Aniplex has basically declared war on the North American anime market

We all knew they were terrible before with their ridiculously overpriced North American "releases" (some of which were straight imports) through Aniplex of America.

Now they're yanking all their licenses back from North American publishers. It started with things like NISA losing Working! and FUNimation losing Darker Than Black. Now it's gotten much, much worse. Some of us saw this coming (I did) as soon as Darker Than Black was lost, but we didn't want to be right. We were.

FUNimation is losing Fullmetal Alchemist!

Yup! One of the series that pretty much defines FUNimation has been torn out of their hands. There is no way FUNimation wouldn't have fought tooth and nail to keep the license if they could have. Aniplex clearly doesn't want them to have it.

They said they still have FMA 2003, but that's just damage control. Note that FMA: Brotherhood's Hulu expiration date matches when they lose the license. FMA 2003 is next on that list, expiring at the end of July.

Glad I've never supported Aniplex aside from buying some of their titles that were licensed to non-Aniplex entities.

Someone's keeping track of the damage in this list.

Aniplex has never been terrible. They hire great studios to produce great dubs, and the goodies they include in their products are usually worth the purchase price (some exceptions, of course, like part 3 of SAOII which included a whopping 3 episodes because of how the story arcs are laid out, but part 4 included 9 or 10 instead.)

Yes, they are pricey, and I hate that some of their releases like Garden of Sinners and Persona are non-dubbed "imports" sold at exorbitant Japanese prices. There are also obvious problems like the fact that they generally don't re-release stuff. I want my fucking Baccano! blu-rays that I didn't know were released until it was too late, and there's no reason why the Blu-ray version of the Gurren Lagann movies shouldn't include Parallel Works... But their actual localizations are quality products at a steep, but reasonable price. They essentially succeeded where Bandai Visual failed in delivering high quality releases of their licenses.

It makes a lot of sense, honestly, and ANN's Answerman's had a couple different reponses about this recently. The only reason why anime companies like FUNi and Sentai exist today is because companies like Aniplex didn't self-publish. Now we're got them, Pony Canyon and Sunrise (in partnership with RightStuf) directly releasing stuff out here, and it doesn't make any sense why they would still have FUNi distribute their products.

Aniplex is just refusing to renew licenses with other publishers because it's their product in the first place. FUNimation owns nothing, when you dub a show, the owner of the product owns your dub, you just have a license to produce the western version of the product and sell it for mutual profit.

While I would prefer that FUNimation would keep publishing these titles as they are certainly more cost-effective, Aniplex is totally within their right to do this, please stop making this controversial.

Right. Got it. There are plenty of others elsewhere willing to pick up that pitchfork anyway. Opinions of Aniplex are... very polarized.

That said, the two FMA movies are in the mail and then I'm good. Those are the only two parts of the series I didn't get during the recent Holiday sales, and Aniplex can do whatever it wants now.

Sucks for everyone else tho.

I don't think there's anything wrong with complaining, but I feel that western fans are overreacting when they take the stance that they are personally being wronged by this.

Personally I just need to grab FMA and Mardock Scramble (I have the original Shambala LE DVD but I got rid of my 2003 DVDs a while ago,) then find some copies of Shinesman and Kikaider. Baccano! desperately needs a reprint though, I don't think it's even on eBay in New quality. I'm still deliberating on whether I should get Gurren Lagann on blu-ray or even bother with the movies because of what I mentioned above...I think the Bandai release is just lacking like 1 CD and the fancier box art of Aniplex's DVD set anyway.