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| Company type | Private limited company |
|---|---|
| Industry | Entertainment |
| Headquarters | , |
Area served | United Kingdom and Ireland |
| Products | Anime |
| Website | MVM Films |
MVM Entertainment, also known asMVM andMVM Films, is a British licensor and distributor ofJapanese animation. The company also sub-licenses anime titles from US anime companies such asMedia Blasters,Geneon,Nozomi Entertainment,Urban Vision,AnimEigo andUS Manga Corps, which do not have a UK presence, and releases them on Region 2DVD. It is part of the MVM Group, which also haswholesale andretail arms, and specialises in anime,manga and related merchandise. It is headquartered inChepstow,Monmouthshire,Wales.
MVM Entertainment came into existence in 1990 as amail order and retail shop that specialised inniche market items. It grew as did the demand for anime and manga products into the nineties, allowing the company to start licensing anime series for the United Kingdom market in 1998.[1]
MVM currently have over 250 titles listed on their official website. The company continues to license TV series and films from major Japanese productions such as theMonogatari series, theFate franchise,Girls und Panzer, as well as popular titles that includeBerserk,Samurai Champloo,Tenchi Muyo!,No Game No Life,Land of the Lustrous,Flip Flappers,Toradora!,The Garden of Sinners andRascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai.[2]
Many of their releases have been jointly mastered with Australian distributors, includingMadman Entertainment and Hanabee to save costs, and are therefore dual-region (Region 2 and Region 4).[citation needed] The company also won theBest Anime distributor award in the 2006Neo Magazine Awards. MVM Entertainment had also managed to win the 2009Best Anime Distributor award inNeo magazine amid stiff opposition from the likes ofBeez andManga Entertainment UK.
On 5 July 2018, owner Tony Allen gave an interview to The Anime Independent where he announced that MVM would begin to remove DVD from their new acquisitions in line with their partners atSentai Filmworks andMadman Entertainment. He states:
We all suffer the same problem of minimum print runs on two formats where sales are then split across those formats and often leaving us large quantities of stock. Recent increases in costs of warehousing unsold and slow moving stock has made it all the more important to consider the hard economics of servicing two formats. It's just a repeat of the old VHS / DVD position.[3]
The official dropping of DVD began in Q4 2018.[3]
Up until November 2006,Funimation distributed their titles in the United Kingdom through MVM. However, in a surprise announcement, Funimation switched their British distributor toRevelation Films,[4] starting in early 2007. This move has been credited to Funimation's takeover by theNavarre Corporation, which already distributed titles via Revelation in the UK. MVM retained their licences for some series animated by studioGONZO and licensed by Funimation in North America, such asSamurai 7 andBurst Angel, since they were licensed directly from GONZO. Nevertheless, MVM's market share was damaged, and the publisher lost some of their most popular titles, includingFruits Basket (although re-licensed by MVM in late 2011) andFullmetal Alchemist. They later lost access toChobits when the US rights passed fromGeneon USA to Funimation;[5] however, they succeeded in re-licensing it in late 2010,[6] followed byFruits Basket andKiddy Grade in late 2011.[7] MVM's most recent releases of Funimation-licensed titles (who have had an exclusive distribution agreement withManga Entertainment since October 2008[8]) areAquarion,.hack//Quantum,Shakugan no Shana,Ga-Rei: Zero,Sankarea,Is This a Zombie? and[C] – Control. On 2 January 2014, MVM had acquiredAccel World,We Without Wings, andChrome Shelled Regios anime withAccel World being released in June 2014.[9]
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