The Robbers

This comes highly recommended by the quality Kaiju Shakedown, and the trailer certainly looks like it could be cool, so I'm interested.

some concerning trends/tidbits

Apparently FUNimation's share of the anime market is even bigger than I had thought:

The market share info, provided by FUNimation from VideoScan data, showed FUNImation at 32.7% in the first half of 2008. It’s worth noting that VideoScan numbers do not include Wal-Mart, which may sell as much as 30-40% of all anime in the U.S. If Wal-Mart were included, it’s likely that FUNImation's market share would be larger than the number provided here due to the company's significant presence in the country's largest retailer.

While I'm happy for FUNimation's success, I don't actually think that's a good thing. It would be much better to have several mid-sized companies than one big guy and then everyone else. For a wonderful example of how screwed up an industry can be when you have one company that's just orders of magnitude larger than everyone else, look at the hobby game industry.

I also worry that FUNimation will have a repeat of the ADV choking-on-their-own-success story. That's another danger when so much of the market hangs on one company - when it falters, everyone's start crying "ADVpocalypse!"


And then we also have the Big Guys from Hollywood still stepping in to kick some anime shit around:

Sony has acquired the U.S., Canada, Latin America, Australia, and New Zealand rights to Production I.G. anime feature The Sky Crawlers.

I suppose that's a bit dramatic, but I find it kind of annoying when a "real" studio steps in and licenses some anime.

Why? Because they don't really do anything special with it (it's not in more theateres or doesn't really get more exposure or anything) and they're a giant, impossible, pain-in-the-ass to work with to get screening permissions or do anything special with. They come with all the baggage of a giant studio with none of the benefits.