ADV Bridges the Pacific with Anime (12: Unedited)

After I parked my car and walked up to the front door of ADV Films, I was greeted by Jack Glauser, a University of Houston alumnus and ADV’s Marketing Associate. He swiped a card to unlock the door, and had me sign-in to a log and wear a “guest” badge. The red and black, traditionally decorated office has a large plasma screen in its lobby, but the strict security guards something else; cartoons.

In 1992, the Land of the Rising Sun shone a new beam of entertainment on a Disney and Looney Toons saturated audience, called ADV Films. The Houston based anime provider now dominates the US market as its largest supplier of Japanese anime, a $4.3 billion industry, and is growing exponentially. It’s a strange gem in the diverse and rough bootleg-fashion area of Harwin Street.

With the popularization of DVDs and variety of subtitle, dubbed audio, and commentary options, Anime has steadily become much more accessible to American audiences. Aside from ease of playability and collectable value, it offers something that older American audiences were almost completely without. “Most of the American animation…has been for a younger audience. And the animation from Japan; yes it’s stylized a lot differently in character and design and stuff, But really, some of the stories are crazy, and you’ve got all sorts of adult themes. So if you like watching animation, but you’re not a child, you’re going to find anime,” said Anne Armogida, ADV’s Director of Marketing.

Anime is most often presented as a series, although many feature-length films are made. In Japan, a surprising number of television stations broadcast anime as regular programming, and the subject matter is as diverse as America’s dramas, comedies, sports, action and detective shows. Because these series are almost entirely unavailable to American audiences, ADV acquires the licensing distribution rights to take the series further than the North Pacific Ocean.

This process is a long and complicated one. ADV first contacts the Japanese producers of an anime after it has gained a certain degree of popularity in Japan. Another UH alumnus, Griffin Vance, and other members of ADV’s legal team acquire the rights to an English version of the anime. The Japanese production company then sends over the available materials, which range from a basic episode to multiple sound and video tracks, scripts, unused material, and extras.

If it’s not already translated, ADV utilizes its three in-house translators, but also contracts translators from all over the United States. “They translate the show, or any of the extras or booklets that we get with the DVDs,” said Jin Chung, one of ADV’s veteran producers, “That’s a big chunk of our period of waiting, because that takes a while to translate. In the best case scenario, we get the Japanese script, and the translators watch the show, and hear it, and also go off the script. Sometimes we don’t get the script, and the translators just have to go through it, just by listening to it, and that takes some time.”

The literal translation is rough and almost never matches the “flapping-” or movement of a character’s mouth. ADV hires screen writers to re-script the dialogue and rearrange sentence structure to make sense in English. This can be restrictive because the sync may not match up, and many of the Japanese cultural references are easy to lose.

A director then looks over the script, watches the anime several times, and casts voice actors for the English dubs. The actors are brought into ADV’s prized on-site recording studios with a director and an audio engineer. ADV Films is the only anime distributor in American with its own recording studio, and it helps them to save on costs and turn a product around that much more quickly.

I was invited to sit in on the recording session for an episode of the highly anticipated series, Air Gear. Kira Vincent, the voice actress behind character “Emily,” has an impressive resume in voice acting, and her wide range (she’s voiced male characters) can be heard in dozens of ADV titles. She has a fan base among “otaku”, the Japanese word for geeks, and sound engineer John Swaize appreciates her efficient adaptability.

The five recording studios are all state of the art. Swaize watches the video as Vincent speaks, and makes quick edits to the script as necessary, which feeds directly into the glass booth. Vincent can hear Swaize’s instructions and recommendations, and watches the anime to maintain correct pacing.

While the audio engineers are busy with sound, the art department recreates newly translated packaging. Hiroko Fukumori, the senior graphic designer, also creates advertisements and point-of-sale material.

The new vocal track is mixed, and sound effects and music are recorded if they weren’t separate on the original master. The production department brings everything together, designs the menus, adds whatever extras they can find and will fit, authors the discs, edits trailers for other upcoming products, and the whole product is sent back to Japan for approval.

The popularity of Anime and other Japanese entertainment media is growing quickly in the United States. Not only in DVD series and feature films, but also in manga, cosplay, videogames, Newtype USA magazine, and ADV’s newly created Anime Network television station. Our university was the launch pad for many of ADV’s employees, and the amount of work to share a nation’s cartoons with another is awe inspiring., especially in such a niche form of artistic expression.