The Old School Otaku Lounge

I was surprised to see this pop up on Twitter--apparently ADV's website has sort of come back online, with a weird fake "counter" thing on it? http://www.advfilms.com/

It looks vaguely official, though I suppose that it could've been easy for someone to snag the domain if it had expired and whip up something like this for an easy prank. Still....hmm. I wonder if it's legit or not. What do you guys think?

Maybe I'd rather they stay fragmented. I never cared for ADV. I've bought their stuff, but I never really liked them and particularly not their philosophy towards anime. I was sad when USMC went belly-up, but I couldn't care less to see ADV go away.

Personally, I'm on the other side of the fence. ADV handled distribution for a number of great anime titles and released numerous live-action giant monster films on VHS, and later DVD, that had been neglected any official release for years. Gamera: Guardian of the Universe (and the later films in the '90s series--all of which had amazing special features crammed into each disc), Destroy All Monsters, Daimajin, etc., were only a handful of titles. As for their anime licenses, like Evangelion, some DVDs had excellent bonus material (commentaries by the voice actors, promos...), at a time when features like that were scarce.

In truth, I'd rank ADV as one of my personal favorite distributors. Their Anime Network was great and they even published NewType USA, which was a far more impressive 'zine than Animerica, Anime Insider, and certainly Otaku USA. Out of the major companies that licensed and distributed anime in the US, I always felt ADV did more for the medium stateside than any other, with the exception of Funimation. Though, in a way, if ADV films is indeed coming back, it's not too surprising since they still exist in some capacity--Section23 is one of five companies that splintered off from them.

Maybe it's partly nostalgia, but I recall ADV's promo trailers to be some of the best. I remember seeing the Evangelion one on the Destroy All Monsters video tape and I immediately sought the show out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOhu6a9hUq4

I'm honestly only interested to see if they pop up with something like "Hey, remember the Eva TV series?? Well, we still own that & we're gonna release those Eva blu-rays that're coming out in Japan soon here in the US!" That might grab my attention.

ADV was one of my favorites too. They released a lot of small OVA titles that might otherwise never be released here, like Girl From Phantasia, Megami Paradise, and Dragon Half, amongst many others. They releases so many favorites for me, like Blue Seed and Golden Boy. I always loved their "Do It Now" promos, and I liked their voice actors as well. I would like to see them comeback if they release some of these old titles on BD, or start releasing old 90's anime again.

I didn't mind ADV Films. Their QC was generally good and they used good DVD authoring houses. A lot of their older DVDs actually still hold up well when I play them on my BD player, picture quality wise. I know Greg didn't like how they changed the title and end credits sometimes, but considering that Funimation does that AND MORE, ADV looks pretty good in comparison. Honestly, I would have preferred it if ADV was still the dominant anime distribution company instead of Funimation, whose DVDs and BDs are often full of artifacts and other problems. And Sentai Filmworks has basically NO quality control. Every single release of theirs usually has some sort of glitch or two, whether it be mis-timed subtitles or audio issues.

Animeigo doesn't do anime anymore (BGC blu rays aside) and I always felt that they were at their best during the VHS era, not the DVD era.

My favorite companies now are Discotek and Nozomi anyway, but the problem with those companies is that producing blu-rays regularly is still out of their price range.

llj wrote:I know Greg didn't like how they changed the title and end credits sometimes, but considering that Funimation does that AND MORE, ADV looks pretty good in comparison.

That's exactly it. I own a lot of ADV stuff and while they certainly loved anime, I just never got on board with exactly how they preferred to do things. Plus they ran themselves into the ground by focusing so much on Eva. Naturally it was their biggest seller from what I gather, maybe they'd still be around if they had not bothered with the idea of a live action Eva movie. They sure knew how to make even the crappier titles seem exciting, though.

As for Funimation, I can't think of anything of theirs that I own.

llj wrote:My favorite companies now are Discotek and Nozomi anyway

Me too! That's pretty much all I buy these days. It's not the result of some policy of mine; it's just that they're the only ones making stuff I want to buy anymore.