In more fun for ADV films, they have announced the discontinuation of 4 more titles: 5 Centimeters Per Second, Best Student Council, Innocent Venus, and Robotech.
ADV has not said whether they were also licensed by Sojitz like the 32 other titles that they lost or not, though I wouldn’t be surprised since it would seem to be odd for ADV to license these outside of Sojitz (except for perhaps 5 Centimeters).
This leaves Kurau: Phantom Memory as the only recent ADV release which it hasn’t lost or at least “discontinued” (Kurau was licensed 4 years ago just before it aired). However, somehow I don’t think that ADV will be able to keep running the business on the back of Kurau.
4 Comments
Wow I can’t believe they discontinue 5cm per second.
I actually bought the ADV release of it just to show support to Makoto Shinkai and ADV (for licensing a master piece)
I was pretty disappointed with the ADV 5cm per second release though. There was no limited edition. It was just a single DVD. If they invested more into the release, the sale would have been much better.
I am glad I have the HK region 3 limited edition that could match the Japan DVD release
Well, Five Centimeters was part of the ADV shut-down back in January and February, which I’ve always assumed had to deal with part of the Sojitz/ADV falling out. If that’s true, then this could just be another part of that whole issue for ADV.
However, ADV doesn’t seem to be talking about why they’ve discontinued these titles, at least yet, though if they don’t speak up about it before Otakon, I’m sure they’re going to be asked about it there.
If they decide to discontinue it, I hope they would give up/sale the distribution right for 5cm per second to another company. It would be shameful if 5cm per second can never been seen again here.
Maybe someone else can do a proper release. A North American Blu-ray release of 5cm per second would be nice. A good limited DVD edition would not be so bad either.
I would definitely agree with that. If this is part of the Sojitz thing, I’m surprised it didn’t go over to Funimation with the rest of them.
If this is a money-saving thing, then one would think they could get some cash by selling the rights to the movie to someone else.