American Anime

ADV’s Mutineer’s Moon project (adapted from the David Weber novels) isn’t dead yet.

This is from an interview of ADV’s John Ledford, which can be read here:

ANN: Right now ADV’s picking up a lot, but, right before the market went to hell, ADV had also expanded a lot, possibly at the absolute worst time.

JL: Yes, expansion right before one of your biggest customers falls through the hole (Musicland/Suncoast).

ANN: So a couple of departments were …

JL: Hiatused.

ANN: Hiatused. Now that ADV’s really moving forward, what are we going to see from those departments? (Manga, Merchandise, ADV Pro, etc…)

JL: ADV Pro has been re-activated, so the projects it had under its wing, specifically Mutineer’s Moon, are still proceeding.

I didn’t see how it could be left in the trash bin, as it was apparently about 75-80% complete, but honestly, I expected it to end up being sold off to some other company and developed by a whole new team. I wasn’t aware ADV was “moving forward” again. I figured they were slowly strangling on their effort to run The Animé Network. (As an aside, would I be correct in assuming that ADV is the only serious importer that is not owned by or closely associated with one of the Big Five Four media companies?)

I have been waiting for years to see this series, and I hope it is really and truly on the way again. The fact that the website is still fubared does not give me great hope however. Sounds like to me they’re just stirring the ashes and calling it progress.

Update: Should have looked at the interview before asking stupid questions.

This was preceded by the Sojitz deal, where Sojitz Corporation invested in A.D. Vision. How much does Sojitz have to do with ADV’s rebound?

Sojitz is one of the big key factors. Having done the deal with Sojitz has really enabled the company to move a lot faster than we could ever have done with a non-Japanese partner. The typical American investor would not be nearly as good as having a neutral Japanese party. There were some publishing companies, some other animation studios, [and] general people that were interested in investing in ADV on the Japan side, but I felt that the trading companies were the best overall because they’re like Switzerland; they’re very neutral.

Eeeeenteresting. This definately puts a different slant on things; now they’ll have the money to do what they need to do, as well as better contacts on the Japanese side.

Update 2: VERY facinating interview. Check this out:

Do you think we’re going to actually see same day-and-date regularly, or is that just unreasonable?

I’m going to choose my words really carefully here, so don’t read too much into this and don’t misinterpret this. Because of the proliferation of online illegal file transfers and downloads and whatnot (a lot of the content broadcast in Japan is subtitled and propagated over the internet within 24 hours), license fees are dropping for the Japanese, which means production quality and production budget will be affected in the long term. Because the Japanese companies generally look to the Americas for 20 to 40 percent of their budget, if that budget is not there anymore, they can’t sustain quality and scope of production. So in order to fix or help or kind of mend the problem, some of the companies we’ve talked to are discussing releasing the Japanese version on TV with an American near simultaneous broadcast, in English, subtitled or dubbed. But only broadcast. And that’s all I’m going to say.