ADV at A-kon

Among the announcements ADV made at their panel at the A-kon anime convention, in the new series department ADV has announced that they have acquired the rights to Devilman Lady, the 1998 television series entry of the Go Nagai franchise. Devilman Lady reportedly compares favorably to other Devilman series. [Editor’s note: directed by Toshihiro Hirano, director of the Vampire Miyu OAVs, Devilman Lady was very popular in the Japanese television ratings when it was originally broadcast.]

ADV Fansub releases are on hold for approval of bonus materials to be offered only to subscribers. Since some of them will require a subscription to the entire series, they want to get it all in order before shipping more tapes to give more people a chance at the extras. AD Vision hopes to have approval to put the offer up on their site this week. Once it is up, they will hold the second tapes, which are currently ready to go, for two weeks to give people time to jump on board. The third tapes should ship two weeks after that. The releases will follow an accelerated schedule to catch up to where they should be based on the original one-a-month plan. They also reiterated that ADV Fansub releases will not be on DVD until the dubs are complete. AD Vision is in negotiations now to bring both series, City Hunter and Nadia, to TV, which are being complicated by efforts to keep the content editing to a minimum. On the topic of TV, when asked about efforts to create an anime TV channel, ADV could neither confirm nor deny it, but said that if one were created, it would be unlikely to be on basic cable, and more likely be a satellite channel due to content issues.

In the Kenshin area, it was stated that the the Samurai X title was chosen to tie into the mainstream market. Sony will be marketing Rurouni Kenshin on TV, with the Samurai X title and ADV wanted to take advantage of Sony’s marketing machine by tying in with the dub. The sub packaging will be different and will have Japanese on the box to make it clear. The two title approach was difficult, but they wanted to both take advantage of the marketing opportunity and please existing fans.

The action movie Spriggan should be released theatrically this summer in wide release, covering all the major markets. It was stated that it should receive a wider run than Princess Mononoke did.

On the DVD front they are holding back the released of the second volume of Neon Genesis Evangelion to use feedback they are receiving from the first disc. They may go back to using subtitles, or perhaps a compromise with fewer digital editing overlays.

In regards to the upcoming ADV Music division, the anime soundtrack discs ADV will release will likely be less than $15.00 and nearly identical to the original Japanese releases.

Source: Anime on DVD