Anime Boston 2011

Funimation

Funimation marketing manager Adam Sheehan and social media manager Justin Rojas helmed the Funimation industry panel, which started with the promotion of Funimation's Relief for Japan eBay auction program. Brand manager Charlene Ingram took the stage to talk about the project, in which Funimation auctions off various swag with voice actors' autographs and donating 100% of the proceeds to relief efforts for victims of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. Apparently they made so much money that eBay cut off their auctions for the rest of the month of April. So far they have earned...wait for it... over US$9,000.

Rojas carried on talking about the Funimation blog, Facebook, and Twitter accounts, plus YouTube, Hulu, and Funimation.com/video. Sheehan took over to talk about Funimation's various simulcasts, including One Piece, Toriko, and [C] - CONTROL. The usual promotion of the FUNimation Channel followed, and then Sheehan took over to talk about the new Funimation.com beta. Sheehan specified that Funimation will later launch a premium subscription for the site, but noted that pretty much everything they do on the site will be based on user feedback.

Rojas and Sheehan went back and forth to talk about upcoming releases: Ga-Rei: Zero, Eden of the East (specifically the film Eden of the East: The King of Eden), Excel Saga, To: Elliptical Orbit Symbiotic Planet, and Dance in the Vampire Bund.

Special announcements: Panty & Stocking, Shin-chan season 3, live-action film The Treasure Hunter, Fairy Tail, and Aria the Scarlet Ammo, which it'll launch as a simulcast on Tuesday.

The session went into Q&A, which featured a lot of the standards (including the "will you license Sailor Moon?" which more or less needs its own slide in the Funimation industry panel Powerpoint presentation these days).

Unfortunately for company representatives, the highlight of this panel came immediately after it officially ended, when a child dressed as Sailor Moon (first season version) proceeded to dress down both Funimation and absent Japanese animation studio Toei for their apparent inability to get the Sailor Moon television anime re-licensed in the U.S. No one managed to grab their video cameras in time to catch the surprisingly effluent kid before her mother led her away.