FUNimation

From Freepedia

FUNimation Entertainment
Image:HeadrL3.gif
Type A wholly owned subsidary of Navarre Corporation
Founded Early 1990s
Location Fort Worth
Key people Gen Fukunaga
Industry TV Industry
Products anime and other entertainment properties
Revenue
Employees {{{num_employees}}}
Website http://www.funimation.com

FUNimation Entertainment (previously known as FUNimation Productions) is a company formed by Gen Fukunaga in the early 1990s to produce, merchandise and distribute anime and other entertainment properties in the United States and International markets. It is now a wholly owned subsidary of Navarre Corporation. FUNimation is headquartered in North Richland Hills, Texas, near Fort Worth, occupying one and a half floors of a four story office building.

Contents

FUNimation's first blockbuster property

FUNimation rose to prominence by acquiring the rights to the popular anime title Dragon Ball (licensed between 2000-2001), Dragon Ball Z (licensed in the early 1990s) and Dragonball GT (licensed between 2003-2004). By 1998, they were able to get widespread television exposure via Cartoon Network and the Dragon Ball phenomenon quickly grew in the United States as it had elsewhere. (Two previous attempts by FUNimation to release Dragon Ball to network television had previously been cancelled, before the series and the company found success on Cartoon Network.)

Other properties licensed by FUNimation

FUNimation is a full service brand management company. Other properties include:

*Geneon has the rights to the other Tenchi Muyo! properties and the second Lupin III TV series (FUNimation only has the rights to the Lupin movies).
**FUNimation only has the rights to the Yu Yu Hakusho TV Series.

FUNimation | 4Kids distribution agreement

In addition, they also provide distribution services for 4Kids Entertainment, who produced the American version of the anime titles Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Kirby: Right Back at Ya!, One Piece, and Shaman King.

Navarre acquisition

On May 11th, 2005, FUNimation was acquired by Navarre Corporation and is now a subsidary business unit. In Navarre Corporation's press release regarding FUNImation, it revealed that FUNimation has shows airing not only on Cartoon Network but also Disney Channel, Nickelodeon, and PBS Kids and that FUNimation has "third-party marketing, sales and distribution agreements with ... 4Kids Entertainment Inc., Nelvana, Alliance Atlantis, Chorion, WGBH, Cookie Jar Group, Porchlight Entertainment and Mainframe Entertainment" and that "Since January 1, 2005, FUNimation has signed product license agreements including Noddy, Winx, Akira Kurosawa’s Samurai 7, My Dad the Rock Star, and a co-production agreement with sports icon Tony Hawk."

Disribution of properties to non-American markets

FUNimation does not produce import DVDs for non-American (English-speaking) markets and instead sublicense their shows to other companies, primarily MVM Entertainment for the United Kingdom and Madman Entertainment for Austrialia.

MVM Entertainment, however, has had little to no success in getting any of their properties (or FUNimation's) on British television. One example of this was MVM's attempts to sell Yu Yu Hakusho to BBC and ITV for their children's programming. The company ignored the fact that even the TV-7 edit had several things that hadn't shown on CBBC or CITV since the days of Reboot. It failed and lead to the DVD production being halted for over a year. As such, MVM Entertainment has come under heavy criticism from the British fanbase, often to the point where it's suggested that any show that is sublicensed by the company has a death wish in regards to its chances of airing on British television.

To date, MVM Entertainment has only been able to get one show on air that wasn't aired before their acquisition of that series: Blue Gender on the UK version of the Sci-Fi Channel.

As of AyaCon2005, MVM has announced it's intentions of geting Yu Yu Hakusho on TV and also geting Fullmetal Alchemist aired aswell.

Also, MVM Entertainment has now started to sublicense from Madman Entertainment, using their DVDs as the base for their own DVD releases and this, along with other factors (including not securing the rights to the uncut version of Sailor Moon and its sequel, Sailor Moon R, along with any version of Sailor Moon S, SS or Sailor Stars) has not helped their position with fans.

However, the Dragon Ball series is licensed to a different company in Canada and the European mainland, which means that FUNimation's dub is not used in these contries and instead is dubbed by Ocean Group, retaining many of the voices that worked on the first two series of Dragonball Z including Scott McNeil as Piccolo and Brian Drummond as Vegeta, or its sister group, Blue Water Studios in the case of Dragonball and Dragonball GT.

In the instance of the Dragonball Movies, a Norwegian company, Bridge, produced the dubs for the movies in the UK. These dubs often deviate greatly from the source material, including changing the chracters' names. For example, Piccolo is called "Big Green", the Saiyan race is refered to as "Super Warriors" and "Super Saiya" (the dub alternates between the two) and the Dragonballs themselves are referred to as "Crystal Balls.". British Dragonball fans were also disappointed with the quality of the dub as well as Toonami UK's decision to air these dubs despite there being a FUNimation (or in the case of Dead Zone, Geneon*) dub of better quality being available for at least a year for each movie.

*FUNimation has since redubbed this title

FUNimation Channel

FUNimation has launched the "FUNimation Channel", the second 24-hr anime digital cable network in North America (the first being ADV's The Anime Network). The website for the channel will go live within a few weeks. OlympuSAT is the exclusive distributor and the FUNimation Channel is now available to video service providers throughout the United States. You can find the press release here.

External link

Retrieved from "http://en.freepedia.org/FUNimation.html"


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