Grave of the Anime Companies: Central Park Media Files for Bankruptcy
Anime and manga distributor Central Park Media filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy last Friday, which means that the company does not plan to restructure and its assets will be liquidated. CPM put out such classic anime as “Revolutionary Girl Utena,” “Project A-Ko,” “Demon City Shinjuku” and “Grave of the Fireflies.” They also published yaoi manga under the Be Beautiful imprint as well as assorted shojo and shonen titles. However, they hadn’t issued any new releases in a year.
This news comes less than two years after the collapse of Geneon USA. Apparently, CPM won’t comment on how they got to this unfortunate pass, although they’ve obviously been struggling for some time. Of course, times are tough in publishing, and the bottom’s dropping out of the manga market in Japan. Geneon also cited illegal downloading as a factor in their troubles, and I’m wondering what role that played in CPM’s demise.
It’s sort of ironic, really. Fan subs and scanlations helped build the manga and anime industry in the U.S., and now they’re probably helping to tear it down.
Amy Goldschlager is an editor at findingDulcinea, the Librarian of the Internet, and SweetSearch, the smarter search engine.
