Changes are in the air once again as the old guard of domestic anime continues to move out of the picture. It’s now been revealed that MediaOCD, which does a lot of work across the anime industry since 2012 when founded by Justin Sevakis, who got his start way back with Central Park Media in the 1990s, has now acquired the video distribution business from AnimEigo. There don’t look to be a lot of changes, at least early on, with distribution continuing as it has though MVD Entertainment for the retail market while the various kickstarted projects will remain under the AnimEigo brand.
It looks like this is a slow-moving transition as AnimeEigo’s Robert Woodhead said it will be done over the next few years and that Woodhead will continue to oversee and manage the current and future Kickstarter projects, which is definitely one of the smarter things to do as Woodhead and his wife Ueki are “easing” into retirement.
AnimEigo has been central to why I became an anime fan in the 1990s when they began their releases of Kimagure Orange Road and Urusei Yatsura, showing fans that there was more than just what populated so much of the market then with (bad) video game anime and straightforward science-fiction action projects.
Hopefully, MediaOCD will maintain and utilize the AnimEigo label as something to denote quality for discerning anime fans for years to come. For fans like myself from this generation and before, it’s an expected sign of the continuing changes in the market and fandom itself.
