Somehow Starz Edge– a premium cable channel owned by the same company that owns Manga Entertainment –has gotten hold of two Geneon titles, Black Lagoon and Kyo Kara Maoh!. They’re airing them both starting on the 8th, or at least a couple of episodes of them, and in Black Lagoon’s case, they’re starting with the thus far unreleased second season, Black Lagoon: 2nd Barrage!

Maybe Manga Entertainment is doing a license rescue? Either way, I HIGHLY recommend catching Black Lagoon if you can, because it is epic and awesome and involves incestuous gothic lolita twins. Kyo Kara Maoh!, eh, if it’s something you’d like you’ve probably already seen it. (I think Geneon finished releasing it, at least everything prior to the recent OVA and now the new season…am I wrong?)

John Sirabella of Media Blasters has declared on the AoD forums that Seirei no Moribito will still air on Cartoon Network as it was originally planned prior to Geneon’s demise. Sirabella also notes that he has two more un-announced titles from Geneon, and that the company isn’t interested in partially-released series, so don’t go thinking that Media Blasters is going to save everything. (Wahhh!)

Anime on DVD reports that an extra on the KITE: Liberator DVD has announced that Media Blasters has acquired the license to release Seirei no Moribito from the mostly-defunct Geneon, the first rescued license from that debacle thus far.

Hopefully that means more is on the way, however!

Miss me? :D

Never let it be said that FUNimation lets an opportunity to pounce on some titles slide– ICv2 reports that Navarre has just begun negotiation to acquire some of Geneon’s catalogue.

Now, me being me, I think that if FUNi wanted to be a TRUE hero they’d consider stepping into ADV’s brief role as Geneon’s sales and distro team– though it may be that Geneon’s hole is deep to the point that their parent company Geneon Japan won’t bother with that.

Well, we’ll see. It’s not hard to imagine FUNi releasing shows like Black Lagoon or Rozen Maiden, and with ADV probably sitting between a financial rock and a hard place, this is a good opportunity for FUNimation to snag some of those fan-favorite titles.

Just…just don’t insist on putting Vic Mignogna in all of them, okay, FUNi? If there’s a dub cast already, just, y’know, leave it as-is…

Original source: ICv2

Shorties:

• Blah blah blah Yaoi Con. If you’re interested in it, odds are good you’ve already seen YaoiSuki’s phenomenal coverage of it, so I won’t bother rehashing.
• Hey look– Japan Town San Francisco is revamping, including the building of a Jpop culture center. I’ll have to check that out when it’s done…
• European investors like Japanese love hotels. Who knew?
• Let’s see, I already talked about Lucky Star being licensed. For those of you silly enough to take me seriously, I was annoyed that it happened on a weekend when I wasn’t around to scoop, not because of the license itself. Duh.
• Apparently the gala event for Takashi Murakami’s exhibit at the LA Museum of Contemporary Art was a little star-studded.
• Tsundere GPS device. What the fuck.
• Are we done with Hare Hare Yukai now that even the virtual idols are doing it?
• HOLY SHIT LIVE ACTION AKIRA. Well, maybe. Possibly. We’re thinking about it.
• Remember Dale’s interview with Oreskaband at Anime Expo? No? That’s because animeOnline died before we could post it. (Wait, did we get it through? I don’t remember.) Anyway, the band is going to be in a movie.
• Vertical has Osamu Tezuka’s Black Jack. It’s my fave Tezuka series, second to Unico, so HUZZAH!
• VIZ is all like, “look at all of our live-action manga adaptations! LOOK AT THEM! WE SO COOL!” Apparently they hoped we’d forget that everyone’s been expecting all of these for ages, except maybe Love*Com.
• Gong+Blinkx=more legal anime online. And stuff.
• A couple of new series: the sci-fi/greek mythology dark-lookin’ show Mnemosyne, plus an anime based on the character books Zenryoku Usagi. Also, BIOHAZARD CG anime.

At Length:

Ghost Hunt licensed: I love this show– solid characters, interesting stories, and any and all potential romance/personal drama is subtle and mostly not addressed. Also, AMAZING soundtrack by Masuda Toshio, who also did the soundtrack for Mushishi, FYI. Mmmm.

FUNimation vs Atari re: Dragon Ball Z games. I’m intrigued that no one has released the “why” for FUNimation’s move (which was to announce their intent to sever Atari’s rights to the games due to unknown infractions). Apparently DBZ is one of the floundering Atari’s few successful franchises– I wonder if FUNi is just hoping to jump ship before it sinks, or ir something significant really did go down?

B2B anime info portal: So Japanese companies are trying to get more information about their series to both North American and European countries. Given the recent hubbub with U.S. anime companies– e.g. FUNi, ADV, and Geneon’s layoffs and scalebacks –I think it’s a good idea for anime companies to get a better sense of what’s out there and what to license. While the “snag every single anime possible” tactic has its bonuses, I can’t think it’s the best method out there.

…Whew. That should keep you guys busy for a few minutes. Did I skip anything big?

Anime News Network has gotten a report from ADV that the company has laid off 13 employees across the board of their operations (of about 100 employees). They also say that they’ve hired a few new people, though.

The change of staff levels is apparently supposed to reflect their priorities, but it’s not like they’re telling us how many people they’ve got in each department, so I guess we don’t get to know what their priorities are, for now.

So, I think all the FUNi, Geneon, and ADV layoffees should go start their own company. Or at least go have a big layoff party.

While Geneon USA is closing their distribution doors, Geneon Japan is opening theirs up wide to let a juggernaut in: Geneon Japan will distribute films for Universal Pictures Japan, according to Variety, starting with The Bourne Ultimatum in March.

ADV put out their word too, which doesn’t tell us anything new really, but I did notice…

…ADV says it has “withdrawn plans” to do distro for Geneon, and Geneon says that THEY have “withdrawn [the] appointment” of ADV to do distro…

…Doesn’t it read kind of like a “I dumped you!” “No, I dumped YOU!” argument? Just a little? Hey, this could be better than all those Ross/Rachel twists on Friends!

ANN has announced that the deal that Geneon USA had with ADV, giving the latter the sales and distribution responsibilities for the former, has now been cancelled. They also claim that Geneon USA was planning on closing its in-house production by the end of this year.

So, Geneon USA minus anime production minus sales and distribution equals…what, exactly? At best, some kind of anime broker; at worst, it equals zero. But of course, now that the ADV deal is dead, that leaves everything in limbo. Including the status of Geneon’s titles, like Hellsing. Eep.

So I just heard from ICv2 that ADV totally just jumped into bed with Geneon– like, omg, great couple! Totally the Brangelina of anime. Those DVDs are gonna be the best-looking ever!

*cough*…But seriously. If Geneon has just killed its entire sales, marketing, and distribution staff (…hi, guys! I can sympathize!), what’s going to happen to the deal that Geneon signed with Bandai Visual for the former to distribute the latter’s titles? Is that deal just cancelled? It was just announced back in March, so it’s not likely to have expired already…

Or maybe ADV will be handling BVU’s distro too? OMG MENAGE-A-TROIS!