ADV:

We know there are a lot of rumors swirling about, and that fans are looking for assurances that ADV will continue to distribute the anime series they know and love.

While we can’t go into any detail at this time, please know that ADV is working through a few short-term challenges and fully intends to continue our releases.

We thank you for your patience.

So it’s basically sounding like what I increasingly suspect – something went funky with the licensing and that this isn’t a money matter (ie, ADV isn’t going out of business). As I suspected too, it’s also something they probably can’t talk about until whatever they’re doing is done, so I’ll be interested in what happened here.

At least ADV finally decided that things had gotten out of hand to a point that they felt like they had to say something.

Update

More from the Robert’s Anime Corner Blog:

I have heard what I deem as reliable information this morning that ADV is close to a solution to the licensing problems and that there is a very good level of confidence that their existing catalog will remain in-tact with nothing more than a few bumped street dates. I’ve been doing business with this guy for 10 years and he never bullshits me, so I think this is as good of information as we can get less than an official statement. I have verified this info through a couple other inside industry contacts and it jives. ADV will probably not be able to make any official statement though until everything is wrapped up which could be a few more days.

ICv2 reported this to Anime News Network:

The article on Sojitz and ADV you refer to was one of several contingency articles we prepared and posted on a staging site…. It’s unfortunate because as this is written, the article isn’t true. It may still be one of several possible outcomes of the current situation, but as far as we know today ADV has not sent a notice to its retailers or placed the titles in question on hiatus and may not, pending the outcome of events that are still unfolding. We regret that our efforts to prepare for any eventuality led to this draft article becoming public before it was published and have taken steps to prevent such an event from happening again.

So this muddies the water of what exactly is going on even more. ADV still declines to comment on the situation.

Yesterday, Anime News Network reported that several pages for many of ADV Film’s recently acquired series disappeared off of their website and store.

Apparently, also yesterday, ADV sent a press release to ICv2, which no longer appears on their website, but can be viewed using Google cache.

In it, ADV reported that 37 series were on “Indefinite Hiatus” due to ADV “suspending certain elements of its former alliance with ARM Corporation” which ADV used to license nearly all of it’s new shows since ADV started their partnership with Sojitz.

The titles in question were:

009-01, 5cm Per Second, Ah! My Goddess: Flights of Fancy, Air Gear, Air Movie and TV, Best Student Council, Blade of the Phantom Master, Comic Party Revolution, Coyote Ragtime, Devil May Cry, Ghost Train, Gurren Lagann, Guyver, Innocent Venus, Jinki: Extend, Kanon, King of Bandit Jing: 7th Heaven, Kurau Phantom Memory, Le Chevalier D’Eon, Magikano, Moeyo Ken TV Series, Moonlight Mile, Nerima Daikon Brothers, Pani Pani Dash!, Project Blue, Pumpkin Scissors, Red Garden, Synethesia, The Wallflower, Tokyo Majin, UFO Princess Valkyrie – Third and Fourth Seasons, Utawarerumono, Venus vs. Virus, Welcome to the NHK, and Xenosaga.

ADV Films still continues to refuse to comment, according to ANN.

However, before people start panicking, Robert from the Anime Corner Store had this to say on the ANN forums:

The letter was NOT sent to retailers. It was pulled at the last minute. The pulled article on ICV2 reflects the bleak situation as of last Friday, but things have changed since then and I’m sure ADV was hoping they could rectify the situation before too much of this became public and caused a panic.

Obviously it is impossible to know what this means for these licenses until ADV decides to speak, and perhaps not even they know the answer to that question. Hopefully the totality of these statements suggest that it looked like titles were going to have to wait, but maybe that isn’t the case anymore. ADV may not talk until whatever dealings they need to do are finished.

In any case, the only thing we can do is wait for official word from ADV before we know anything for certain. Unfortunately they’re keeping quiet for the time being.