Section23 Anime Company

Company Overview

• Company Founded: 2009
• Website: section23films.com
• Info last updated: 2010-04-28

Section23 is essentially the anime releasing division of the former ADV Films conglomerate spun out into its own company and rebranded (technically, ADV sold all its licenses and materials to Section23, which also hired most of the old staff, but this was in effect selling part of the company to itself). As a result is has a massive catalog and reach despite being a "brand-new" company. The company still has connections to the other spun-off ADV divisions, and also distributes anime licensed by Sentai Filmworks, which had a relatively close relationship with ADV prior to the rebranding.

Though the transition was essentially transparent to customers and distributors (the only functional difference was the logo on the box), they've been slow to ramp up a public face--well into 2010 their website isn't even up yet.

Their Catalog

Section23 has ADV's entire catalog as of the time of their shutdown, which is to say it has a massively wide and deep cross-section of anime history. While the lean is toward big-name TV series and high-budget OVAs, they have at least a little of more or less everything from old-time favorites to modern hits.

The centerpiece of their catalog is almost certainly the perennially popular Neon Genesis Evangelion TV series, but there are many classics of every genre as well, from Gunnm to Excel Saga.

ADV, and thus Section23, also has an unusually large collection of cut-short-after-two-episodes OVA series. Their predecessor was, historically, pretty good about keeping things in print, so that will presumably continue; an exception is the original two Sol Bianca OVAs, which have yet to see a DVD release.

What Their Releases Are Like

Section23's DVDs, since they only comprise the later parts of ADV's catalog, currently is of almost uniformly high quality. The exception are some of their older dubs, which took significant liberties with both character and story details. they do, however, release some shows with less mass-market potential as subtitled-only.

They're good about extras as well, although if they carry on with past history they usually release TV series one disc at a time, followed almost immediately by a drastically cheaper box set of exactly the same discs in a shelf-space-friendly box. They may also carry on with the pattern of periodically re-releasing older titles with additional special features.

ADV was active in the video-on-demand and streaming arenas, something Section23 will, presumably, also continue. They haven't, however, released any blu-ray discs as of mid-2010.