FUNimation Has Been Sold

Hopefully, now that they got their sale out of the way they can finally get the right's to the 4th season of One Piece. They really need to give us some info on that as the silence on the matter has me a bit worried.

As others have pointed out, Funimation is really important for us anime fans in the US since they are pretty much the only company releasing quality shows on a consistent basis. The dubs are almost always good and the only one's that I can think of that I didn't enjoy was One Piece and Black Butler, but subs are always included so they give you an option.



Yeah, if people would actually look into it, they would realize how cheap anime really is especially when it come to Funimation as they make the shows available at a very economic friendly price point. The sites you mention are basically the only ones I use for anime. With Right Stuf, you can get shows at 40% their retail price during company sales or 46% if you have a membership. Pretty amazing deals considering how much our fellow anime fans in Japan have to pay.

I don't think your comments have any ability to expand on discussion, rather it's you parading your opinion around trying to be a special snowflake. Of course you will disagree with this, that is blatant.

I don't see why everyone has to bring morals into this, it's just used as pointless justification for either side. It honestly doesn't matter, and I don't see why everyone has to get so defensive and try to make their opinions seem more then they are. It's cool, you don't buy anime, we get that, no need to try to make yourself seem bigger then you are.

I don't buy anime either, but that by no means makes me special. I just happen to not do something that others do, that's it. Sigh...zzz

Except this isn't an issue of morals, it's an issue of capitalism. I buy anime, not because stealing is wrong (that's another issue entirely), but because there is a direct correlation between the money I put in to the industry and the material that continues to come out. I really don't give a shit if you torrent anime illegally, but if you honestly believe that there would continue to be anime created at all if everyone did that, you have a screw or two loose. Here's an analogy to help everyone understand.

Imagine your little sister opens a lemonade stand. She is selling cups of lemonade for 50 cents each. Your mom, because she's an economist, and also just a weird parent in general, decides that after the first pitcher of lemonade, your sister will have to buy the ingredients from her with the money she earned from sales.

The process of making lemonade looks like this: your mom takes the money given to her by your sister, goes to the store, and buys lemonade. She buys all different kinds! The expensive, high-budget kinds are sometimes good, but occasionally there will be one or two that are a little cheaper, but still taste incredible! But remember, she buys the lemonade in powdered form. You could eat it if you want, but you sure as hell won't get the same experience as drinking it ice-cold through a straw, on the porch, in the shade, away from the summer heat.

With the lemonade now in the pantry, your sister brings in her earnings and inspects the lemonade. She looks at all sorts of things - how easy it is to make, what the people at the store thought of it, how much money she thinks she can make selling it - and picks a few kinds to make into something that you can actually drink. She pays your mother and goes outside to the street corner with her sign, and does her best to sell enough that she can buy more and still have some extra left over to take to the fair next weekend. Neighbors walking by start buying, and the cycle goes on.

Now, you really like the lemonade, but you are utterly incapable of mixing it - all you can do is drink it. So you have a couple options. You can either buy drinkable, high-quality lemonade from your sister for the very agreeable price of 50 cents; you can buy it from your mother, in powdered form, for a much higher price, and at some cost to the quality of the drinking experience; or there is a third option. You happen to have some friends who are former ninja chefs. They are always looking for ways to both hone their skills and increase their recipe repertoires. They have made you an offer: in exchange for allowing them to drink some of the lemonade themselves and copy down the ingredients of each particular package of lemonade, they will sneak into the pantry, download it - I mean, take it off the shelves, and mix it in secret for you. Some of your ninja chef friends are incredible lemonade makers. In fact, you have often found that you prefer the subtle nuances of their mixing method over your sister's. Since you don't want to learn to make lemonade yourself - which is understandable, it's a difficult process - you are forced to turn either to your ninja chef friends or your little sister for the lemonade you crave. What do you do?

It should be fairly obvious, but I'll explain. Each package of lemonade stands for a single story, franchise, concept - whatever you want to call it. The store your mother goes to represents the actual creators of any given anime - in fact, any work of fiction at all. Your mother represents Japanese production studios. When she buys a package of lemonade, she actualizes an anime. Once the lemonade reaches the pantry, your little sister - in this case FUNimation, but in a broader sense, overseas distributors - has to decide which flavors/series she wants to make/license. She doesn't have enough money to buy them all from your mom, so she picks the best ones she can based partly on how she thinks they will sell and partly on what the people who drink the lemonade - we, the consumers - want. The ninja chefs are illegal fansubbers, and while they do a lot of very good work for the promotion of lemonade that might otherwise never be drunk, they offer the opportunity to drink all the lemonade without paying. All the lemonade, ladies and gentlemen, and that is the problem. People like me drink some lemonade from the ninja chefs. If we like it, we buy it next time our little sister has it at her lemonade stand. Maybe we drink it again, if it was really really good. Maybe we just reminisce about how good it tasted the first time. Sometimes, we will even buy a flavor we have never tried before. Maybe we heard good things about it, or it our friend recommended it to us, or it simply looks delicious. Whatever the case, when we buy flavors we like, the money we spend goes to our sister; and from there to our mom; and our mom looks at the amount of money our sister spent on each kind of lemonade, and next time she goes to the store she buys kinds that are similar. With our money. Our 50 cents. Which is now in the cash register at the store.

