Thursday, September 27, 2007

Geneon USA closing shop

Geneon has basically announced that they're closing up shop. Speculation is rampant that they will become the de-facto equivalent of Kadokawa, US for their Dentsu parent company. Not much to add to any of that really, but this is a very sad day for the anime market. Geneon genuinely cared about creating quality productions. They were also willing to bring over a lot of series that no other licensor would have taken a chance on. While I think that this is true of each of the licensing companies to some extent, Geneon was my favorite because they combined good quality video and audio with a lot of my favorite dub work, faithful subtitles, and they frequently focused on animation that was intended for adults.
While I enjoy Bleach as much as the next man (unless the next man happens to prefer Naruto), and we can all tell that I like generic harem #458,398 more than the next man, my favorite anime shows have always been things like ROD the TV, Gankutsuou, and Paranoia Agent. To all of the employees of Geneon who will be affected by this move, my condolences. I hope you'll find new employment soon.