Yesterday I was looking around my local conventions pages when some very upsetting disturbing news was brought to my attention. One of my favorite conventions, Animeland Wasabi, is being sued by Funimation. This is a sad day indeed because there is no way that the American anime industry is big enough to go around suing small conventions. I can completely believe that Funimation would do this.

Funimation is one of the largest anime producers in the country, at least I think they are. I do not hear much about Aniplex, I know Genon America and Bandai America were shutdown. So you can bet your ass I believe that Funimation is pissed off that they cannot get a good cut into the money that will flow through Animeland Wasabi. While a $150,000 is not all that much to Funimation, it is a lot for a small convention like Animeland Wasabi. While I do not believe that there were actually any counterfeit goods sold, Wasabi cleaned up its act a lot after year two. It would not surprise me if a couple snuck under the radar. However, I will say I am rather disappointed in Wasabi for accusing NDK of being a part of this.

When I wrote this entry there is currently a large press release on Animeland Wasabi's website that says they believe this is an attempt by NDK and Funimation to muscle them out of the con industry. Sorry, but I cannot really believe that. Yes NDK has partners with Funimation. I know a majority of my time at panels was spent in Funimation panels at NDK. I do not believe that NDK is in on this deal for any vile reasons. NDK and Wasabi have no reason to fight, they are 6 months apart from each other, and both have different venues. However, I do believe that Funimation could easily muscle NDK into pulling the stuff they are accused of doing by Wasabi. Lets face facts Funimation is a major partner of NDK. If they pull their support for NDK, the convention would struggle to recover. There is no doubt in my mind about that. Large cons like NDK need to have insider looks and exclusives to survive. Otherwise they are just a con with a lot of people. So this war that Wasabi is trying to brew with NDK is not needed. The real enemy here is Funimation.

I really do not know what to think of Funimation. I am trying really hard to give them the benefit of the doubt and trying REALLY hard to stay 100% legit and buy their crappy streaming service, which only works about half the time. However, after hearing crap like this I am going to have to reconsider my views on them. So what, you are not big enough to run your own funimation convention, go cry me a river. The truth is the only reason why NDK is not being picked on is because of how much money NDK makes funimation. Rarely do I see the Funimation booth with anything left in it at NDK. So yeah you know, that you can easily make up any supposed loses at NDK. However, Wasabi sells all of its space in the dealer room to local vendors. I doubt that Funimation has even attempted to make a partnership with Wasasbi. So what Wasabi is small, I bet if you forced a few employees to go visit the convention Wasabi would grow.

Regardless, this is what is happening and it is very upsetting that we are too that point in the industry where people feel they can just start beating up on the little guy. I agree that counterfeit goods are a problem in the industry, you will get no argument from me. However, you need to go after the vendors not the group that is putting on the show. Let me ask Funimation what they are doing to prevent these goods from getting sold. Truth is even if they manage to shut down Wasabi, the goods will still be sold. I doubt they are losing any real money on them. I mean most of the goods they are claiming are counterfit and goods that they would not even sell. The sad thing is that funimation seems to believe that they have a rabid following. Truth of the matter is that plenty of anime fans would boycott funimation for doing something like this. We are interested in the anime not the company. You are talking to one of those people now. Since this is their first infraction I might give them a chance to redeem themselves, but if this happens again to another small convention, lets just say the few Simulcasts that funimation has are not hard to find elsewhere.