When they were successful though there was a bit of a revolt within the company. Some of the top executives who helped build the company decided that they wanted to start their own company, and felt that they had learned how the anime industry worked to a point where they could compete in the market. The studio they formed was named Illumitoon Entertainment, and there was a lot of hope for the future of this company. Instead, it would go bankrupt less than a year later. How did they fail so miserably?
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What was the Goal Behind Illumitoon Entertainment?
Illumitoon Entertainment was founded by three former Funimation executives: Stephanie Giotes, Richard Ray, and Barry Watson, who served as the new company’s CEO, and was the most noteworthy of the executives as he was one of the founding members of Funimation. The company was based in Fort Worth, TX. These executives helped produce and market Dragon Ball Z for Funimation, so they were feeling very confident in their abilities to found their own anime company. The business model would be based on what was Dragon Ball Z’s most successful plan: they would air edited anime on TV and sell uncut DVDs on the home media market. They started with Beet the Vandal Buster and would license more shows afterward.
Poor Dubs and Defective Discs
Problems began almost immediately. Not content to start with one small show and go bigger later, they licensed Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo and worked on two consecutive dubs at the same time. Early interest in both shows by networks were non-existent, so the company decided to start releasing DVDs sooner rather than later. True to their word, the dubs contained re-written dialog, changes music, and small edits. Not only did these changes annoy fans of the shows, but a second (much bigger) problem also emerged: the use of dubtitles. For those unaware, dubtitles are subtitles that are based on the English script of a show, not on the translation of the original script.
Anime fans who watch subtitled shows hate the use of dubtitles, as they end up with an altered product one way or another and are denied seeing the ‘authentic’ version. To add insult to injury, many of the discs shipped defective, and simply didn’t work at all. Having to recall your first two DVD releases is an unfortunate (if not completely unexpected) problem to have, yet Illumitoon Entertainment promised that they would ship out replacement discs with the correct subtitles. Unfortunately for fans, the company was already strapped for cash, and sent replacement discs as DVD-R’s, which are cheap discs that people use to burn home videos on and are not known for their durability.
During this whole disc recall debacle Illumitoon Entertainment licensed three more anime: AM Driver, B’tX, and B’tX Neo. When TV networks didn’t show any interest in the previous two series (and they weren’t exactly selling very well on DVD due to the production issues), rather than slow down and refocus Illimitoon Entertainment decided to license more shows that they felt had franchise potential. Though a DVD of B’tX was released, it had similar issues to the previous DVDs (and shipped as a DVD-R right out of the gate).
Eventually, The Anime Network would eventually license B’tX and AM Driver (which means Illimitoon Entertainment was correct that there would be interest for these series), though only 14 episodes of each series had completed dubs. By this point the company had spent too much money on various anime series and recalled discs, so there was no more money to make complete dubs for these shows. With The Anime Network not willing to pay a higher fee for future dubbed episodes and DVD sales not doing well, the writing was on the wall.
Illumitoon Entertainment opened their doors in 2006. In late 2007 the rest of their DVDs were canceled due to lack of funds and the company quietly folded. No press release was given. Barry Watson retired after the failure of the company while the other executives left the anime industry and found new careers. The loss of the company was not exactly mourned, as the shows that were licensed weren’t beloved, and the DVDs were considered of poor quality. All of these anime would eventually be re-licensed by various other companies, however none of the titles were ever big sellers, and in retrospect they were probably poor acquisitions to base the founding of a Funimation rival on. Still, they tried to build something new, and few can fault them for that.
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