Bad News for Anime Fans: Geneon USA Cancelling DVD Sales and Distribution

[Toastburner B]

The onetime anime distribution company Geneon Entertainment (USA) Inc. has notified its retail customers that it will cease "the sales of DVDs and all related distribution and marketing operations as of 5 p.m. on Friday, September 28, 2007." The deadline for ordering all Geneon USA products is that time and date, and only orders for "catalog products in inventory or new releases with a street date" of November 6 or earlier will be accepted. Any outstanding retail orders will ship as soon as stock is available. No more returns will be accepted after 5:00 p.m. on November 30, and new orders after September 21 cannot be returned at all. The letter to retailers also says that "payables to Geneon remain unchanged."


Article can be found here (http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2007-09-26/geneon-usa-to-cancel-dvd-sales-distribution-by-friday).

Basically, this means if you were following an series being sold/distributed by Geneon that have volumes being released after early November, you're S.O.L.

Series impacted by this include Hellsing Ultimate, Karin, Black Lagoon Second Barrage, Rozen Maiden Traumend, When They Cry (Higurashi), and I'm sure others I haven't heard about.

[NonCon]

Why god why?! Why in god's name would they do this? I love Higurashi and Ultimate!

[Krylo]

I wouldn't think it's permanent. Basically what happened is that Geneon cut a deal with ADV, to have ADV do all their distributing. So Geneon goes and lays off their entire sales division. Then the deal with ADV falls through, so now we have an anime distribution company with no distribution division.

They are, literally, unable to to distribute for the time being.

I would assume/hope/pray that they either make a deal with a different distribution company or start refilling their sales positions--hopefully the infrastructure is still in place for that.

[Aerozord]

well I just hope something happens. They are one of the major publishers along with Funimation (I refuse to acknowledge 4kids existance)

[Death by Stabbing]

As long as I can keep watching Lupin III then I'm happy

Those bastards had better not take Lupin away!

[Lord of Joshelplex]

Dammit! My primary channel for anime is sponsored by Geneon! FUCK!

[bananarama]

Well....this is bad for sure...I sure as hell hope it's not permanent (though why do I care? Fansubbers FTW!)

[Lord of Joshelplex]

Is this only for sales of DVDs? Can a show that is airing still continue?

[Toastburner B]

Is this only for sales of DVDs? Can a show that is airing still continue?

I dunno. As far as I can tell, Geneon itself will continue to exist, its just their sales department going down the drain.

Of course, I'm not sure how they'll make money if they're not selling anything.

I'm also not sure how this will affect existing series...though I think I'll make sure to buy the last volumes of Trigun before November.

Its just a question of what they are going to do with the licenses they have...whether they're going to hang on to them until they get back into distributing (whenever that would be), or sell them off to other distributors like ADV and Funimation.

It sucks for me, 'cause I had quite a few pre-orders that are going to get canned.

[Kenryoku_Maxis]

Its only bad news if you rely on American distributors to dictate what Anime you can see and if they die, you can't see it.

This is the beauty of liking something that actually came from another source. American Distributors are just a middle man. If they fall short, just find another middle man or better yet, go directly to the original source if you want to see the show that bad. You don't have to rely on these companies.

With that said, I do realize Geneon is connected to Pioneer which produces many of the shows that are then brought over here and sold. I was just making the point that you don't have to go 'oh damn, I have to just sit around waiting for this company to come back to life or another company to buy the rights and do the show before I can see the show I want.'

No...you can see a show by other means... And NO I don't just mean illegal.

[Seil]

...=3

I just find this terribly amusing. Not he DVD cancelling, but the outrage against it. Us NPFers - we can handle a server wipe, we can handle sick cats - but mess with our anime, and we're all in an uproar.

[NonCon]

It would be like if someone had told me a few years ago that they were going to cancel the rest of excel saga, I would have killed puppies in that case...

[Zombie_Punk]

Unfortunately for me I was picking up the volumes of When They Cry, Black Lagoon, Karin, Hellsing Ultimate and Rozen Maiden as they came out. I was looking forward to the Shakugan no Shana OVA too.

I'm not terribly affected by it though. I imagine the rest of those series will be released somehow and When They Cry and Black Lagoon are the only ones I have to see. Besides, if the worst happens and they're all dropped I'll be out of my parent's house soon and can take the non-dial up route.