AD Vision Announcements from AnimeNEXT

At this past weekend’s AnimeNEXT convention, AD Vision revealed that it no longer has distribution rights to the Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch anime TV series. Research indicated that there was no potential of mainstream American television support for the program, and it was too expensive to license and distribute in America without massive mainstream exposure and success. So ADV has canceled its distribution agreement for the show.

AD Vision presently does not have distribution rights to Super GALS! episodes 27-52. ADV will tentatively only release Kaleidostar episodes 27-52 and acquire distribution rights to Super GALS! episodes 27-52 if the upcoming episode 1-26 sets for each title sell very well.

The “Ani-Mini” line of retail sampler DVDs is being phased out. Sampler discs will still be produced occasionally for promotional purposes.

AD Vision does not anticipate releasing titles on the UMD format, but will respond to market demand.

Gantz episodes 14-26 will be released on 4 discs with a 4/3/3/3 episode count. The “experimental” two episode per disc release format for episodes 1-13 reportedly had little impact on sales, but increased production costs.

According to AD Vision, less than a third of anime fans buy debut release single anime DVDs. Companies rely on those initial sales to finance production of the remainder of a series. In order to encourage initial disc sales, DVD supplemental features will be limited to individual disc releases. AD Vision re-released collected sets will not include bonus features.

Source: Anime News Network