The Death of ADV Films (1992-2009)

[areaseven]

(This was already discussed on the RIP Central Park Media thread, but I feel this deserves its own thread, given the hundreds of titles this particular company released over the past 17 years.)

In case you just joined us, ADV Films, the once-mighty anime distributor in the U.S., has closed its doors. Read the following articles and discuss:

ADV Films Shuts Down, Transfers Assets to Other Companies

What's Happening with ADV Films

[Einherjar]

Wait, from the articles it sounds like only ADV Films is gone, but all their assets and stuff associated with them were given to other companies or are still moving along independently. There's the possibility that these other guys can continue their work, right?

[areaseven]

Wait, from the articles it sounds like only ADV Films is gone, but all their assets and stuff associated with them were given to other companies or are still moving along independently. There's the possibility that these other guys can continue their work, right?

Yes, but the ADV moniker is gone. A lot of fans will associate certain titles with ADV, just like how many associated other titles with Pioneer/Geneon, US Renditions, Streamline Pictures and Central Park Media before those companies went under.

[wolfx]

It was just waiting to happen...and i wonder what does this mean for their ongoing manga titles that they have been sitting on for ages, like Gunslinger Girl.

[areaseven]

It was just waiting to happen...and i wonder what does this mean for their ongoing manga titles that they have been sitting on for ages, like Gunslinger Girl.

I'm surprised ADV managed to run their manga division, despite losing a lot of key titles. Whatever ADV Manga had will probably be transferred to other companies such as Tokyopop or Yen Press.

[Keith]

Everyone knew this would happen as soon as "Sentai Filmworks" popped up, it's called weaseling out of debts. When CPM went under, they did it with style, using their last breath's to make the best possible Votoms releease as they could A shining moment in the life of a mediocre company.

When Geneon went under, it was because the Japanese parent company pulled the plug, but wiseley sold off its assets to Funimation, the "who the hell woul have thought" new king on the block.

With ADV going down, it's more of a "you sneaky bastards, you set your own house on fire to collect the insurance money, whilehanging out in Hawaii to wait for things to blow over." Not even remotely as sad.

[Ghost Train]

I never saw the "Anime Import" business as being a particularly competitive market with many firms. More like 1 hydra-like shadow conglomerate with multiple heads called "EnglishDub Corporation."

[Einherjar]

I don't really know if this really affects me that much. With what I learned about Carl Macek and others, the same people and resources who have been working in the industry for a very long time are bound to pop up again somewhere, sometimes under different banners. Anime shows are traded around between companies when the current legalities end, or when a ship sinks like ADV here, and depending on the popularity of the show get re-released eventually. So all the anime community is grieving over the end of a company brand/name, but it's still significant. I'll miss the moniker too, but hopefully the industry just goes on with everything associated with ADV in, or will be in, other people's hands.

[Mercurial Morpheus]

Everyone knew this would happen as soon as "Sentai Filmworks" popped up, it's called weaseling out of debts. When CPM went under, they did it with style, using their last breath's to make the best possible Votoms releease as they could A shining moment in the life of a mediocre company.

When Geneon went under, it was because the Japanese parent company pulled the plug, but wiseley sold off its assets to Funimation, the "who the hell woul have thought" new king on the block.

With ADV going down, it's more of a "you sneaky bastards, you set your own house on fire to collect the insurance money, whilehanging out in Hawaii to wait for things to blow over." Not even remotely as sad.

Applause. That's basically exactly what appears to have happened. To be honest, I'd expect no less from the company in all my con experiences with them. Besides, "Weaseling out of things is what separates us from the animals.... except the weasel." Shame the new names sort of suck (SXION23?). I'll miss the ADV moniker. It was sort of fun watching them go from the big bad wolf to the scrappy underdog (with Funi taking their place with their "creative" dubbing and compression happy icehouse). Hopefully with this change they'll tighten up some of their shortcomings.

Though isn't AD Vision itself still going to hang around? I was informed that only ADV Films is being retired. The true name survives at least. Animation Dubbing Vision.

Edited September 3, 2009 by Mercurial Morpheus

[Fortress_Maximus]

Everyone knew this would happen as soon as "Sentai Filmworks" popped up, it's called weaseling out of debts. When CPM went under, they did it with style, using their last breath's to make the best possible Votoms releease as they could A shining moment in the life of a mediocre company.

With ADV going down, it's more of a "you sneaky bastards, you set your own house on fire to collect the insurance money, whilehanging out in Hawaii to wait for things to blow over." Not even remotely as sad.

Interesting! Do you have any more information about this? Do not know much about how ADV handled things sneakily. Thanks for sharing.

