4Kids Loses $21M, Licenses Anime
4Kids Entertainment announced its fourth quarter & full year results for 2009 earlier this month, & the bad news that has been plaguing the company for the last couple of years continued. As usual, it was pretty rough. 4Kids lost $21 million during the last part of 2009 when compared to the same time period in 2008. Most of that has to do with the poorer than expected results for their Chaotic franchise, which the company put a lot of faith & money behind when they launched it. This accounted for half their total losses for the year- $42 million, which is more than the $37 million they lost in 2008. The loss would've been even greater if the company hadn't sold their rights to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise to Nickelodeon for $6 million.
As a result, 4Kids' Al Kahn has promised to return to the business model that brought the company prominence & profitability- licensing more anime. Yup, after having gone three years without butchering licensing a title, 4Kids is returning to the anime game. Kahn was quoted as saying "We have decided that 4Kids needs to return to its roots as a licensing and merchandising company that specializes in bringing wonderful Japanese programming and merchandizing to the rest of the world." Mind you, this is after he was quoted as saying "Japan is over" & "manga was dying in Japan" & "TV anime was tired" back in 2007.
Shortly afterwords, 4Kids confirmed one new license, sort of confirmed another, & hinted that even more were on the way for the Fall 2010 season. The series they confirmed is actually a Japanese/Korean co-production work called "Tai Chi Chasers," a 39-episode fantasy series about card games & Asian mythology. The plot, according to 4Kids:
Tai Chi Chasers focuses on Rai, a young orphan, shocked to discover he's a secret descendent of the Tigeroids: an ancient race of peaceful beings locked in struggle with the ruthless and cunning Dragonoids. In a parallel universe called Suhn, the Tigeroids and Dragonoids are locked in an age-old race to recover 500 lost tai chi symbols. Whoever recovers these precious and potent symbols will possess the ultimate power to rule their realm…and destroy their enemies. Rai must now hone his innate tai chi card skills to fight the Dragonoids, find the lost symbols and battle to become one of the champion Tai Chi Chasers.
The characters seem to remind me of those from a certain other series. & the card element behind the show is obviously 4Kids trying to emulate their success with the Yu-Gi-Oh franchise. Speaking of which, the sorta confirmed license is that 4Kids actually has the 10th Anniversary Yu-Gi-Oh Movie! Really all Kahn said was that they were participating in a new 3D Yu-Gi-Oh movie, but I think we all know what that is referring to. Quite surprising considering they've basically given up on the franchise. Maybe they plan to show it in the US on our 10th Anniversary for Yu-Gi-Oh, which wont occur until next year.
Source: http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/17122.html