ADV Films DVDs are being clearanced from Right Stuf International… and then days later, this news hits Anime News Network:
Then days later ADV Films puts forth this statement:
The last time Right Stuf International clearanced DVDs, it was Geneon, and we all know they pulled out of the US Market…
Chime in.
Probably. Even though they have big name titles and lots of small name titles, they never seemed to be able to run their business very well. Especially the manga section.
My understanding is that the anime market is experiencing their own version of the “Internet Bubble Burst” these days. Few customer purchases, licensing too many titles at once, and the falling dollar value are major hurts (for once, pirating is not too much an issue). Expect a cold winter - but groups like 4Kids and Cartoon Network are still going strong. Heh… but not everyone likes those guys. 
You can be happy, here in Germany the most Anime’s who are licensed are Mainstream (didnt say that they are bad, but i want the pearls 
). Good Manga Series often discontinued because they didnt catch the Eye of the Main Consumer Group 
Sure looks that way doesn’t it?
I have spent at least one entire afternoon this week trying to get in touch with my sources and ask them what was going on with ADV. Not a single one of them would give me a comment. Baka.
I would say that the rep can say whatever she wants. The writing is on the wall and unless a miracle happens, ADV will be done by Q4 of this year. It makes me sad really, almost all of my favorite series came from them.
Actually right stuf actually did a geneon clearance before the one where they closed their sales and marketing department so this shouldn’t be a notice that a company is going under besides if they were they wouldn’t have just announced the next gen disc format they’ll be using.
So I’m saying don’t worry.
More likely they’re going under organization shake up. Dropping mostly low-selling titles and company restructuring. This isn’t going to be a good year for anime releases.
On the upside, this may only be temporary. If you continue with the Internet bubble comparison, it did burst, but it’s regrown from that point.
Honestly, that doesn’t fill me with confidence. I know the writing is on the walls for DVD, but it’s not entirely clear that high-definition will be the savior that ADV Films, or the anime industry, is looking for. DVD copy protection was very easily defeated, I mean, it’s a joke, so it was inevitable that industry players would look at the stronger encryption algorithm on Blu-Ray… but the internet, the bittorrents, the P2P videos, are shaping up to become the next generation of video distribution. Even internet distribution is not a foregone conclusion, if one considers that video sales was a mere fraction of music sales on iTunes.
High def DVD format sales are also still a small fraction of total DVD sales… does ADV Films know what it’s doing?