NIS America To Publish House of Five Leaves Anime

Alright first let’s just get this point out of the way: Streaming Rights, Broadcasting Rights (TV), and Home Video Rights are three very different things and you need to make a deal for each. Now you can get the rights for all three but if you only have the rights to one then that’s all you have.

So let’s say you have the Streaming Rights for [Show X], if you want to air it on TV and/or sell it on DVD/BD you can’t. You only have the Streaming Rights. In order to do those other two you must re-negotiate your contracts with the respective owners. This is both time and money consuming.

Not to mention if [Show X] is an anime you are negotiating with Japanese companies that are on the other side of the world, even in our digital modern day lives these things will take time, usually lots of time. And just because you have the streaming rights for [Show X] it does not secure you the rights for Broadcasting and Home Video. Another company can come in and bid on those as well.

In fact another company can bid on all three (or just the Streaming Rights as well, more then one company can hold these rights) and if they secure them they can also sign for an exclusivity clause over [Show X]. If you did not sign that clause that means the other company’s contract will cause you to actually lose your Streaming Rights. 

Now that the technical stuff is out of the way here it is plain and simple: Funimation has been listening to fan request for a long time and surveying what they want. They have found that streaming is very popular and this is the direction that they are heading. They simulcast One Piece, Toriko, and other new shows, as well as upload a lot of shows from the backlog of material they have. You’ve seen Funimation’s new site and how it’s pretty much like Crunchy Roll now, with both free and subscription based streaming, and its own unique video player instead of using Hulu.

Their focus has now shifted towards streaming and you will be seeing a lot more of these in the future. (just like Viz is starting to give a big push for paperless digital releases). They are now securing a lot more Streaming Rights where negotiations are much faster to do and cheaper and thus they can take more of a risk. This doesn’t mean no more Home Video releases anymore but it does mean that Funimation will be picking up Streaming Rights to more shows and not necessarily have any plans to get the Home Video rights for them in the future.

Funimation has good relations with Fuji Television (as well as Toei Animation) and have been making contracts with them for a good while. Because of their relationship Funimation has been able to secure the simulcast rights for shows from their NoitaminA line-up.

Now Funimation only has the Streaming Rights keep that in mind. NoitaminA shows while being popular among the hardcore out there and having many good quality shows are still a pretty niche thing and somewhat of a dangerous release for Home Video. But shows like these are a perfect place for simulcast.

Recently Funimation surveyed their fans asking what show that they have the Streaming Rights for, would they like to own on DVD/BD. The winner of that survey was Princess Jellyfish (Kuragehime), another NoitaminA show and probably one of the best animes in recent memory if you ask me. 

So Funimation secured the Home Video Rights to that show (with a dub) and will be releasing it soon. I can easily suggest it as a purchase it is quite a good show. Anyways House of Five Leaves was passed over. But NISA came along and negotiated for the Home Video release themselves. NISA is a small company and anime is not their main focus so you know the drill no dub.

Trailer for Princess Jellyfish: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPUv_x13TeA]