Sentai Acquires Kurenai

There is a big difference between ADV back then and Sentai today. Well, actually there are a number of differences. It wasn’t just that ADV acquired too many licenses, which if you look back on it, the total number wasn’t too bad. They only acquired about 35 in three years, which is less than 1 per month.

ADV back then had several divisions, many of which were unprofitable, including NewType, manga, toys, music, original productions, and more. The only division that appears to have been making money was Anime Network’s VOD channel, while the 24 hour channel burned cash.

ADV also dubbed everything, while Sentai releases most of it’s niche titles sub-only. Not only do they save on localization costs, but licenses tend to be cheaper if you plan on skipping the dub, as the Japanese licensors know the title will likely sell less.

Licensing costs are perhaps the biggest difference. The most expensive titles these days are only going for $8k-$12k an episode, plus a cut of the sales. Most titles go for even less than that. Both Sentai and Funimaton have stated that some titles are being acquired with no upfront costs, so they are only giving a percentage of sales. This means there is a lot less risk for these titles, even ones that have little sales potential.

Back in ADV’s day, we know they had series that they were spending more than double that, sometimes three to five times that per episode. Kurau Phantom Memory cost nearly $1 million according to their court case with ARM/Sojitz. It was more the overextension of the company as a whole and overspending on every front that did them in.

Sentai has been pretty conservative until this past year. But they still have some cost saving practices. First of all, as I wrote before, they don’t dub everything. They are starting to dub more and more series each year, but there are still a ton of sub-only releases in their library. Secondly, they (sometimes unfortunately, like ALL dubbing studios these days) don’t spend as much time working on each dub. There are no more all night recording sessions where Matt Greenfield is trying to get Hilary Haag to do one “just right”. Dubs are done on a tighter budget and schedule.

Sentai also doesn’t spend as much money on special editions as ADV did a few years ago. They skip the chipboard packaging and physical extras. They use less expensive packaging all around.

Also, during it’s final days, ADV didn’t have any really successful series. Even it’s biggest hits during the ARM years didn’t approach any large number of units and it seems they were often unprofitable. Sentai has been able to snag a few in the past couple years, starting with High School of The Dead. It is one of the most heavily reviewed anime series on Amazon at present and it sat atop not only the anime bluray rankings, but also the horror bluray rankings for several weeks around its release date. They’ve also snagged Angel Beats, Clannad, and had lesser degrees of success with shows like Canaan, Demon King Daimao, and Xam’d.

Sentai has also expanded their digital distribution avenues much more than ADV had, which allows them more channels of revenue.

I can understand being concerned about the rate at which they’ve been acquiring series. But one should keep in mind that their situation is fundamentally different from ADV’s. Their cost structure is different as is the entire layout of their company. As long as they keep their costs in line, which they appear to be doing so far, or they wouldn’t be able to license so much, then there shouldn’t be too much to worry about. If Media Blasters, ADV, and Bandai proved anything, it’s that there will be some outward signs if things start to go south. I would save worrying for titles being removed from their sites, or DVD sets missing street dates without communication.