[Keith]

I'm sure there are links with sources & whatnot over at animeondvd. But around the time ADV licensed (and thankfully lost) Gurren Lagann, they way over exerted their funds, Newtype USA just died, who know's how much money they blew consulting Weta digital on the Eva movie project a couple years ago, and the Japanese backer they pulled in said "uh huh, you guys are teh suck at banking) and left with whatever licenses they paid for. Those licenses got split between Funimation & Bandai btw.

Next thing you know, "Sentai Filmworks" pops up, and all the writing was on the wall.

[Vifam7]

Interesting! Do you have any more information about this? Do not know much about how ADV handled things sneakily. Thanks for sharing.

I don't think it's right to call their actions "sneaky". It could just as well be called smart reorganization. I don't know enough of these proceedings to determine one way or another. But a lot of fans have had strong opinions on ADV and so some hope this leads to betterment while others are disappointed they didn't disappear altogether.

Edited September 3, 2009 by Vifam7

[Fortress_Maximus]

Thanks for sharing Keith, the info helps.

[transfan52]

Hmm... As the world economy worsens small businesses like these which license anime to english speaking audiences are bound to suffer and are some of the first businesses to fail. What could probably help most of these companies is lowering the price of their official content because IMO the official DVD's are way overpriced as it is.

The fact that this is a niche market in the west won't help either, and selling DVD's at 20 dollars each isn't gonna help these struggling companies in any way.

Right now ppl just don't have the spare money to buy something they can get for free over the internet. Most ppl still download, stream or pirate anime as they please via online sources even if the series they choose to watch is already licensed in their country.

I dunno what to say... It's good to know that the anime culture is still thriving via the internet and local conventions. I foresee the anime culture going back to it's niche roots again in a more underground manner.

That's not necessarily a bad thing though.

[taksraven]

There used to be a shop here in Sydney called "The Cartoon Gallery". It started off selling animation cels and after a few years started to sell video's of animated programs.

A few more years went by and they started to sell Anime video's and then Anime DVD's when they were released. After a few years of this the owner Michael Heins had to close the shop and now just operates a website selling anime DVD's.

To me, it illustrates the need to adapt and have different business models ready to go if the one you are currently using fails. I think that this sort of thing is what companies like ADV have to pay attention to.

Taksraven

[Mr March]

I'm surprised it didn't happen before now. International distribution has been in a slump for years and with the downward turn in the economy I expected a lot more industry casualties to happen a lot faster. Sad to see an old company like ADV go down, but that's the nature of business.

[David Hingtgen]

For me, it all comes down to "I'm not waiting 3 years for you people to badly dub it, when I *only* want subs". Yes, I realize that the eventual dub sales retroactively fund bringing it to the US in the first place, but it's still no excuse to not release a sub-only version earlier.

[Scream Man]

There used to be a shop here in Sydney called "The Cartoon Gallery". It started off selling animation cels and after a few years started to sell video's of animated programs.

A few more years went by and they started to sell Anime video's and then Anime DVD's when they were released. After a few years of this the owner Michael Heins had to close the shop and now just operates a website selling anime DVD's.

To me, it illustrates the need to adapt and have different business models ready to go if the one you are currently using fails. I think that this sort of thing is what companies like ADV have to pay attention to.

Taksraven

i didnt know u were in Sydney as well!

i rememebr Cartoon Gallery well, from when it was int eh QVB to their eventual move up behind Lincraft. Im still sorta sad it's gone, I bought from there occassionally.

[taksraven]

i didnt know u were in Sydney as well!

i rememebr Cartoon Gallery well, from when it was int eh QVB to their eventual move up behind Lincraft. Im still sorta sad it's gone, I bought from there occassionally.

Always nice to talk to another local fan. We should organise a get together for Sydney fans. Not a convention, just a casual meet. I'll think about organising one and if I do I will post about it in the "Local Gathering" section.

Yeah, for a long time the Cartoon Gallery was the place in Sydney to get anime. Not particularly cheap but they had good stock. I remember going in there every couple of weeks in the 90's to get the latest Evangelion release. (ADV films, related to the thread, please step back Mr Mod) :lol:

Taksraven

[Whamhammer]

I hope they didnt have anything to do with importing over the new Slayers seasons!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Keith]

I hope they didnt have anything to do with importing over the new Slayers seasons!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Nope, Funi's got the slayers seasons, including the new one. ADV had the movies & OVA's.

[Whamhammer]

Nope, Funi's got the slayers seasons, including the new one. ADV had the movies & OVA's.

I still hope that Lisa Ortiz is doing Linas voice, the other girl just doesnt carry the character well enough!!!

[Keith]

Solution, watch it subtitled!

