Breaking News: ADV And Geneon Merger Over?

Readers, there is an update at the bottom of this post.

To The Anonymous Poster: We would love to hear more about this, but we don't really think that the comments are the best way for you to let us know exactly what is going on. We have an email address listed at the bottom of the page, but here it is in case you don't want to go looking: Moonchasers@NOSPAMPLZTHXgmail.com (remove the NOSPAMPLZTHX). We promise to keep you anonymous - and won't publish anything that you would rather us not post.

Hey Moonies: we are treating this current Breaking News Story as Rumor. Two weeks ago we brought to your attention late breaking news of a proposed merger between ADV and Geneon, two anime distributors who once held licenses for Sailor Moon. This morning, an anonymous poster to that article notified us that the deal was on hold. And just a few hours ago, ANN also broke the news. This sad news comes after the other disheartening news that as we (and others) predicted, Geneon laid off many employees, especially those in sales. Also of note is that an Editor of ANN has admitted that their source was also anonymous. We're not sure if our sources are the same , but we're still unsure whether to call this news legit or not. We also thought something was up when one of our members last week spotted some Geneon titles in a store going for a little cheaper than they usually do.

It's also way too early to speculate what this could mean for Sailor Moon. Geneon's North American distribution is up in the air at this moment. We really don't want to see Geneon pull out of the North American Market - especially like this. Especially when articles like this one come out and say that many of the Japanese companies are setting up shop in North America just to manage their releases of anime.

We apologize to fans for not reporting this earlier. All of our staff members are busy during the day with school and/or work so by the time we find out about these things it's late evening. But by those hours half of us are so insane that we have just enough energy to create graphics like the one above ;).

EDIT: (Posted @ 8:55 AM Friday, September 21st, 2007) This news is no longer a rumor. Dentsu (Geneon's Parent Company in Japan) released a statement confirming the news here, and ADV released a statement through ANN here. Dentsu states that Geneon has withdrawn from the deal, but they do not give any reason (neither does ADV). Dentsu goes on to say that some other companies, including trading giant Sojitz and the Development Bank of Japan, are going to be making investments in ADV through the Japan Contents Investment Business Limited Partnership, a special partnership that promotes the export of Japanese Animation Content. As of October 1st, Geneon will be involved only in managing their works. Their distribution is still up in the air, and now we're a little worried - who is going to release their series? We'll be hunting down our favorite Geneon titles in case we may never see them again.