Jujutsu Kaisen: Execution — Remembering What Power Looks Like
I walked into the theater not entirely sure what I was about to see. In the United States, anime films — even those tied to some of the biggest global franchises — arrive with little to no fanfare. It’s a strange contradiction: anime is a global industry, but its theatrical presence here is treated more like a footnote than a premiere. That’s how I ended up watching Jujutsu Kaisen: Execution with…
The Shifting Anime Distribution Company Game in NA
I’m going to just say it bluntly. Capitalism is annoying, isn’t it? In general, yeah. It feels like whenever companies feel blood in the water over something, they really go after it. In recent years or the past half decade or so, anime has become one of blood in the water. I don’t know if I would call it mainstream yet besides some classic shonen battle and isekai I suppose, a lot of anime is…
Yesterday, AMC Networks announced that it has acquired Sentai Holdings, LLC. The Houston Based Anime Distribution Company, which included Sentai Filmworks and the Anime Streaming Service, HI-DIVE has been acquired from the Cool Japan Fund.
“With strong industry relationships and access to key content creators in Japan, Sentai distributes and curates one of the anime industry’s most diverse…
I’m feeling a little rant/ramble coming on in regards to anime DVD/Bluray distribution in American right now. So if you don’t care or just aren’t concerned, now’s your chance to skip past this to the next thing.
Alright, anyone left that doesn’t want to read this? No? Good. On we go.
Now I’m fairly new to the whole anime thing. I’ve been watching and collecting consistently for only a couple years now. In that time though, I’ve actually amassed quite a large collection of anime. Enough to really get a somewhat decent handle on how the major companies that bring us our anime work.
Funimation is the most obvious one. They bring us a good deal of shows, though honestly they tend to stick with safe bets, rarely going for the oddball show anymore. They do dub just about everything they get too, which some people like so that’s a plus as well. We see limited editions from them occasionally, but they make a good point of also releasing a regular edition for those who don’t have the money to dump on all the bells and whistles. Add in their S.A.V.E. releases and anime classics for older titles they still have the rights too and you have a fairly decent set-up for the fans.
Sentai Filmworks is the other big company when it comes to anime. Their releases are a lot more bare-bones than Funimation, and at times a bit pricier than they should be, but they do get some of the more offbeat titles that probably wouldn’t make it here otherwise. Their dubs aren’t my cup of tea and some would call them awful, but they do seem to dub about half the shows they get, which again, is nice for the fans that want that. To my knowledge, they have only done limited edition releases a couple times ever, though they are great about going all out on those so that was nice.
Between Funimation and Sentai, we probably get most of our anime releases through them right now, and I’m all for them since they are quite good to the fans overall. Now, below them we have five other companies that are vying for a piece of the pie; Aniplex, NIS America, VIZ Media, Nozomi Entertainment and a new entry, Pony Canyon.
Aniplex of America has long been a source of annoyance for many fans with their stupidly expensive releases. Granted, the shows they get, while favorites of the hardcore fans, probably don’t always sell well otherwise (except for Sword Art Online and Kill la Kill which did get slightly cheaper regular edition releases). This is still a problem though as their releases are either wildly expensive Bluray sets, often broken down into volumes of thee to five episodes or DVD-only sets that will probably never see a high-def release now. This last point with DVD-only releases is a huge point for me personally as I’ve come to enjoy my shows in higher definition and not getting that after having watched something in high-def when it’s airing here really bugs me. Well that and the whole “by the volume” selling thing. Funimation and Sentai have really gotten me to not be used to this as a marketing strategy. But I’ll get back to this later.
NIS America I have kindof a love/hate relationship with. I like that all of their shows are limited edition releases since they aren’t insanely expensive (unless you have to buy one second market). The shows they get are often times niche titles, which is kinda fun as I’m someone who looks for these sorts of shows over the wildly popular ones most of the time. The only strikes I really have against them are the shape of the limited edition boxes as they don’t display well or fit on shelves well with regular cases (I’m a bit OCD so this is a bigger issue for me than it probably needs to be). Also, though not a point for me really, but they don’t dub anything. Still, I can back this company and often buy their releases.
VIZ Media is one I’ve only really dealt with a couple times so I don’t have a ton to say about them. What I’ve bought from them is on a volume release system, but it’s also a very long series so the volumes still have a seasons worth of shows on it. They’ve also been good, at least with the Ranma 1/2 and Sailor Moon releases that I’ve bought, about releasing both limited and regular editions, and about making a new dub for Sailor Moon. They tend to stick to licenses they’ve had for years though, so I don’t see them often picking up new shows (or at least, not any that I’ve noticed).
Nozomi Entertainment is the DVD branch of Rightstufanime.com and honestly, they are probably my favorite of the smaller companies trying to sneak into the anime market. They get interesting shows AND make reasonably priced releases. The only thing that kinda sucks, and it looks like they’re slowly changing this, is that they have been DVD-only this whole time. Granted, most of their shows are old enough that they don’t really need to be high-def, but we’ll be seeing a change with that soon I think.
Now, the last one, Pony Canyon, is the one that has managed to surpass my hatred for Aniplex of America, and is part of why I’ve typed this up today. They are a total new-comer to the anime market in America. I just hate their marketing method so far. Like Aniplex, they are releasing shows in volumes of three to five episodes a piece, and again, like Aniplex, they are charging extraordinary amounts of money for these sets. The thing that gets me is that these are prices for shows that nobody should be paying that much for. Fans might dump this kind of money on something big like Sword Art Online or Bakamonogatari (I know I did). The same is not going to be true for something like Etotama. I watched it while it was airing, and I’d be hard pressed to buy that show as a full season for a Sentai type price. The same is true of the other two shows they’ve released (Yuuki Yuuna is a Hero and The Bookstore in the Electric Town). Maybe this is a personal thing on my part, but it just feels like Pony Canyon doesn’t know their market at all and are instead just throwing whatever they can out there to see what happens. I just feel fortunate that so far they haven’t gotten shows that I actually want to watch that badly, but at the same time, I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to see a company fail so badly in my life (well, except for some of my previous employers but that’s another post, hehe). May they never get the rights to anything worthwhile and further destroy the wallets of fans who could be spending that money on shows more deserving of those wads of cash, or better yet, just more shows in general.
***side note: I’m aware that there are many other companies releasing anime here, but they are either much smaller companies, subsidiaries of these companies or companies that I just haven’t personally dealt with enough to have an opinion on yet (AnimEigo, this means you)***