[VFTF1]

In the end there are two things that bring about this state of affairs, and both have (IMO) little to do with the bad economy, except insofar as credit is hard to come by these days:

1. It is immensely hard to compete with free fan subs that are free to download. In order to compete with that, you have to be able to offer something immensely more attractive AND, most importantly, you have to market your product to as wide a group as possible. Free fan-subbers don't particularly care whether 100 or 100 thousand people download their work because they do it out of love and out of a sense of wanting to practice their translating skills. But a company has to market to as broad an audience as possible. Marketing anime cannot be limited to marketing DVDs however. As the most successful cartoons in the USA have shown, the model is always the same: cartoon/comics/toys/possibly movie/books/various merchandise. A company that focuses only on one aspect of this (for example the cartoon/anime dvd aspect) either needs to be working alongside and in tandem with companies that focus on the other aspects of it, OR they need to expand their business and do more. That's where the credit aspect comes in. For a venture like this to really succeed, you need a whole lot of money up front to invest in all the angles.

2. Legal problems resulting from licensing and trademarks. In the end, this is a big downer, because by the time you finish preparing all the contracts, signing all the documents, reading the fine print, paying the lawyers, making sure you're following the (ever changing) laws.... the anime you're bringing over is old hat, everybody's seen it on the internet already, and people are into something new. By the time your DVD hits the shelves, it will be way too late. This is why laws need to either be harmonized between different countries or abolished altogether - the economy is global, ad information and cash travels quickly and without consideration of borders. Any company that is hindered in its' market activity by having to conform to the artificial conventions of different countries/different legal systems is going to loose out to companies or individuals NOT hindered by this. I would go so far as to even say that the entire tax system needs to be overhauled because legal definitions of concepts such as "profits" from which taxes are collected are all wrong. After all, fansubbers make a "profit" too - because the true definition of profit is when you get more units of subjective value in exchange for less units of subjective value. Every transaction in the marketplace is always "profitable" in the sense that the transaction would NEVER take place if the market participants did not actually think that they would benefit (profit) from the transaction. But in the law, and in the rules governing accounting, profit is just what you make over costs, and in some cases it can be manipulated even more than that. We have seen that the manipulation of the legal definitions of profit, loss, revenue, interest etc etc has led to a huge mess in the global financial markets. Meanwhile, markets that are not hindered by artificial definitions of economic concepts nor by laws are thriving DESPITE the depression. In short - there's too much red tape for a company like ADV and others to survive when the credit lines dry up and the economy goes south because so many resources are consumed when they have to conform to completely abstract laws and conventions that have no real bearing on their activities, and which fansubbers and individuals don't have to worry about.

The net result WILL be to make the anime industry go under ground and to create yet another black market.

But that's what happens when laws and regulations are written in accordance with the fantasy imaginations of professors who never actually worked in the private sector and spent their lives creating pie charts and looking at agorythms, graphs, equations and models instead of considering how the real world works.

Or...

It could just be that demand for anime is actually shrinking, not just as a factor of overall demand decreasing due to credit becoming tight and consumers raising the rate of savings...

One needs to take into account the unfortunate possibility that less people are interesting in anime?...

hard to believe though. So many cool robots and boobs that one would think this genre will last forever

Pete

[Bri]

I fully agree on your first point Pete. On the second, licenses for the american market are often already negotiated during the production proces in Japan so legal issues are not that big in terms of time lost. David Hingtgen mentioned that dubbing takes up most of the delay but is a necessity for DVD sales in the US.

I don't believe demand for anime has gone down at all, if anything it's on the rise worldwide. However, anime distribution via licensing companies who produce localised DVDs is a dying business. This is not neccesarily a bad thing, just cutting out the middleman. As long as those who actually produce the original work will find ways to make money the future is safe. Who knows, maybe merchandise sales through internet vendors like HLJ are the future for anime.

[Whamhammer]

Solution, watch it subtitled!

Not really a solution,I prefer to watch Slayers dubbed, voice inflections help with the sarcasm of the show.

[Warmaker]

For me, it all comes down to "I'm not waiting 3 years for you people to badly dub it, when I *only* want subs". Yes, I realize that the eventual dub sales retroactively fund bringing it to the US in the first place, but it's still no excuse to not release a sub-only version earlier.

WORD, MY BROTHER!

[Keith]

Not really a solution,I prefer to watch Slayers dubbed, voice inflections help with the sarcasm of the show.

Which is why I said to watch it subtitled!!

[BeyondTheGrave]

For me, it all comes down to "I'm not waiting 3 years for you people to badly dub it, when I *only* want subs". Yes, I realize that the eventual dub sales retroactively fund bringing it to the US in the first place, but it's still no excuse to not release a sub-only version earlier.

That would be nice. Bandai did it with Gurren Lagann b/c it took so long for it to be dubbed and released. Let's take it a step further and make the DVDs region free with subs in various languages. I highly doubt its more expensive to get an Japanese to English translator and some English major from overseas . Then for the Big titles (Bleach, DB,DBZ,One Piece,FMA) look into actual voice acting for that region.

