The year is 2000. The new millennium has officially started. Y2K has come and gone with minimal problems.Funimationis riding high on the success ofDragon Ball Zon Toonami. The small production company based in Texas had struggled for years at this point to become profitable, and now they were basking in their success. Their CEO Gen Fukunaga is not impressed though. While he is happy that his hard work is finally paying off, he knows that the company is coming close to becoming a one-hit-wonder. Plans to redubDragon Ballare underway and the studio will soon start work onDragon Ball GTonceDragon Ball Zcomes to an end.
But then what? What is Funimation’s path forward? Fukunaga decides that Funimation must expand and become a serious anime company. He comes up with a plan: the company can continue to acquire shows that would be great for TV while also releasing titles direct to home media. In short, Gen Fukunaga wanted to take Funimation and transform it from being ‘the DBZ company’ and turn it into one of the biggest anime companies in America. And he had his sight on two titles.
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Yu Yu Hakusho is a Likely TV Successor to Dragon Ball Z
While Funimation made their plans of acquiring more anime known late in 2000, fans would have to wait months to find out what they were going to release. They would soon discover that Funimation would continue their relationship with Cartoon Network when they announced that they had acquired the rights toYu Yu Hakusho. The show was a fighting series in the same vein ofDragon Ball Z, but with a supernatural twist. It was a logical next step for the company to continue its dominance on TV.
The series was also announced to be coming to Cartoon Network’s upcoming adultprogramming block Adult Swim. This would be a block where animation and anime could air with fewer edits than they would have to on Toonami, andYu Yu Hakushowas a prime program to help launch the block and transition Toonami viewers over to the more mature programming. Though the announcement made sense, Funimation had a second announcement coming in a few days to prove that they weren’t going to keep dubbing the same old types of content.
The DVD Market Requires Something More Prestige
WhileYu Yu Hakushomade sense to acquire, it also painted Funimation as a studio that would only acquire anime that had franchise potential (and could be aired on Cartoon Network). This is why the second acquisition caught many observers by surprised:Blue Gender. According to IMBD:
Yuji Kaido was diagnosed with a serious disease and since there was no cure for the unknown illness, he was cryogenically frozen. Twenty years later, he wakes up to see the Earth like it has never been before-the humanity is almost eradicated, because of the alien bugs called the Blue. However, the humanity still lives, a few selected humans have retreated to the space station called Second Earth. Yuji is taken back to the Second Earth, where he finds out that there are people that have been also cryogenically frozen and now they will be used as a force to combat the Blue.
This was an acquisition, unlike anything anime fans, were expecting from the largely family-friendly company. This was a science fiction series. It was dark.It was R-rated. The chances of this being sold to a TV network were low. This was uncharted territory for Funimation, who would have to rely on strong word-of-mouth if this was going to sell on DVD. What this signaled to the anime world is that Funimation was going to be taking anime as an art formveryseriously going forward. They were going to license serious adult fare in addition to TV-friendly shows.
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They were going to make higher quality dubs that could be taken more seriously. They were going to take the little dubbing crew they put together forDragon Ball Zand use it to expand their dubbing footprint. With these two acquisitions, Funimation made their future clear: they would acquire anime that was TV-friendly as well as art house fare for anime fans who wanted to pay for higher quality content on the VHS and DVD market.
Funimation Today
While it may be a stretch to say thatYu Yu HakushoorBlue Genderalone made Funimation the eventual powerhouse they became, it should be noted that Gen Fukunaga’s vision of being the distributor of big hits and art house favorites did prove to be a fruitful plan.
Years later the company would announceThe Funimation Channel, launchFunimation Now, and eventually be bought by Sony andmerged with Crunchyroll. As Crunchyroll they are now the biggest anime distributor in North America as well as one of the biggest producers of anime production funding as well. And to think these are the two titles that set the company up for their eventual success.
Note:Blue Genderis out of print and not currently available on any streaming services.
