FUNimation representatives Amanda Nanawa, Adam Sheehan, Justin Rojas, Adam Zehner and their new manager of conventions, Sarah Sullivan, took the stage for their company while FUNi’s Lance Heiskell hung back and filmed the whole event. “Event” seems like a good word as FUNi had so much to say their wasn’t any time for Q&A. Every division of FUNimation had a lot to say.
They led off by thanking the fans for their help in bringing back Toonami, and took a moment to plug Deadman Wonderland and Casshern Sins. They then boasted about their simulcasts, and noted that a tablet application should hit by early August, and that they are also getting FUNimation apps on Samsung Blu-ray players and Roku media streamers. While they couldn’t provide much in the way of sunny news for Verizon TV subscribers who lost the FUNimation Channel this year, they provides some rays of hope, as AT&T U-Verse was at Anime Expo gauging interest in the network, and they hinted that the channel may come to some major cable systems in the falls. Additionally, more content will be pumped to Hulu, XBox and Playstation, and the linear will be adding live-action Japanese Films as well.
Then the social media side took center stage. Justin Rojas, head of FUNimation of Social Media presence noted that they’ve now started to do show-specific Facebook pages, and that you can now even buy FUNimation anime on Facebook. FUNi’s YouTube presence has be a big success, now boasting over 350,000 subscribers. Their Tumblr presence has also been a success with “bouncy” gifs from some of their fan-service titles proving to be very popular.
Then came a plethora of plugs and a few trailers for titles including Dragon Age, Tales of Vesperia, Hetalia’s final volume, Panty and Stocking, Fractale, One Piece Season 4 Part 1 and Collection 7, and Oblivion Island 3D They noted a lot of new anime classics and save titles were impending, including Texhnolyze, Armitage, Ergo Proxy and Ai Yori Yoshi.
They finally dropped their announcements to wrap the panel up. While FUNimation’s press release covers everything they dropped in detail, the big pick-ups are as follows:
Full Rights:
Appleseed XIII
Aria the Scarlet Ammo
Blood-C
Blood-C: The Last Dark
Eureka 7: Astral Ocean
Ikki Tousen – Great Guardians
Ikki Tousen – Xtreme Xecutor.
Jormungand
Michiko & Hatchin
Simulcast:
Aesthetica of a Rogue Hero
Binbougami Ga!
