Illumitoon Entertainment was a production company based in

Fort Worth, Texas Fort Worth is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the county seat of Tarrant County, Texas, Tarrant County, covering nearly into Denton County, Texas, Denton, Johnson County, Texas, Johnson, Parker County, Texas, Parker, and Wise County, Te ...

that specialized in

anime is a Traditional animation, hand-drawn and computer animation, computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, , in Japan and in Ja ...

. It was founded in January 2006 by former

Funimation Funimation was an American Video on demand#Subscription models, subscription video on-demand Over-the-top media service, over-the-top Streaming media, streaming service. Launched in 2016, the service was one of the leading distributors of anime ...

executives Stephanie Giotes, Richard Ray, and Barry Watson. Illumitoon's goal was to have its shows aired on television and offer unedited dual language DVDs.

History

Illumitoon shared facilities with CRM Productions in

and

Westlake Entertainment Westlake may refer to: Places Australia * Westlake, Canberra, a ghost town suburb of Canberra * Westlake, Queensland, a suburb of Brisbane New Zealand * Westlake, New Zealand, a suburb of Auckland ** Westlake Girls High School **Westlake Boys ...

was used for distribution. The company's first anime license was

Beet the Vandel Buster is a Japanese manga series written by Riku Sanjo and illustrated by Koji Inada. The manga ran in Shueisha's ''Monthly Shōnen Jump'' from 2002 to 2006. After a nearly ten-year hiatus, the series resumed in '' Jump SQ.Crown'' in 2016, befor ...

and Beet the Vandel Buster Excellion. They also licensed

AM Driver ''AM Driver'', known in Japan as , is an anime series produced by Studio Deen, TV Tokyo and Nihon Ad Systems. It is directed by Yūji Yamaguchi, with Satoshi Namiki handling series composition, Eiji Suganuma designing the characters and Ka ...

B't X ''B't X'' (pronounced "beat x" and stylized as B'ᴛ X) is a Japanese manga series, written and illustrated by Masami Kurumada. It was serialized in Kadokawa Shoten's '' Monthly Shōnen Ace'' from 1994 to 2000. The series is set in a fictio ...

, and BT'X Neo. Illumitoon joined with Westlake for the licensing of

Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Yoshio Sawai. It was serialized in Shueisha's manga magazine ''Weekly Shōnen Jump'' from February 2001 to November 2005, with its chapters collected in 21 volumes. It was followed b ...

. Several Illumitoon releases had production issues including music being changed, the use of dubtitles (subtitles created from the dub script), and inoperable discs. Replacements with translated subtitles were offered for the first DVDs of Beet, Bobo, and B't X that were later found to be DVD-Rs. AM Driver and B't X were licensed by

The Anime Network Anime Network was an American video on demand (VOD) network dedicated to anime owned by AMC Networks. History The network was launched in North America in late 2002 and is marketed to multi system operators (MSOs) as both a free and subscri ...

for VOD, but only 14 episodes of each series had a complete dub. After Westlake ceased distribution of their titles, future releases from Illumitoon were cancelled in late 2007.

Post Illumitoon

AM Driver was never released on DVD and all series remained incomplete until S'more Entertainment relicensed Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo. This release also experienced issues due to the lack of subtitles. B't X was relicensed in 2016 by

Anime Midstream is a hand-drawn and computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, , in Japan and in Japanese, describes all animated works, reg ...

References

External links

* {{Authority control Anime companies Companies based in Fort Worth, Texas Mass media companies established in 2006

History

Post Illumitoon

See also

References

Further reading

External links