Jordan Hill
2-11-17
Digital Media
1994 logo
One product enjoyed by the masses is anime. Anime in a short description is a Japanese made animation. The reason that American viewers can participate in the enjoyment of anime is because of the success of anime licensing companies like Funimation. Funimation is a well-known company for making a legal way for viewing new released anime in America possible. Like many companies, Funimation have gone through changes that has even included in a change of logo design since their discovery. It would be a good journey to learn of their story and progress over the years.
Like any good story it must have a beginning, and Funimation’s story begins on May 9, 1994. On that day Gen Fukunaga, a Japanese - born businessman, founded the company at the time to be known as Funimation productions. By convincing a family who owned an old feed mill in Texas, Fukunaga was able to make a starting ground for his company. “Fukunaga met with co-worker Daniel Cocanougher whose family owned a feed mill in Decatur, Texas and convinced Cocanougher's family to sell their business and serve as an investor for his company.” (Wiki.com) At first Funimation production s was created in Silicon Valley, but would son relocate to flower mound, Texas. There the company would collaborate with a few companies on getting Dragon Ball to American audiences for two straight years of failure, to obtain success on cartoon network in 1998. “They initially collaborated with other companies on Dragon Ball, such as BLT Productions, Ocean Studios, Pioneer and Saban Entertainment. By 1998, after two failed attempts to bring the Dragon Ball franchise to a U.S. audience, it finally found success on Cartoon Network's action-oriented programming block Toonami, and the Dragon Ball phenomenon quickly grew in the United States as it had elsewhere. This led Funimation to begin licensing other anime to the U.S.” With Funimation at an all time high it was a matter of time that it would be pursued by other companies trying to purchase it, and on May 11, 2005 Navarre Corporation did just that. “On May 11, 2005, Funimation was acquired by the now-defunct Navarre Corporation for US$100.4 million in cash and 1.8 million shares of Navarre stock.” This new change also caused the company name to be changed to Funimation entertainment.
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In 2007, with Navarre Corporation as the new owner Funimation had doubled in size and obtained a new location. “In 2007, Funimation moved from North Richland Hills, Texas to Flower Mound; the standalone Flower Mound facility has double the square footage of the space Funimation occupied previous North Richland Hills facility” With a new path paved for them, Funimation had began to acquire more assets to the company, aiding its growth. In the year 2008, Funimation Entertainment had obtained the rights to many geneon and sojitz titles, greatly increasing the amount of anime they were releasing in America. “Funimation confirmed that they had acquired distribution rights to several Geneon titles, including some that Geneon had left unfinished when they ceased operations. At Anime Expo 2008, Funimation announced that it had acquired over 30 titles from the Sojitz catalog that had previously been licensed by ADV Films.” Not only did they just take multiple titles from competition, but in 2009 Funimation would land a deal with Toei giving them the ability to stream a good chuck of titles on their website.“In 2009, Funimation signed a deal with Toei Animation to stream several of its anime titles online through the Funimation website, and Hulu.” Funimation had been at a major standing as they were increasing the aount of content they can releas.
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