With many businesses ending their fiscal year yesterday around the world, it’s no surprise that today is the day that changes are made in regards to structure. Anime Sols has posted to their site that they’re shuttering their business with the site going offline on May 1st, 2015. They’ll continue to stream their projects until then, but they’re in the process of finishing out their crowdfunded home video releases and then will be bringing the venture to a close.
“This week we have shipped out the final packages from Creamy Mami 3-4 and Black Jack 2 to supporters. As you may have noticed, Anime Sols has not added any new projects for quite a while, focusing only on completing the goods which had already been funded. It saddens me to say that animesols.com will be shutting down on May 1st, 2015. The videos will remain up until for the next month if you would like to watch them. Thanks to everyone who pledged!”
According to their Twitter feed, all personal information will be deleted as per Japanese privacy laws.
The company had three successful campaigns overall for its run with Black Jack, Dear Brother and Creamy Mami getting DVD releases through the crowdfunding process.
The attempt is one that when it got off the ground I, along with others, were enthusiastically supportive of. But with so many issues along the way, from a lack of awareness for the majority of fans to shows that are hard sells, DVD only, lack of advertising and a lack of communication for months at a time, it proved to be more than what the one man operation could be. Especially since it was its own site and not tied to a larger crowdfunding source with a lot of attention with other projects that could garner additional funding, but also because it was kept to just the North American region as well, which kept more folks from getting involved and being active participants to raise awareness.
