Doom & Gloom.. Let 2012 Bring Us Down

Not The R1 Industry

Putting all of this joking aside, this year is not shaping up to be a really good so far for anime fans that like domestic releases. Lets start off with Bandai Entertainment USA that has officially announced they will no longer licnese, make or produce any more DVDs for any new series cutting them fully out of the market expect for their older titles such as Gurren Lagann or Eureka Seven. This means any series they did have license for where reversed back to the original holders will not be released here for example they did lose are Nichijou, Gosick, & Turn a Gundam.

Now for the next tidbit of bad news is that Media Blasters has layed off 60% of it's work force cutting down to only five people. Media Blasters is not as well known as bandai but they have hung in there for the past six years by releasing some decent titles like Doujin Work, Squid Girl, Girls High and keeping a partner ship up with crunchy-roll to stream their titles. Now this isn't Genon Usa bad mind you but the worst tidbit of news I do have to add after the epic pic break.

Gendo 2012

Well biggest lay-down that has occurred so far have is that the two, biggest R1 companies that are left  that are sill licensing titles are now going to quarrel in court over un-payed dues that total eight million. So this means that Sentai Filmworks and Funimation will be dueling out in court for these un-payed dues. If you are to dense to remember Sentai Filmworks was formally ADV Films so when they filled for bankruptcy apparently broke some laws while restructuring in to six smaller companies with their the few licnese they had left to make a profit with sub only dvd's before financially coming back like they are now.  

So what does all this bull-shit mean.. well in case you are under the age of twelve and in-cable of reading this means that we are on shaky ground right now. Personally I think there is a high chance of the bubble popping again like it did back in 2008 but I will still have a wait & see mood for now. Now there not much else I can add to this, but I am standing back in awe of these events thus far this could be to the changing market of needing everything digitally. 

One thing I will bluntly say is this, if you really love a anime series/franchise buy what can of it while there are still physical copies in stock or be left in the dust and price gouged out the as later on. Now excuse me while I am off bargain bin diving at rightstuf?? What are your thoughts on these turns of events?? Hell it's not even February yet and the bad news just keeps rolling in catch you all later~

-Cecil The Dark Knight