Ask John: Will Universal’s Acquisition of Geneon Affect Americans?
Question:
With Universal merging with Geneon does this mean Geneon titles will be dubtitled from then on since Universal doesn’t want to hire people who can translate Japanese to English like Sony with Blood+? Any idea if Universal even knows anything about the anime community?
Answer:
Since Geneon doesn’t have an active American distribution office any longer, Universal’s acquisition of Geneon only applies to Geneon of Japan. Geneon has been distributing Universal Pictures’ home video properties in Japan since March 2008, so Universal’s acquisition of its home video distributor isn’t an especially surprising move. Geneon anime titles are presently distributed in America by FUNimation, Media Blasters, Nozomi Entertainment, Bandai Entertainment, and AD Vision – companies that produce their own translations and American localization, so the transition of Geneon from control by Dentsu to Universal may have no noticable affect on American anime fans at all.
The realm of uncertain possibility lies in licensing rather than translation. Geneon no longer distributes its Japanese titles in America itself. Instead, Geneon licenses distribution rights to many of its titles to American distributors. Presumably, and hopefully, Geneon will continue this marketing strategy. However, with the exact future status of the company poised for change, we can’t ignore the possibility that Universal may decide to throttle or even end the policy of Geneon granting American distribution rights to current Japanese properties. Geneon currently distributes Japanese titles including Casshern Sins, Toaru Majutsu no Index, Kemeko Deluxe, Allison to Lillia, and Zettai Karen Children. I’m sure that there are many American anime fans that will be very disappointed if Universal Pictures decides that managing American distribution licenses for shows like these isn’t worth its time or effort. Hopefully that won’t happen, but at the present time, anything is possible.
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And one of the reasons Geneon no longer distributes in the USA is 2 episode per DVD and charging $20+
Where did you get those numbers? That might be true in Japan, but certainly not in the US.
Apart from boxed sets, all of the Geneon USA DVDs I bought — at retail, not secondhand — were 4 episodes per $25 disc, which was pretty standard pricing and amount of content for the industry at the time.
And one of the reasons, Megumis, that they had to is because of the fact there are too many fans stealing the product. A $29.99 price point for 4 episodes requires a certain number of a _buying audience_ which, flatly, DOES NOT EXIST. The Bandai Visual people saw this, and cut it down to $29.99 for 2 eps, figuring there were very few “real anime fans” in America. (They’re right.)
Fact is, Bandai (Entertainment) won’t be around much past the first of the year, vis-a-vis anime, if the economy (esp. retail) continues to degenerate as most believe it will.
To answer the question: No one really knows. There is a belief out there that, should Universal actually decide to release anime to the US, in one form or another, that they could nullify especially the Funimation deals, undercutting them to the point where I’d believe they might be able to give Gen an “offer he can’t refuse” for the entire company.
But no one really knows what it all holds at this point.