AnimeNation

• 1. Introduction

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  AnimeNation started in 1995 in Clearwater, Florida, at a moment when anime was still a niche passion in the United States, known mainly to devoted fans who traded tapes and haunted specialty shops. Gene Field founded the company with a straightforward goal: serve that underserved audience. What followed was a two-decade run that touched nearly every corner of anime fandom, from retail shelves to the mailbox to the licensing contracts that brought obscure Japanese series to American screens. How did a small Florida business become one of the top two online anime specialty retailers in the country? And what did it take to survive long enough that a single column answering reader questions would outlast the store that hosted it?

• 2. Building in Clearwater

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  Gene Field launched AnimeNation in 1995 out of Clearwater, Florida, betting that American appetite for anime would grow fast enough to sustain a dedicated retailer. The bet paid off quickly enough that the company opened a brick-and-mortar location after its early success. By 1999, operations had expanded to a purpose-built 15,000-square-foot facility inside the Lynmar Commerce Park in Tampa. That kind of footprint was a serious commitment for a specialty retailer. By 2004, AnimeNation had grown into one of only two online anime specialty retailers in the country that dominated the category. The company had gone from a startup to a benchmark in less than a decade. That same year, the company already had its eye on licensing, having first considered acquiring titles like Berserk and Cyber Team in Akihabara back in 1998, though it chose to wait until the business was on steadier footing before moving forward.

• 3. AN Entertainment and Licensing

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  In 2002, AnimeNation stepped into the licensing and distribution arena, forming a label called AN Entertainment. The name was deliberate: "AN" came from AnimeNation, and "Entertainment" was chosen to leave the door open for live-action titles down the road. The first show AN Entertainment licensed was Risky Safety, with Bang Zoom! Entertainment producing the English dub and ADV Films handling distribution. For that release, AN Entertainment worked from a script originally prepared by the fansub group Sachigumi, adapting it with modifications. The company also secured TV broadcast rights for Risky Safety. Their approach to the catalog was disciplined: they would finish one title before licensing another, partly because of small staff numbers and partly out of a commitment to quality. Miami Guns came next, though the company did not acquire TV broadcast rights that time. The dub for Miami Guns was produced by Phoenix Post Sound, also known as Coastal Studios. Haré+Guu was a more ambitious project, a co-production with Bang Zoom! that included TV broadcast rights, with Funimation distributing the finished release. AN Entertainment also licensed Haré+Guu Deluxe, though Haré+Guu FINAL was left unlicensed. A licensing complication involving Bandai meant that the original TV ending for Haré+Guu could not be used. Notably, Haré+Guu became the first program to air on the Funimation Channel that was not a Funimation property. AN Entertainment's license for Risky Safety expired in the fall of 2007.

• 4. Ask John

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  John Oppliger joined AnimeNation as an employee and became the public face of the company through a column called "Ask John," where he answered reader questions about anime. By 2005, Oppliger had written more than 1,070 articles for the column. That volume speaks to both the scale of reader engagement and Oppliger's consistency over years of publication. The column survived everything the company went through, including the closure of the online store in 2014. As of the 5th of July 2023, the "Ask John" blog and the AnimeNation forums were still operating, long after the retail and licensing sides of the business had wound down. The column became, in effect, the last living piece of a company that had otherwise closed up shop.

• 5. RentAnime and the End

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  AnimeNation also ran RentAnime.com, a DVD-by-mail service that applied the Netflix model to anime specifically. The service ran into logistical trouble with the Tampa office of the United States Postal Service, though those mailing problems were eventually resolved. When AnimeNation's online store closed in 2014 after increased licensing and retail competition had reshaped the industry, RentAnime.com kept going. It finally shut down at the end of 2015, outlasting the flagship store by more than a year. The sequence of closures tells a story about which parts of the company its audience valued most: not the retail catalog, but the conversation, the rental queue, and the column that John Oppliger was still writing years after the store went dark.