)What I'm mainly referring to is a specific period of time that I like to refer to as The Great American Anime Licensor Massacre of the Late 2000s-Early 2010s. Pioneer/Geneon, Manga Entertainment, ADV, Bandai Entertainment/Visual, etc. ALL went belly-up in one way or another in the span of just three or four years, roughly around 2008-2012 (Manga for example didn't actually go under, but got sold to Starz and ceased all acquisition of new licenses, and Sentai Filmworks still uses the ADV branding on a select few of its legacy reprints). We're talking companies with decades-long histories of importing THOUSANDS of different anime, both major and obscure, ALL going out roughly around the same time... but FUNimation not only persevered, but grew FAR stronger by scooping up the lion's share of the licenses dangling in the abyss from the liquidations. HUNDREDS of titles, many of which were years and years old, were suddenly under the FUNimation banner in the early 2010s.
Question is... how did FUNimation make it through all that intact to grab all those titles and not suffer the same fates as those other companies that were all once VASTLY more successful? I mean, what did FUNimation even have at that time that was strong enough to weather those catastrophic several years aside from Dragon Ball? Gunslinger Girl? Burst Angel? Blue Gender? Kiddy Grade? Samurai 7? The Lupin III movies and specials? Detective Conan? Basilisk? Speed Grapher? Fruits Basket? Tenchi Muyo GXP? Kodocha? The Galaxy Railways? Peach Girl? Suzuka? Yeah, I think we all know that NONE of those were anywhere near big enough to hold up the entire company through a disaster such as that (even Lupin III and Detective Conan, as EXTRAORDINARILY beloved and popular as they are in Japan, are sadly nowhere near as well-known and popular here in America, certainly not in the mid 2000s).
They only had ONE license that was HUGELY popular enough to keep them steady, and that was Dragon Ball. Sure, they had Fullmetal Alchemist at the time, but that, as popular as it was and still is to this day, didn't PRINT FUCKING MONEY the way DB did. Dragon Ball wasn't just DVD and VHS sales, though those were quite strong (as terrible as they were, the Orange Bricks were still positively FLYING off shelves circa 2007-8), it was also toys. TOYS. LOOOTS OF TOYS. It was SEVERAL video games EVERY. SINGLE. YEAR. for EVERY major home AND handheld console in existence. I can't think of any other reason why FUNimation, with only at best twenty or thirty rather obscure titles to its name that all had next to no merchandising, could have survived when those other companies, which had FAR more experience in the field and had licenses to a WHOLE BUNCH of INCREDIBLY popular titles like Cowboy Bebop, Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Sailor Moon, Mobile Suit Gundam, Trigun, Hellsing, Bubblegum Crisis (the reboot, at least), Samurai Champloo, Wolf's Rain, Vision of Escaflowne, Guyver, Saiyuki, and so, SOOOO many more, went under.
I mean, look at one of the VERY few other companies that came through the crisis just fine: Viz. Yes, of course there's the fact that Viz, since the 90s if not before, has been BY FAR the biggest and most prolific licensor of manga in the states; that's obviously a HUGE part of the equation... but there's ALSO the fact that they had distribution rights to some INCREDIBLY popular, and most importantly, WIDELY marketed IPs at the time. Obviously... there's Pokémon. That alone had to have kept them totally stable, as it is THE highest grossing media franchise EVER, by a motherfucking country mile. But they also had rights to other WILDLY popular series like Naruto and Bleach that were still actively running at the time, and also had SOOOOOOOO much merchandising (toys, games, clothes, etc.), as well as stuff like InuYasha and Death Note, which weren't QUITE as heavily merchandised (InuYasha barely had any toys or games, and Death Note had practically none), but still huge sellers nonetheless.
What do you guys think? Am I missing anything in my history? Or am I just blatantly getting wrong basic business facts about what parts of these IPs and franchises the anime distribution companies actually got their money from? Lemme know!
