[OPLINLIST] To all librarians with anime clubs - regarding Funimation

[Grace E. Nuth]

Hello everyone!  This is my first Oplin message, but I have looked through digests and I believe the question has not yet been posed.

I have been running a teen anime club at our library for five years now.  The response is outstanding, and we have a good amount of teens attending every month.  However, the preparation for choosing an anime title each month is the most time-consuming aspect of the club.

Funimation, one of the primary distributors of anime in the U.S., (to give you an idea of how primary, they distribute 6 out of the top 10 current anime titles on Amazon) used to have a group called Operation Anime for all anime clubs.  Participating clubs could choose from a list of anime to request permission to show, and a screener disc would be provided.  Even if a club wanted to show a Funimation title that was not on the list of anime with screener discs available, they could still email Operation Anime to receive permission to show the anime of your choice.  When Funimation started sharing a good chunk of their anime portfolio on Hulu.com, it became even more easy to show to the teens...all we needed was an internet connection and a laptop to hook up to our projector.  I would then email Operation Anime to receive permission, and we were all set.

All this leads to a point...Funimation recently canceled their Operation Anime program.  They have decided to merge their public screening options with Swank Movie Licensing USA...a program I'm sure some of us have heard of.

Here's where it gets especially concerning.  When I contacted a representative from Funimation, he verified that even if I want to show the teens titles via Hulu.com, I'll still need to go through Movie Licensing USA.  But when I contacted Movie Licensing USA, they told me that they are still in the process of starting up the new program (which will require a separate yearly license purchase from their main movie licensing program) and thus far they only have permission to show 30-some titles, only 15 of which are anime, and half of the 15 are either sequels to earlier anime, or inappropriate for teens.  When my coworker Amy emailed to inquire further as to what sort of goals they had for when they might have more anime available, they said that they were hoping to have 100 titles available by February/March of next year.  They had no answer as to how many of those titles might be teen appropriate.

So.  Funimation has such a large chunk of the anime market, to lose permission to view their titles severely cripples our options in the anime club.  I find myself without a single option to show in the next few months of the club, and am in full-on panic mode.  I know that anime clubs are a pretty common thing for libraries, and so I know I can't be the only one in this boat.  So what is everyone else doing?  Are there any alternatives I haven't already considered?  I know that there are very few other companies that make it easy to contact them for permissions.  Right Stuf is easy to contact, but their available titles are rather limited.

I would love to hear from anyone with a teen or adult anime club what they have experienced regarding this crippling change.  Hopefully Movie Licensing USA can get licenses for Funimation titles swiftly, but what should we do in the mean time?

Thanks in response for any replies!
Grace Nuth
Emerson Miller Library
Newark, Ohio