Ask John: Why Aren’t the Marvel Anime on American DVD?

Question:
Why is America being denied the Marvel anime on DVD/BD? It seems like it would have an instant buying audience here, and yet it’s only available through G4 and Amazon streams. Could there be some home video rights issues, now that Disney owns Marvel? Or is it a reverse importation issue?

Answer:
At this point in time, I’m not prepared to concede that American consumers are being consciously or even practically “denied” the three Marvel Anime series on domestic home video. Certainly, they haven’t reached American DVD quite as quickly as 4C’s Thundercats animation went from American broadcast to DVD, but less than six months has passed since the G4 broadcast of the final episode of Blade. The first season of the Japanese animated 2011 Thundercats did reach American DVD only four months after broadcast premiere, but that turnover from broadcast to home video was unusually swift.

Reverse importation may be a concern, but considering that the Marvel Anime series haven’t threatened any Japanese sales records and the shows were produced with American release certainly in mind, reverse importation doesn’t seem like an especially likely explanation for a home video delay. The possibility of an American home video release was probably negotiated early in production, if not before Madhouse even began animating the four shows.

Licensing, particularly audio tracks, may be a concern, but again probably isn’t especially likely. Voice actors appearing in the show would almost certainly have contracted in advance regarding the distribution of their work in multiple channels, including TV broadcast, digital distribution, and home video.

The most likely explanation for the present absence of a DVD or Blu-ray release is a matter of practicality. Who’s going to release it? The G4 television network is own by NBC Universal. Streaming is simple because digital distribution requires minimal investment and places most of the onus on the streaming host rather than the title owner. A home video release requires far more logistics and resource investment. Presumably, either NBC Universal or Disney may presently own the domestic distribution rights or possess temporary domestic distribution exclusivity to the Wolverine, Iron Man, X-Men, and Blade anime series. Both companies are multi-billion dollar conglomerates that may deem a domestic DVD or Blu-ray release of these four anime series a relatively insignificant priority, especially given the limited exposure of the four series in the American viewer marketplace and the small size of the domestic anime market. An American DVD release of the Marvel Anime might be foreseen to sell 50,000 discs. A domestic anime specialty distributor like Viz, Funimation, or Sentai Filmworks would certainly be thrilled with that sort of sales success. However, the estimated sales of Marvel Anime on domestic disc, however many units that may be, may be a piddling amount to a distributor like NBC Universal or Disney that counts sales in millions, not thousands or even tens of thousands.

Given the massive variety of programming available on domestic DVD and the potential consumer interest from both anime fans and Marvel Comics fans, I don’t expect that we’ll go indefinitely without the Marvel Anime available on domestic disc. But we may have to wait until their domestic distributor gets around to them, or decides to sub-license them to another domestic home video distributor more eager and likely to rush the titles to DVD or Blu-ray production.