Anime Expo 2011

Sentai Filmworks Industry Panel

Sentai Filmworks' David Williams opened up the company's panel by calling it a "small, scrappy" company which is now starting to run panels at various conventions. He then hinted at his past with ADV by suggesting that the audience will remember him from "another company," which resulted in chuckles from fans.

Moving into the panel content, Williams went through a few recent releases, such as Highschool of the Dead, which received audience applause upon mention. Coming up are new releases for Samurai Girls, Maid Sama!, Kobato., To Love-Ru, MM!, Amagami SS, and the first Mardock Scramble film.

New announcements include:

• October - Hell Girl season two
• October/November - Loup-Garous
• November - Clannad first season on Blu-ray
• No date - ef: a tale of memories and ef: a tale of melodies
• No date - Saiyuki: Requiem OVAs with the original ADV dub cast
• No date - Ro-Kyu-Bu! (which will air in Japan this summer)
• No date - More of Golgo 13

After the announcements, Williams opened up the audience question-and-answer session. Some highlights from the answers:

• Sentai will likely begin to dub more shows as the company moves along, but they will also continue to release titles subtitled-only, on a case-by-case basis.
• Demon King Daimao has been selling well at their booth.
• Sentai does not currently have any more Gintama on its schedule at this time.
• Williams described his experience with ADV as being like watching your child grow to the age of 18 "and then get hit by a bus."
• Sentai Filmworks is interested in "all anime that's out there," so any anime the audience can think of that isn't already spoken for, they have probably looked at, but can't comment on currently.
• Sentai would like to release the second part of Glass Mask, but the first part didn't perform as well as the company hoped. They're trying to figure out a way to feasibly release the second half but they haven't come up with anything yet.
• More Highschool of the Dead merchandise is coming.

Williams then gave away a number of DVDs, and Blu-rays to trivia winners. During this time he revealed that when Right Stuf's Nozomi Entertainment licensed Dirty Pair recently, he offered to dub the series but was declined. Williams then tossed t-shirts into the audience and closed the panel.