past few weeks it's clear that over the last few months I've been way too quiet about the little hypocrisies in our industry. Time to change that.

So I was perusing the news blurbs over on the Anime ecomatrix this morning, when I saw this:

"Crunchyroll and TV Tokyo have issued a lawsuit against 13 YouTube uploaders for allegedly illegal distribution of anime episodes, according to a copyright infringement complaint filed on May 11 and served between July and September. Crunchyroll and TV Tokyo are seeking reparation for "great and irreparable injury that cannot fully be compensated or measured in money" because of the defendants' allegedly unauthorized copying, uploading, and distributing via YouTube of multiple Naruto, Naruto Shippūden, and Bleach episodes.

Based on their YouTube subscriber information, the defendants reside in the United States, Japan, Canada, Denmark, and Hungary. Crunchyroll maintains its main offices in California (as does YouTube), so the suit was filed as a U.S. copyright violation in the Northern District Court of California. For the purposes of the lawsuit, TV Tokyo is giving Crunchyroll legal permission to act on its behalf in order to "permanently remove the illegal uploads of infringing parties from file-sharing services and to obtain legal relief against infringers."

I just find it a bit entertaining as, before they went legit, Crunchyroll got it's start and built it's audience streaming unlicensed fansubs captured from torrents. A little history:

"Launched in the summer of 2006, Crunchyroll is a video-streaming site run by Crunchyroll, Inc. that originally grew by serving illegal (unlicensed) content, namely Japanese Animation (anime). The site generated revenue by soliciting donations and through advertising. After failing to be bought out by Viacom in 2007, Crunchyroll secured venture capital funding to the tune of $4 million through Venrock."

Of course, as soon as they got the angel funding from Venrock (and started working up SEC filings so they could privately sell more shares) they had to go legit, but they built their original audience and 'brand' on unlicensed content. So let's not forget that Kun Gao, Vu Nguyen, Sanha Han, Brandon Ooi, James Lin and many others have gotten rich off an enterprise that started deep in the shylocks.

Just something to think about the next time you are watching Anime there. I'm sure there will be outrage from the fan community over their persecution of YouTube users, and if not, I hope the irony does not escape you. :-)