Welcome to a special Rising Sun, where I give anime fans and those looking for anime some buyers’ tips.

Most anime fans don’t really care about who the distributor for their favorite shows is, but who obtains the license from the Japanese production studio will give you a pretty good idea of how the show will be released in the US. So I’ve decided to ensure my readers are in the know about the four important distributors of anime in America. The big four in anime are:

Funimation Entertainment

Funimation is easily the biggest anime distributor in America, founded in 1994 by the Fukunaga family. Initally struggling to get much ground, they finally became a household name when their biggest property, Dragon Ball Z, became the hottest show on Cartoon Network. Based in Texas, they have a incredibly strong working relationship with Toei Company, Ltd., and provide almost ALL of their releases with English translations they produce themselves. Also of note, they run the Funimation Channel, which is exclusively Japanese products licensed by the company, as well as providing theatrical releases for some of their feature-length films, such as Resurrection ‘F’.

Viz Media

Founded in 1986, Viz Media is unqiue as it’s owned by Japanese publishers Shueisha and Shogakukan. They aren’t as big as Funimation going just by anime, but if you count their manga releases, Viz has the edge. Having provided anime and manga back in the days where it was just a niche most Americans had never given much thought, they became incredibly famous for releasing the smash hit Ranma 1/2 entirely uncut. These days, they are known for their uncut Sailor Moon translation and release almost all of their releases in English like Funimation.

Sentai Filmworks

Sentai Filmworks was founded around 2008 from the renmants of defunct distributor ADV. Most of their lineup is school life comedies avaliable exclusively in the original Japanese, such as Hidamari Sketch. Nowadays, they are most likely going to take translation more seriously, with Akame ga Kill and Parasye -the maxim- currently airing on Adult Swim, Beyond the Boundary and Hanayamata receiving English translations, and the upcoming Angelic Layer re-release scheduled to include the ADV-produced translation.

Aniplex of America

Aniplex of America is part of a Japanese counterpart, similar to Viz Media. They are also rather controversial. English translations of their releases are extremely rare, generally reserved for the most popular shows like Puella Magi Madoka Magica, and their retail prices are outrageous. To compensate, a lot of their shows are avaliable on both Hulu and the streaming site Crunchyroll.

Those are the four largest anime distributors, but not all of the anime avaliable in the US is released by them. There are smaller distributors too, like Discotek Media, Media Blasters and Rightstuf. Even Disney has a slice of the pie thanks to their insanely successful releases of Hayao Miyazaki’s movies. So now that you know the distributor’s qualities, you can have a little more knowledge of whether or not you’re going to get the show the way you want it.

Thank you for your time, and enjoy the shows!