The most pleasurable part of my trip to Anime Expo today was the FUNimation Industry panel.  Adam Sheenan, Brand/Events Manager at FUNimation and ever-present representative of FUNi at various cons, led the panel with FUNimation CEO Gen Fukunaga coming in at the end for questions.  Fukunaga rarely does panels so it was a treat to see him.

The large convention room where the panel was held was packed, and the fans were genuinely excited about everything. When they got to the Q&A session, quite a few people made it a point to thank Fukunaga-san for the great work before they asked their questions. But more on the Q&A later.

Adam started off with a big slide that said “Don’t Panic!”, referring to the recent shake ups and bad news in the anime industry. FUNimation fully plans to keep rockin’ and leading the way in anime for the U.S.

They started off with a good amount of news about current/upcoming DVD and video-on-demand releases. Aquarion and Witchblade are on iTunes now, dubs only because subtitles are hard to read on the small ipod/iPhone screens. Ouran High School Host Club is set to come out October 28th, but the new news that made lots of fans squeal was that part two has a release date now: January 6th. People in the audience were seriously stoked about that, I didn’t know it was that popular.

Other DVD news included talk about the Dragon Ball Z discs, including Blu-Ray which Adam says really does look amazing. He also talked a lot about the “marathon” viewing mode on the DVDs that allows you to skip all the intro and outros and recap portions at the beginning of each episode. If you want to watch the entire DVD in one sitting, in marathon mode you’ll see 1 intro, the whole series of episodes (no recaps ala “LAST TIME ON DRAGON BALL Z”), and 1 outro.

Then we got to the news on the new acquisitions. As I wrote in my Good News: FUNimation picks up where Geneon left off post, FUNi is taking on the task of distributing many series that Geneon left hanging here in the U.S. Fukunaga clarified the nature of the deal, saying that Geneon will continue to actually develop (dub, translate, and package) the series while FUNi does the distro and marketing. So don’t worry about any inconsistencies in the upcoming DVDs from FUNImation, it’s still Geneon doing the same work behind the scenes.

They also talked about the titles they’ve gotten from the recently announced deal with Sojitz, where they get 30 new titles to play with. These include Air Gear, Devil May Cry, and Le Chevalier D’Eon. The fans in the room were giddy.

Fukunaga headed up some really informed and on point questions in the Q&A session (i give mad respect to the anime fans, they know their stuff). One of the questions brought up why One Piece isn’t on Cartoon Network anymore. Fukunaga explained that CN didn’t feel that the show progressed quickly enough to capture the American fan’s interest, but then he also said that Cartoon Network is looking to reduce the number of anime they show anyway. This evoked a round of boos from the crowd, and it kind of surprised me. You’d think that with the wild success of Naruto they’d be looking to add MORE anime, but who knows what their logic is.

Another fan brought up the Big Windup series that FUNimation has licensed. I wasn’t really in the loop on this one, but Fukunaga and Sheenan really spoke highly of it so I checked it out. It’s a series about high school baseball, and it’s something different from what they usually do. It’s a big hit in Japan apparently (no surprise considering that country’s love affair with baseball), and they’re looking to release it next year around baseball season.

Overall, the message of this panel was “FUNimation is kicking ass and taking names.” Gen Fukunaga has been called the most influential man in North American anime, and it’s clear why. They’re doing great work. Adam Sheenan is a great presenter, and his slide show was fun. Kudos to him and Gen for a great panel.

Technorati Tags: FUNimation, Gen Fukunaga, Adam Sheenan, Anime Expo 2008, anime, geneon, sojitz

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