There’s been a lot going around about ADV’s health as an American anime distributor. Though ADV representative’s say nothing is “official” yet, it looks as though another American anime giant may be positioned to fall down to some degree. In my opinion, it would be a loss if ADV were to go the way of Geneon. While there are other good anime distributors out there, ADV has been around for a long time as one of the “big guys”, with the now defunct Geneon USA and the still kicking Funimation.
Geneon’s US demise this past October left a bad taste in my mouth. I figured a monopoly was the worse that could happen, but also that other unsavory outcomes were possible. Some fans had the opinion Geneon’s tanking was no biggie, while others who’ve seen this sort of thing before took a “wait and see” approach to the episode.
As ADV started laying off employees, the bad taste in my mouth went from slightly sour to icky. When I read ADV was closing their wallet to anime clubs and shutting down Newtype, I think I became ill. And then when unofficial news surfaced about ADV’s discontinuation of titles, I had to rethink what I originally thought of the US anime landscape.
What would happen if little by little, anime in America, as we know it now, began to disappear? What if, instead of recent anime being released on DVD, any “new” anime was solely available on cable? And what if those titles were nothing but shows like Bleach and Naruto?
Sure, fansubs would gain new fans and a bigger audience, but wouldn’t anime crawl back under the rock it came from in terms of its popularity and mainstream appeal (I use “popular” in a relative context and a loose one at that)? What would happen to manga? Would manga keep the anime culture in America afloat? Or is this a minor setback, one we’ll bounce right back from?
These questions and more are the ones I ask myself and other anime fans whenever there’s some disturbances with the distribution companies. Some questions I toss out to get the dialog going but some I honestly want to know. The biggest, ultimate question, however, would be: What if anime in America were no more…Period.
No fansubs, no new Adult Swim, no video on demand, no YouTube, nothing. Zip. No more anime. Just the series and movies already in your and your buddies collections. All the cool new super awesome shows you hear are being released in Japan would be nothing more than wishful thinking in America.
Reruns would rule supreme (imagine Cowboy Bebop back on Cartoon Network in an endless loop- forever!) Fans would start to further pick apart old series, looking for some fresh nuance to keep discussions alive. Anime conventions would slowly devolve into burnt out shrines of anime past, with no new cosplays, no announcements, just a bunch of fans reliving the Golden Years. It’d be like a Star Wars convention…
And what would you do? Would you give up the medium? Or buy an $80 bootleg DVD of crappy anime from China and Europe? Would you still cosplay? What would your room look like with no new plushies to brighten it? How would you get your fix? What would you do if anime were no more in America?
Yeah, yeah, I know it sounds like I’m being all doom and gloom (it’s only a hypothetical discussion), but please comment below on what you’re anime disaster plan would be!
