Funimation Entertainment

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Funimation Entertainment

Type	Private (subsidiary of Navarre Corporation)
Genre	Anime, Japanese films
Founded	Fort Worth, Texas, U.S. (1994)
Founder	Gen Fukunaga
Headquarters	Flower Mound, Texas, United States
Key people	Gen Fukunaga CEO
Industry	multimedia entertainment
Website	http://funimation.com

Funimation Entertainment (previously known as Funimation Productions, and usually stylized as FUNimation) is an American entertainment company. Originally founded in 1994 by Gen Fukunaga, the company became a subsidiary of Navarre Corporation on May 11, 2005. Funimation company produces, markets, and distributes anime and other entertainment properties in the United States and international markets. Funimation is currently headquartered in Flower Mound, Texas.^[1]

1 History
- 1.1 Reaction to fansubbing
2 Foreign distribution
3 Funimation Channel
4 References
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] History

Funimation was founded in 1994 in Fort Worth, Texas, by Gen Fukunaga.^[2] The company rose to prominence by acquiring the rights to the popular anime title Dragon Ball Z (1999-2003), its prequel series Dragon Ball (2001-2003) and its sequel series Dragon Ball GT (2003-2006). By 1999, 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 canceled, before the series and the company found success on Cartoon Network.

On May 11, 2005, Funimation was acquired by Navarre Corporation for US$100.4 million in cash and 1.8 million shares of Navarre stock. As part of the acquisition, the president Fukunaga was retained as head of the company, transitioning to the position of CEO, and the company's name was changed from Funimation Productions to Funimation Entertainment.^[3]^[4]

According to an interview in February 2008 with Navarre Corporation CEO Cary Deacon, Funimation is in early stage negotiations to acquire some of the titles licensed through Geneon's USA division, which ceased operations in December 2007.^[5]

[edit] Reaction to fansubbing

In 2005, Funimation's legal department began to pursue a more aggressive approach toward protecting their licensed properties, and started sending "cease and desist" (C&D) letters to sites offering links to fansubs of their titles. This move was similar to that taken by ADV Films several years before with several of the major torrent sites.

Funimation's legal department served C&D letters for series that had not yet been advertised or announced as licensed, including Tsubasa Chronicle, Black Cat (manga), and Solty Rei, with a few known series also mentioned in the letter^[6]. Funimation repeated this method of "announcing license via Cease and Desist" letters on 2006-10-06 when it sent letters to torrent sites demanding that distribution of xxxHolic's TV series, Mushishi, Ragnarok the Animation and other series cease. ^[7]

[edit] Foreign distribution

Funimation does not directly release its properties in non-U.S. (English language-speaking) markets, instead sublicensing to other companies such as Revelation films in the United Kingdom and Madman Entertainment in Australia.

Towards the end of 2005, Fullmetal Alchemist (along with Beez Entertainment's Wolf's Rain) became one of the flagship programs on the relaunch of satellite channel Rapture TV and had only one edit, that of changing the opening to "Ready, Steady, Go!!" (the second opening), instead of the few minor edits the show received for its Adult Swim airings. Yu Yu Hakusho has also been acquired for television broadcast in the UK. However, it has not been announced who has picked it up and who the intended audience is.

[edit] Funimation Channel

Main article: Funimation Channel

Funimation has launched the "Funimation Channel", the second 24 hour anime digital cable network in North America, (the first being A.D. Vision's The Anime Network) OlympuSAT is the exclusive distributor and the Funimation Channel is now available to video service providers. On May 1st, 2008 however Funimation pulled all their programing from Colours TV effectively canceling the Funimation Channel. Funimation has yet to give a reason for the cancellation.