Naruto Licensed - How will this affect AMV source footage?

outlawed · Post by **outlawed** » Thu Apr 01, 2004 5:49 am

Below is the Reuters news article. How will this affect you Naruto AMV makers?

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NEW YORK (Reuters)
Japanese animation studio ADV Films defaulted on a ten million dollar loan Wednesday. The loan was secured last year to purchase the complete TV broadcast and home video rights to the hit Japanese animation Naruto. Industry insiders have predicted this program to be the next Dragonball Z in terms of market potential.

This is a crucial blow to ADV Films which was planning to launch their new cable anime channel nation-wide with Naruto as its key block of programming. Naruto has now become the property of a collection agency (name withheld), which states that bidding began almost immediately with ADV Films' competitors. The agency reports that 4Kids Entertainment will sign a deal later today and gain sole possession of the rights to Naruto within North America.

In an interesting turn of events, Funimation, the company that gained its market presence with Dragonball Z did not enter bidding for Naruto. President Gen Fukunaga stated, "We felt me wanted to move beyond programming which was created for an 8-12 year old target audience. Currently the children who grew up watching our releases of Dragonball Z have now matured and we would like to focus on more cutting edge entertainment. We also felt that the attempts to duplicate Dragonball Z's success would be limited considering the planned 1000 episodes that Naruto is scheduled to run through. Instead of re-treading old ground we would like to concentrate expanding into new markets. We especially see good returns in more girls animated programming given the current economic boom for girls manga."

4Kids Entertainment already has plans to run Naruto with Yugioh early next year. Representatives from 4Kids Entertainment have made the decision to cut some of the more violent content which is accepted and prevalent in animated children's programming in Japan but will not be allowable in the United States, especially considering the recent push from the FCC to clean up TV and radio programming. This move will lead to the removal of 3 key episodes which center on fights with a character called Gaara. 4Kids feels that the lost material can be easily covered using a narrative exposition at the beginning of following episodes. The biggest change 4Kids will make to Naruto is to adapt the program into more consumer-friendly marketing. 4Kids has stated that since Naruto is more of a comic-relief outlet for the show they would like to focus on the Sasuke character for merchandising of toys. Subsequently the show will be retitled to "Sasuke's Ninjas and Shinobis" to better reflect the marketing of the show's most important toy asset as well as emphasize that the show is about ninjas. Following this pattern, 4Kids hopes to enjoy the toy success that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles had back in the late 1980's and early 1990's.

4Kids Entertainment representatives have announced that once they acquire the rights to Naruto later today there are matters that will precede any work on preparing the American language version titled "Sasuke's Ninjas and Shinobis". 4Kids plans to take immediate legal action against three major piracy groups distributing Naruto using a peer-to-peer software called Bittorrent on the Internet. 4Kids has already stated that they have a list of people to present to law enforcement officials and have consulted with RIAA lawyers, who earlier this month subpoenaed peer to peer software users who were illegally distributing music, regarding prosecution of this type of case.

Org Profile · Post by **Otohiko** » Thu Apr 01, 2004 7:45 am

*sigh* just as long as they make it a decent DVD release, it'll probably be a good thing for source footage in the long run.

Heero_Yuy84 · Post by **Heero_Yuy84** » Thu Apr 01, 2004 8:15 am

Hmmm...you know, this seemed plausible...then I got to the part about 'Sasuke Ninjas and Shinobis'...

I smell an April Fool's gag

Org Profile · Post by **Otohiko** » Thu Apr 01, 2004 8:19 am

and to think...

bum · Post by **bum** » Thu Apr 01, 2004 8:29 am

so, at 5 eppisodes&$20(US)/dvd it would equal to about $300 for 15 dvd's . then again, who in hell has any idea when their gona stop releasing eppisodes

Declan_Vee · Post by **Declan_Vee** » Thu Apr 01, 2004 8:48 am

I'm doubtful ADV would want to that to themselves. Then again this is ADV. All-in-all I'd say this is just an april fools joke that wouldn't be all that out-of-place next to a Hellsing season 2 thread.

CliffD · Post by **CliffD** » Thu Apr 01, 2004 9:02 am

It IS a 4/1 joke. The person who posted this has been doing this sort of thing on the amv yahoogroups mailing list for years (Love Hina 'Menage-a-Trois?" Linkin Park going after DBZ AMV artists?)

outlawed · Post by **outlawed** » Thu Apr 01, 2004 2:59 pm

Maybe they will get a new OP song....like that one from that south park episode.... Let's Fighting Love.

Taisetsu na mono Protect my Balls.

Org Profile · Post by **Otohiko** » Thu Apr 01, 2004 3:07 pm

that song does have ninjas

and Balls would be a nice delineated reference to the shameless marketing of it to DB fans

J-0080 · Post by **J-0080** » Thu Apr 01, 2004 6:07 pm

Yeah, the title change tipped me off to.