Princess Tutu is a Japanese anime television series created by Ikuko Itoh, and directed by Junichi Sato and Shogo Koumoto. Inspired by ballet and fairy tales, particularly The Ugly Duckling and Swan Lake, the story follows a duck who is transformed into the mythical ballerina Princess Tutu in order to save the shattered heart of a storybook prince come to life.
The history of anime in the United States began in 1961, when Magic Boy and The White Snake Enchantress, both produced by Toei Animation, became the first and second anime films to receive documented releases in the country. Anime has since found success with a growing audience in the region, with Astro Boy often being noted as the first anime to receive widespread syndication, especially in the United States. Additionally, anime's growth in popularity in the US during the 1990s, commonly referred to as the "anime boom," is credited with much of anime's enduring relevance to popular culture outside Japan.
A.D. Vision Holdings, Inc. was an American multimedia entertainment distributor headquartered in Houston, Texas, and founded in 1992 by video game fan John Ledford and anime fans Matt Greenfield and David Williams. The company specialized in home video production and distribution, theatrical film distribution, merchandising, original productions, magazine and comic book publishing. They also ran Anime Network, a television channel devoted to airing the company's titles. Some of their titles were Neon Genesis Evangelion, Super Dimension Fortress Macross, RahXephon, Full Metal Panic, Azumanga Daioh, Elfen Lied, Gantz, Red Garden, and Le Chevalier D'Eon.
Science Ninja Team Gatchaman is a Japanese animated franchise about a five-member superhero ninja team created by Tatsuo Yoshida and produced by Tatsunoko Productions. The original anime series, which debuted in 1972, was eponymously entitled Kagaku Ninja-tai Gatchaman and is best known in the English-speaking world as the adaptation entitled Battle of the Planets (1978). The series had additional English adaptations with G-Force: Guardians of Space (1986) and ADV Films' uncut 2005 release. Tatsunoko also uses the official translation Science Commando Gatchaman in related products and media.
Godzilla vs. Hedorah is a 1971 Japanese kaiju film directed by Yoshimitsu Banno, with special effects by Teruyoshi Nakano. Produced and distributed by Toho Co., Ltd., it is the 11th film in the Godzilla franchise, and features the fictional monster characters Godzilla and Hedorah. The film stars Akira Yamauchi, Toshie Kimura, and Hiroyuki Kawase, and features Haruo Nakajima as Godzilla and Kenpachiro Satsuma as Hedorah. Satsuma would go on to portray Godzilla in later Godzilla films.
Matthew Brian Greenfield is an American producer, scriptwriter, director and voice actor. He produces English-language versions of Japanese anime, including Neon Genesis Evangelion, and was the co-founder of A.D. Vision.
John Robert Ledford II is an American entrepreneur and producer in the anime industry. He founded A.D. Vision, Anime Network, Newtype USA and Sentai Filmworks, and has been an executive producer for hundreds of anime titles including Halo Legends, Appleseed Alpha, Short Peace, Sailor Moon, Hello Kitty, and the dubbing of Neon Genesis Evangelion.
Shelley Calene-Black is an American voice actress who has provided voices for a number of English language versions of Japanese anime films and television series. She has worked for Funimation, ADV Films and Sentai Filmworks. Some of her leading voice roles include Mireille in Noir, Kyou Fujibayashi in Clannad, Rutile in Land of the Lustrous, Medaka Kurokami in Medaka Box, Hamyuts Meseta in The Book of Bantorra and Hime in Princess Resurrection. In live action films, she played the lead role of Maria Patterson in the Mariusz Kotowski-directed Holocaust film Esther's Diary.
Serena Varghese is an American voice actress of Indian descent. She primarily does voice work in anime titles with ADV Films and Seraphim Digital. Serena and her husband Jorge Alberto Gonzalez currently live in Los Angeles, California. She is best known as the voice of Chihiro Kosaka and Lime from The World God Only Knows, Mei Sunohara from the Clannad series, Michiru from Air, Hinako from Sister Princess, Kamyuu from the Utawarerumono series, Yun Yun from Canaan, Rein Tsunomoto from Best Student Council, and Minato Kisaragi from Dream Eater Merry. In 2007, she was one of the hosts of the American Anime Awards presentation ceremony in New York Comic Con.
Gatchaman (ガッチャマン) is a three-part original video animation (OVA) based on the popular 1970s anime Science Ninja Team Gatchaman. It was released in Japan and the United States during the mid-1990s. This version of Gatchaman is set in the year 2066 where the evil leader of the nation of Hontwall is threatening to take over the planet. Scientists from the International Science Organization are disappearing and only five teenage heroes, the Science Ninja team, can stop the disaster. The OVAs were licensed by Urban Vision through Harmony Gold USA and were released on VHS and DVD. At Anime Boston 2013, Sentai Filmworks had announced that they have rescued the OVA series along with the original 1970s series for a DVD re-release in October. The series was made available for streaming through Crunchyroll.
Sentai Filmworks, LLC is an American entertainment company. Located in Houston, the company specializes in the dubbing and distribution of Japanese animation and Asian cinema. Its post-production arm is Sentai Studios.
Sentai Studios is an American postproduction studio of Sentai Filmworks located in Houston, Texas owned by AMC Networks. It was founded as Industrial Smoke & Mirrors, the in-house studio of ADV Films. It was renamed ADV Studios in 2005 when it merged with ADV's secondary studio, the Austin-based Monster Island; and then in 2006, when ADV began offering its services to other companies, the studio was also called Amusement Park Media before it was sold off by A.D. Vision in 2008. It was then renamed Seraphim Digital and was renamed to its current name in 2014.
Shannon Emerick is an American voice actress who voices a number of English language localizations of Japanese anime shows with ADV Films, Seraphim Digital and Sentai Filmworks. She graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in Theater Studies and English. In anime, she is known as the voice of Charlotte Dunois from the Infinite Stratos series, Kei Kishimoto from Gantz and Riki Naoe from the Little Busters! series. Outside of voice acting, she is a stage actress in the Houston area. She won the Best Actress award from Houston Press for her theater work twice in 2006 and 2011, respectively.
Persona 4: The Animation is an anime television series based on Atlus' PlayStation 2 video game, Persona 4. The story revolves around Yu Narukami, a young teenager who moves to the town of Inaba, where a mysterious string of murders is taking place. Upon discovering a distorted TV World and acquiring a mysterious power known as "Persona", Yu and his friends decide to investigate the murders and save others from being killed.
Discotek Media is an American entertainment company based in Altamonte Springs, Florida, focused on distribution and licensing Japanese anime, films, and television series.
Takahiro is a Japanese novelist, manga artist and screenwriter. He is the chairman of Japanese visual novel studio Minato Soft.
