Urban Vision, Rhino Release DVDs
May 13, 2001
Retailers with customers nostalgic for the 1970s anime series that appeared on American television as Battle of the Planets or G-Force have plenty to look forward to this summer.
Ranma 1/2, Inu-Yasha More
May 12, 2001
Viz Comics is publishing English language editions of a series of anime art books that should prove to be an important product line for retailers who deal in anime and manga.
Anime-based Action Game
May 9, 2001
Atomoton, a new game company founded by Mark Rein-Hagen -- the creator of White Wolf's popular Vampire and Werewolf games--is set to release its first game this July.
Now Sort by Date or Relevance
May 9, 2001
'Adding the ability to sort search results by date, and making that the way our search results display first were the most requested improvements to the site since launch, so we listened,' said ICv2 President Milton Griepp.
Should Reach 50% of All Video Sales in 2001
May 7, 2001
Current trends indicate that consumers will spend some $6.2 billion dollars on DVD software this year, which is roughly half of the sell-through video total.
FTC Would Use Industry Guidelines
May 6, 2001
Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut has introduced a bill, 'The Media Marketing Accountability Act of 2001,' which has ramifications for several sectors of the pop culture marketplace.
Pokemon Packager Pursues Replacement
April 29, 2001
4 Kids Entertainment, the company that packaged Pokemon for the U.S. market has licensed Yu-Gi-Oh , the anime series/collectible card game that trumped Pokemon in Japan. A 27-episode television series and an accompanying collectible card game were hugely popular in Japan in 1998.
Top 10 Cool Lists for March
April 29, 2001
As more products became available in March stores reported positive sales trends to ICv2. In anime, DVDs took five of the ten spots including the first two, which were occupied by high ticket boxed and collector's set editions. Note that the videos in the top ten were all new releases from very popular series, Gundam Wing, Dragonball Z , and Martian Successor Nadesico.
Robot Series Primed for Toys
April 26, 2001
Nelvana, the Canadian-based company that packaged Cardcaptors for American (and Canadian) television, has just announced that its latest anime import, Medabot will appear this fall on the Fox Kids network Like Cardcaptors, the Medabot anime series comes from NAS/Kodansha, Japan's largest multi-media company. Nelvana has acquired worldwide distribution and merchandising rights.
Akira Merchandising and Marketing Weight Grows
April 26, 2001
AIA, a new game company, is preparing an Akira videogame for the Sony Playstation 2. The Akira game will be out in August, just a few weeks after the release of the remastered Akira video and DVD. Other Akira merchandise includes the McFarlane Toys second series of Anime toys, shipping in September, and the Dark Horse manga series.
