To America, where Robert Woodhead and Natsumi Ueki, owners of the fan favourite video label AnimEigo, announce that they are selling their company and retiring. This would usually be where fandom clutches its pearls in horror and starts bemoaning the fate of a good company snapped up by some conglomerate, but this time the buyer seems ideally suited.

Founded in 1988, AnimEigo were the people who first brought Urusei Yatsura, Bubblegum Crisis and Otaku no Video to the west, initially as a subs-only boutique distributor – their titles first made it to the UK under the aegis of their sub-licensee, Anime Projects.

Justin Sevakis, whose disc-mastering company Media OCD is responsible for many of the Blu-ray presentations that eventually show up in the UK, has offered to take AnimEigo off its owners’ hands, kiting it along for another generation. Somewhat appropriately, the story broke on Anime News Network, the website that Sevakis founded back in his student days, long since sold on to other owners. The deal was done some time ago, but the parties involved first wanted to do a grand tour of all the anime companies in Japan, introducing the new boss and pleading for the change in ownership not to shut down contracts that dealt specifically with Woodhead and Ueki, rather than whoever it was that would take over their company.

So, this is no leveraged buyout or corporate takeover. Instead, it’s two much-loved fans-turned-pro, gently handing their company over to another fan-turned-pro, and sticking around to ease the transition along.

Sevakis announces that he intends to continue the AnimEigo policy of crowd-sourcing bespoke collectors’ editions of niche titles. Woodhead and Ueki will guide him through to the completion of whatever projects they had underway at the time of the sale, but I suspect that once Sevakis is fully in charge, the acquisition of his own distributor is sure to tempt him with new prospects. If you suddenly found yourself with a Blu-ray label, what would your dream acquisitions be…?

Of course, it might also Turn Him to the Dark Side. Watch out for the sudden appearance of a Mirror-Universe goatee, and a sudden desire to dub everything with silly voices and swearing. I suspect, however, that AnimEigo is in safe hands, and this is one acquisition that fandom won’t decry as the worst evarrr.

Jonathan Clements is the author of Anime: A History. This article first appeared in NEO #239, 2024.