Geneon USA, Inc. - My Two Cents
Well, with the entire American anime market in a tumultuous chaotic state over the very sudden press release by Geneon USA, Inc. regarding their immediately ceasing DVD production and distribution, speculation seems to be running wild. Everyone and their dog thinks they know what happened, and I'm really surprised by a couple of things people are saying. The first is that the blame is the fault of Dentsu (the Japanese company that owns Geneon USA; source here). The second is the belief by many that another company in the US will just "rescue" the licenses to series which are now going to be abandoned midstream (don't people understand how complex licensing is?).
Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty upset about it myself; I mean, even if someone else does eventually pick up the series that are being dropped in the middle, they will either have to start over, or the DVDs released for the end of the series will not match the earlier ones (for long-running shows, such as Kyou Kara Maoh!, this will really be the suck). That could also take years. I doubt many people remember the original US release of Gainax's Fushigi no Umi no Nadia, which got a whopping eight episodes out before the company releasing it went belly-up. Sure, you can pick up that series now by ADVision, but it was pushing ten years between the releases there! Yeah, I know that was an extreme case, and that the anime world is different now than it was then, but it's still an interesting bit of trivia. I'd say the turnaround time for the remainder of series to be released would be at least a year (from now, assuming that another company was able to license the series as soon as it became available from the Japanese studio again).
My advice to distraught and/or disgruntled people: be glad that the series which were dropped midstream were all completely digisubbed; at least, you can see what happens, even if you can't get nice DVDs with professional subtitling (or dubbing, for those that prefer it). My second piece of advice: pick up any Pioneer / Geneon DVDs you were waiting to get before too long, as they're definitely not going to be on the market forever anymore. Sure, there are still scads of copies of most of them out there, but certain titles especially are going to become much harder to find once the remaining stock sells out (low-pressed and/or single-pressed titles come to mind).
Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty upset about it myself; I mean, even if someone else does eventually pick up the series that are being dropped in the middle, they will either have to start over, or the DVDs released for the end of the series will not match the earlier ones (for long-running shows, such as Kyou Kara Maoh!, this will really be the suck). That could also take years. I doubt many people remember the original US release of Gainax's Fushigi no Umi no Nadia, which got a whopping eight episodes out before the company releasing it went belly-up. Sure, you can pick up that series now by ADVision, but it was pushing ten years between the releases there! Yeah, I know that was an extreme case, and that the anime world is different now than it was then, but it's still an interesting bit of trivia. I'd say the turnaround time for the remainder of series to be released would be at least a year (from now, assuming that another company was able to license the series as soon as it became available from the Japanese studio again).
My advice to distraught and/or disgruntled people: be glad that the series which were dropped midstream were all completely digisubbed; at least, you can see what happens, even if you can't get nice DVDs with professional subtitling (or dubbing, for those that prefer it). My second piece of advice: pick up any Pioneer / Geneon DVDs you were waiting to get before too long, as they're definitely not going to be on the market forever anymore. Sure, there are still scads of copies of most of them out there, but certain titles especially are going to become much harder to find once the remaining stock sells out (low-pressed and/or single-pressed titles come to mind).