Our friend Alex here doesn't make his sister happy. He doesn't make his mom happy. He doesn't make the store-people happy. His mom comes home to find the kitchen in shambles, the little sister crying, and the douchebag older brother sitting there, laughing, drinking free lemonade out of a coffee mug, proclaiming for all the world to hear that he doesn't give two shits about whether or not his sister has enough money to make lemonade because he gets it for free. In fact, whenever she sees a ninja chef, she gets scared and calls the police - they are, after all, breaking the law - and so Alex thinks it would be convenient if she was unable to ever make lemonade again. Alex fails to notice the connection between his money and the lemonade in the pantry. He can only see that his money would be going to his sister, and doesn't believe her worthy of it. He is so incredibly dense that he has never paid even a penny to his sister, and by extent, his mother. He will act bewildered, angry, and victimized when, if things don't change, the pantry ceases to be filled with lemonade, and refuses to see how his own actions played a role in the depletion of the lemonade.

The point of the story is this: if you like the lemonade, you'll buy it where it is available. If you don't, you won't drink it, period. It's how capitalism works. Things can't be free if they cost money to make, and everything costs money to make, so really, nothing is free. Your sister is sometimes annoying, and you might not like the way she makes some of her lemonade, but for god's sake, she's doing her best, and she's doing it for you. So don't be an asshole, because if everyone was an asshole, no one would get any lemonade at all.

I hope this isn't a wrong turn.
funimation dubs are awesome and I wouldn't want some of my favorite VA to be out of a job.

im more surprised that funimation is only worth 24 million dollars. dragonball z probably made over half of that for them. anyway back to the topic if funimation went under i mean its over for the next generation of anime watchers. come on are you guys gonna rely on Viz? don't kid me. i don't watch funimation dubs but i buy their DVDs that have the english sub and HQ picture. the dub is just a plus.

is that the reason why episodes 5-26 was removed on youtube of OHSHC?

Everyone shut the hell up, because this situation is nothing but great news for funimation!

Read the first blog entry to see what I mean:
http://animecornerstore.blogspot.com/

Here's a little more info:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Navarre-Corporation-Announces-pz-4254776672.html?x=0&.v=1

Gen Fukunaga is the smartest guy in the R1 anime industry, and funimation is going no where but up! (A little)

Funimation... buys itself...?

As long as the company keeps going strong, I have no problem with it. If they are able to produce and sell their products (animes get successfully serialized) at faster paces than before due to expansion of workforce and company assets, that's even better. I don't like waiting for a whole year or more for my anime to get completely serialized...

They're taking a big chance doing this, I hope they license carefully, one wrong anime could mean...dun dun dun!

wtf

I've never understood Funimation haters...

Anyway it's nice to see Funimation's still around, the title made me scared like they were bought by Viz or something. >_>

it's 2011, either get with the program or get your head examined.

mhm couldnt watch funimation youtube chanel.. now i can yay..
same for veoh yay..
and life goes on ..

Yes, I saw Welcome to the NHK for dirt cheao, among others. I've been hearing the package is too cheap and that some people got bad discs which had to be replaced. But I guess that always happens, plus considering how dirt cheap it is that's a risk I'd take.

man all cash

lol Wow, you're so right, it does sound like that. Alas, no, I'm actually referring to this forum. If you read it one post after another is starts to resemble an anime script. Very entertaining, but all just my imagination.

No one is saying that. The main argument wasn't that you shouldn't be proud of the fact that you're cancer to anime. I really don't care if you're a pirate, just don't go around parading how happy and cool you are to be one.


Why am I always surprised to see these kinds of ignorant posts? Ugh. Will people ever learn?

Are you referring to a particular show?
Cause it sounds like some sentai like Anime with no definitive plot that's has plenty of comedy :D

This is how I see it.

The guy most in a position to understand the true nature of Funimation's prospective future would probably be it's CEO, right. If Funimation was in epic decline with no profit future it seems like he'd want less financial dependence on the company. The fact that he outright bought it makes me feel pretty good about the situation there.

Weather any of you here personally like their releases or not everyone should be able to see that a company whose purpose is to supply anime fans the option to own BR and DVD sets of their favorite Japanese shows in both Japanese and English is deserving of some respect, or at the very least civility.

I've read every post here and I can't believe some of the fail. Taking pride in personal selfishness? Where's the anime supporting that virtue "anime fan"? Others here are pretty damn awesome though.

Reading all the posts here is almost like reading an anime script. Company in transition, future undecided, sides or chosen, battle ensues, idiot appears for comedy scenes, turns out to be a brainless enemy to the company. Gets defeated by the team of heroes do to their superior intellect. Show doesn't get a definitive ending (shocking right).