4Kids has had their earnings call recently and Seeking Alpha has the transcript, which came to light via Anime News Network. The call talks a lot about how the company has lost a lot during the 4th Quarter 2009 period, more than they did the year before, and attribute it to lessening returns from international broadcasters the deal with for their shows as well as the underperforming Chaotic series that they've been using as their primary title during the period. Bruce Foster of 4Kids talks a bit about how accounting practices are what's to blame for it with differences in how one of their domestic broadcasters, CW, does things. For those that are intrigued by the way such losses are explained, it's certainly worth reading. Especially in reading some of the honest admittance about how Chaotic essentially was a Very Bad Choice when Al Khan gets on board to talk.
What will concern anime fans is that Khan wants to bring 4Kids back to what made the company so successful over it's twenty year run prior to Chaotic by going after anime:
"The business reverses in the past few years have caused 4Kids to basically return to the very successfully business model that was used for 20 years prior to the launch of Chaotic. We have decided that 4Kids needs to return to its roots as a licensing and merchandising company and specializes in bringing wonderful Japanese programming and merchandizing to the rest of the world and to toy driven successes that we have currently been known for, and in building up for-site licensing on non-toy, non-kid licensing entity.
As parcels [ph] return to basics business model, we’ll be doing very little of any costly original production of animated series, for the license broadcast and merchandise rights to successful already produced Japanese content. If the content is not already dubbed into English, we’ll then adapt the episodes into English. Since the rights fees and adaptation costs in these original produced animated television series are far below the cost of original production, we feel that our overall risk reward ratio is much more favorable.
Over the last months – last actual year and half, I’ve spend much time with our Japanese partners and in Japan and Hong Kong formulating as we turn to the model that made us one of the most successful and fastest growing licensing and – basically companies in the United States"
What will make anime fans cringe even more?
"We signed yesterday a very important Japanese property that we will be announcing in the next couple of days that we will be handled under our for-site licensing unit. We expect to have received several on this toy office on some of new properties, we expect to rely on [ph] based on these new properties to come out both in 2011 and 2012."
Which title do you think 4Kids has picked up and do you think they learned the right lessons after several years ago and will do less editing and uncut home video releases? Will FUNimation try to partner up with them again by offering to do their home video releases?
Well, they're not going to say: "We snagged a mediocre title." As to which model they're talking about, it could be read as the conclusion of a sentence explaining why they're focusing on taking existing properties and adapting them, or, of course, taking existing titles, mutilating and dumbing them down more than humanly possible.
Still, here's something that's good for both a laugh and a shiver: a "What if...?" re-imagination of properties if 4Kids had gotten them. Evangelion?
A while ago: Sankaku Complex noted that there are two types of anime fans, the hobbyists and the hardliners. And while the hardliners are certainly the LOUDEST, it usually doesn't mean that a larger amount of money can be made (outside of Asia). Or else companies like FUNi wouldn't belly-ache (off the record) about how much money they don't have.
Yes, I don't like 4Kids either. And I don't agree with the lot of the slashing and editing companies like them do to put some anime show on TV. I still cringe with YuGiOh's edit where Seto Kaiba had two suited goons point (the guns that had been edited out) at him. I still think YuGiOh's a cool show, by the way.
But I'll give 4Kids credit where credit is due; for their perseverance and their ability to go beyond the small group of "overgrown open-mouthed birds" which make up pro-moe, anti-shounen otaku-base.
I would love to see Funimation partner up with 4Kids again, but most likely i would love it even more if they released Yu-Gi-Oh and 5D's on DVD also Yu-Gi-Oh The Complete 4th Season (Favorite season)
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This could be a very good thing as long as 4kids snag the right titles- It will be very difficult to do though with funimation now being the #1 company in anime right now. Still this looks hopefull for both parties involved- as far as the liscense I really have no idea but it will be interesting to see what they managed to snag