In early November 2014, it was announced that Jerome Mazandarani and long time colleague and friend Andrew Hewson would be leaving Manga Entertainment UK to establish their own company. The new project was in stealth mode for quite awhile, but news has just broke out that the new endeavor is called Animatsu.
Animatsu Entertainment Ltd, is a distribution and production company and will primarily be focusing it’s works towards Japanese anime films and TV series. They recently closed a UK licence deal with Sentai Filmworks to bring eight new animes to the UK, titles include; Blade And Soul, Comic Artist and His Assistants and Coffin Princess. Not only will they be distributing some well known series, but will also be developing original content.
On March 16th 2015, the very first title to be released is Halo: Nightfall the sequel to last year’s Halo: Forward Unto Dawn. This same series was also released for the Xbox one with the launch of the inclusive Halo: The Master Chief Collection. The film will be a joint collaboration between Animatsu and Anchor Bay Entertainment. All of which will be released on digital, DVD and Bluray.
Manga Entertainment has also agreed to go forward with an exclusive sales and marketing partnership with Animatsu, in which they will be providing key back end services which include sales and distribution, while the new company will take on marketing and brand managements for both companies.
Andrew Hewson says “We can’t exist without anime fans and in an age where there’s so much content readily available on so many different platforms, we have to cut through all of that and justify why people should invest in one of our titles. We’ll be handpicking and curating a collection that we hope fans will be proud to own.” We know you guys will bring a lot out for us and we look forward to it’s first launch along with further upcoming titles.
Thi Lathi Chao is a graduate from Vancouver Fine Arts College and reports for Good e-Reader on all of the latest anime and manga news. In her off hours, she is enamored with playing games, drawing and writing short stories.