In the end there are two things that bring about this state of affairs, and both have (IMO) little to do with the bad economy, except insofar as credit is hard to come by these days:

1. It is immensely hard to compete with free fan subs that are free to download. In order to compete with that, you have to be able to offer something immensely more attractive AND, most importantly, you have to market your product to as wide a group as possible. Free fan-subbers don't particularly care whether 100 or 100 thousand people download their work because they do it out of love and out of a sense of wanting to practice their translating skills. But a company has to market to as broad an audience as possible. Marketing anime cannot be limited to marketing DVDs however. As the most successful cartoons in the USA have shown, the model is always the same: cartoon/comics/toys/possibly movie/books/various merchandise. A company that focuses only on one aspect of this (for example the cartoon/anime dvd aspect) either needs to be working alongside and in tandem with companies that focus on the other aspects of it, OR they need to expand their business and do more. That's where the credit aspect comes in. For a venture like this to really succeed, you need a whole lot of money up front to invest in all the angles.

I think the lack of merchandise to go along with the release of a series on DVD is partially to blame(in the USA). IMO if you had a figure, poster, clothing etc. someone picked up b/c its cool and neat. There is a possibility that someone could actually go "hey I have this *blank* I wonder what its based off of?"

2. Legal problems resulting from licensing and trademarks. In the end, this is a big downer, because by the time you finish preparing all the contracts, signing all the documents, reading the fine print, paying the lawyers, making sure you're following the (ever changing) laws.... the anime you're bringing over is old hat, everybody's seen it on the internet already, and people are into something new. By the time your DVD hits the shelves, it will be way too late. This is why laws need to either be harmonized between different countries or abolished altogether - the economy is global, ad information and cash travels quickly and without consideration of borders. Any company that is hindered in its' market activity by having to conform to the artificial conventions of different countries/different legal systems is going to loose out to companies or individuals NOT hindered by this. I would go so far as to even say that the entire tax system needs to be overhauled because legal definitions of concepts such as "profits" from which taxes are collected are all wrong. After all, fansubbers make a "profit" too - because the true definition of profit is when you get more units of subjective value in exchange for less units of subjective value. Every transaction in the marketplace is always "profitable" in the sense that the transaction would NEVER take place if the market participants did not actually think that they would benefit (profit) from the transaction. But in the law, and in the rules governing accounting, profit is just what you make over costs, and in some cases it can be manipulated even more than that. We have seen that the manipulation of the legal definitions of profit, loss, revenue, interest etc etc has led to a huge mess in the global financial markets. Meanwhile, markets that are not hindered by artificial definitions of economic concepts nor by laws are thriving DESPITE the depression. In short - there's too much red tape for a company like ADV and others to survive when the credit lines dry up and the economy goes south because so many resources are consumed when they have to conform to completely abstract laws and conventions that have no real bearing on their activities, and which fansubbers and individuals don't have to worry about.

The net result WILL be to make the anime industry go under ground and to create yet another black market.

But that's what happens when laws and regulations are written in accordance with the fantasy imaginations of professors who never actually worked in the private sector and spent their lives creating pie charts and looking at algorithms, graphs, equations and models instead of considering how the real world works.

Say the laws get changed. That still won't stop someone from saying you need to pay for whatchamacallit for item J on form Q.

I think anime black market never went away but just became more accepted.

Or...

It could just be that demand for anime is actually shrinking, not just as a factor of overall demand decreasing due to credit becoming tight and consumers raising the rate of savings...

One needs to take into account the unfortunate possibility that less people are interesting in anime?...

hard to believe though. So many cool robots and boobs that one would think this genre will last forever

Pete

It it could be that creators are running out of ideas.

There may be less people interested in anime.

That and the age group its geared toward do not have the best taste in entertainment. Example: Twilight.

(will add more later)

[Vifam7]

Or...

It could just be that demand for anime is actually shrinking, not just as a factor of overall demand decreasing due to credit becoming tight and consumers raising the rate of savings...

One needs to take into account the unfortunate possibility that less people are interesting in anime?...

hard to believe though. So many cool robots and boobs that one would think this genre will last forever

Pete

Good points. Other points to consider -

1. Anime was never really that popular to begin with and whatever boom it got several years ago was nothing but a passing fad for the good majority.

2. The number of fans who financially support the industry (ie. buy anime products) was never that large and perhaps now decreasing.

[Excillon]

Shame, I liked some ADV stuff. Too bad it isn't HG. I don't even know how the hell they manage to stay in business.

[Keith]

Except ADV isn't actually dead, they've just shed their skin & slithered into a new name.