CPM appears to be gone
 

A sad day indeed, it looks like CPM is filing for bankruptcy.

Check animeondvd.com or animenewnetwork for a few sparse details.

They had Patlabor, Yami no Matsuei, Project Ako, Record of Lodoss War...and many other classics that fans in R1 got their start off of...myself included.

They had lamost finished a very spiffy re-release of VOTOMS..of which we are all still due waiting on the last volume +nice box for....nobody knows anythign yet on it or there other upcming releases...like a final uncut versions of the Yotoden OVA.

A sad day indeed.

That's really sad news.

They were the guys that brought us Shoujo Kakumei Utena, my favourite anime series. Despite the fact that their releases were usually subpar in regards to nowadays quality standards, their effort was still greatly appreciated.

Marvel filed for bankruptcy a decade ago...

But yeah, CPM is probably gone.

I never saw the Patlabor tv series(wanted to pick it up), but I LOVED the movies. How were they in comparison?

Guess I can get these for cheap now, no?

i think the prices will go up, at least for the new box sets that were released since the quantity production is probably low

I have the entire Patlabor show on VHS, I'll sell you cheap. :p
The shows are a little different from the movies, more humor for one thing, but they are pretty good I think.

(I bought it on VHS and now also bought the DVDs)

I have quite a bit of CPM stuff, they did sell some nice shows. Too bad they are out.

The rise of new and competitive producers like Manglobe tend to push these out.

Manglobe is an anime studio. Central Park Media is an anime distributor. No relation.

I suspect that the Musicland bankruptcy had something to do with it also.

They were also trying to survive by appealing to a niche market (classics), but the niche market wasn't enough to sustain them imo. I think that they are the new casualties of the current flood of anime and the increased cost of licensing new titles also. Since they didn't have many popular new releases, their presence in brick and mortar video stores was limited dealing them the ultimate death blow imo.

CPM didn't become a classics anime company by choice, but by circumstance....financial limitations. At least they were able to grab hardcore niche titles like Narutaru and Now and Then Here and There (both which I love). They also put independent producers in the spotlight like the creators of Negadon and Kakurenbo (methinks they would have also gotten other Comixwave creators like Makoto Shinkai if ADV didn't outcash them at the time). The ironic thing is that they were among the first to co-produce hardcore anime titles like MD Geist (which sucked, but it was a milestone at the time).
As a once-staple of Blockbuster VHS anime offerings, CPM titles will be missed.

Ah. Distro? I stand corrected. OoooooooOoo

Well, don't bury them yet. Look here, courtesy of Anime News Service and Anime News Network.

Yeah...that blurb gives some hope....but it still doesn't contain near enough info to understand what is happening in the future and with all of their properties.

Hopefully the picture will get clearer by tomorrow or something so I know how to adjust my R1 anime purchasing plans one way or another if I need to blitz all the titles they have left that I don't already have.

Somewhat related to being affected by Musicland, I wonder when anime companies (or more importantly, retailers) will get off the brand-management business model and adopt the publishing industry business model. I know nothing about either, so someone shedding light would help. Is it just me or why aren't booksellers complaining of declining shelf space like the DVD retailers?

I don't have retailer contacts, but book publishers are indeed complaining about shelf space limitations and policies at the major retailers. The demise of the independant book store has really hurt publishers of niche books and anything that doesn't easily sell to WalMart.

Am I the only who think this is expected because CPM has done a poor job on their release?

For all of my DVD, only Utena is relased by CPM and I am not pleased with their release even then. The quality is OK. The translation is off sometimes and most of time, it is just been cut or edited (censored?) too much. If the translation is not good enough, I don't care how much extra they pack in the DVD, not to mention the dub is poorer among most of the major anime dub distributors.

Maybe some other companies can re-make the shows previously licensed by CPM.

@guest: You're assuming that the other distributors would want to. Most classics do not bring in that much money nowadays. I always consider it to be a "labor of love" when classics are released by a distributor. Region 1 likes new, bright and shiny. Take SDF Macross for example. ADV brought that over and added a dub. A person in an "Ask John" question called it a "waste of time".

yeah, I know that but one can dream. :D

Still, I think if CPM had done a better job on their release, it might have been different.

I am currently re-watching my Patlabor on VHS as I do once a year. Without CPM I would not have gotten as badly hooked on anime (even with stuff like MD Geist :P ). So I will miss them greatly.

Cut? Censored? Are we talking about the same company?

How much of Utena do you own? There was a large gap in production after the first arc due to licensing issues, and the work on the following volumes was far superior to the previous work. Frankly, the Utena Movie DVD still stands out in my mind as a reference quality disc - Ikuhara-san, the original director, was flown in to personally oversee the translation and dubbing process, as well as to provide a newly-recorded commentary track. All this was in addition to a gorgeous video transfer (aside from a one-frame technical glitch that most people didn't notice) and providing the best audio available for the movie at the time (the R1 release predates the creation of the 5.1 remastered audio).

And any company with such a stellar release of Now And Then, Here And There (and Narutaru, though I haven't personally seen that one) can't -possibly- be faulted for censoring.

Live-Evil's old release of Utena was probably the only time EVER that I could say that a fansub (even based on a R2DVD source) looked better than the actual R1DVD. Because no matter how you slice it, 7 episodes per DVD is just too much.

To CPM's credit, their release of episode 14-39 (and the movie) were notably better and extremely appreciated. 8)

PS: BTW, according to ANN, CMP is still soliciting anime for August release. VOTOMS and Wrath of Ninja to be precise. It's probably a case of them having already finished work on these series, so I wouldn't be too optimistic. I doubt they'll be able to release anything else with a laid-off staff.

In the case of bankrupcy, aren't licensing deals generally nontransferable, ie. they cannot be sold / transfered to a debtor and instead revert back to nothing?

Also if the release is due in August, it could already be finished or mostly finished, essentially just waiting for it's scheduled release date.

The poor quality of the first two DVD collections amount to the fact that, at the time of their DVD release, it was very much a back catalogue title. The DVDs are little more than ports of the old work done for the original VHS release (thus the hardsubbed songs), to expand into what was then a new market. Thus, the high episode count collections with budget pricing.

I typically disqualify such releases as indicative of the company as a whole, since just about every company has done it to give some attention to their older properties. It just isn't a fair representation of a company's current work.

The rest of Utena, acquired much later, was treated as a brand new property.

When I think about R1 Utena, I was talking about mostly the translation. The quality is OK, that is, the images, audio, etc. It is the translation I found unstatisfied. They skip lines or change the meaning. Things like "I want to become a prince myself" becomes "I want to see him." This may be subtle but it is a signicficant part of the show because that is the entire concept right there. Utena does not just want to see her prince. She wants to become one herself. There are a lot more difference like this in the show. I care more about the originality in term of the show, instead of the "external" things, like good audio, good video quality,etc. That is just me.

Translation is not an exact science, and without more concrete backing (like a time reference for the exact line in question), it is really hard to believe such a major error would exist, especially in the later arcs. Are you certain you're not misinterpreting the line yourself?