Dec 11 2008
2008 Year in Review: ADV
A new year is coming up on the horizon and I guess that means it’s time for me to take a stab writing my year in review for everyone and figuring out who came out as winners and those who came out as… not. The first one that I’m going to give my thoughts on is ADV.
ADV:
Let’s face it; this was a very tough year for ADV starting with an incredibly rocky first part of the year. A lot of things went wrong for them early and a lot of fans were speculating on if they were still going to be around for the entire year. For anyone who came into the anime community via some of the great releases they had throughout the early part of this decade, there were periods in time when you were holding your breath.
Things went from bad to worse by the time Anime Expo had rolled around. It had been awhile since anyone had heard anything significant from ADV, their license announcements weren’t pouring out. Then AX hit and the anime weekend from Hell began when ADV was forced to announce the loss of more than thirty series. Basically everything that they had built over the last year or so, gone to rivals Funimation. A lot of fans who hadn’t written off ADV yet were ready to do so at this point. ADV was on incredibly thin ice. Their magazine venture had dissolved within only a matter of months and staff layoffs seemed to predict what was coming next.
Since then though, ADV has managed to find itself a new beginning. Finding a new partner or two and completely changing their business model, ADV has re-invented itself and shows signs of continuing to push into 2009. In October, ADV announced their new partnerships and some of the new licenses that they will be leading off 2009 with. Partnering with Sentai Filmworks, fans can be excited about ‘Clannad’ on six volumes as well as the former Geneon titles ‘Mahormatic’, ‘Pet Shop of Horrors’ and ‘Tsukihime’.
2009 is going to be a very difficult year for ADV and it’s going to be really interesting to see the rebuild.
