Origins Origins of Sentai Filmworks go back to the early 1990s with the founding of its predecessor A.D. Vision. In 1990,
John Ledford, a native of Houston, started a Japanese video game and video console import business. He was introduced to anime when he watched
My Neighbor Totoro at his friend's suggestion. His friend,
Matt Greenfield, born in
Sacramento, California, ran a local anime club called Anime NASA. Both men would later establish
A.D. Vision on August 17, 1992.
Ledford establishes Sentai In June 2006, the Japanese
Sojitz Corporation acquired a 20% stake in ADV Films. This was done as a means for ADV Films to acquire more titles in the Japanese market. From this point on, virtually all titles that ADV acquired were with Sojitz's help. The following year, Sojitz announced that Japan Content Investments (JCI),
Development Bank of Japan, and film distribution company KlockWorx, planned to contribute money to ADV, in return for equity in the company. Ledford was to remain the majority shareholder and CEO. JCI subsidiary ARM also planned to contribute money for ADV to use in acquiring new distribution licenses. The investment was to ADV Films to raise its output of new anime titles, which had dropped in 2006, back to previous levels or above. In return, ADV planned to assist Sojitz with the acquisition of North American and European content for importation into Japan. According to ADV, they also reportedly had "big plans" for its manga line. However, in January 2008, ADV mysteriously removed a large number of titles from their website. Among the titles which were subsequently removed was
Gurren Lagann, which had test disks sent out with dubbed episodes. As a result, ADV
sued ARM Corporation and its parent Sojitz for a
breach in a contract made previously. In the suit, the exact amount ADV paid to license twenty-nine titles was disclosed. The lawsuit was withdrawn and no ruling was made. That July,
Funimation announced the acquisition of thirty of these titles licensed by Sojitz from ADV. Ledford established Sentai Filmworks in 2008. Some of its first titles to be released were
Clannad,
Princess Resurrection,
Indian Summer,
Appleseed and
Mahoromatic (formerly licensed by
Geneon). On September 1, 2009, ADV went defunct and sold off its assets, which included transferring distribution rights to
Section23 Films. On July 4, 2013, during its industry panel at
Anime Expo, Sentai Filmworks announced its plans to release a number of classic titles from
Tatsunoko Production. The current list of released titles from the partnership include the original
Gatchaman series and
movie,
Time Bokan: Royal Revival, and
Casshan, and more titles followed.
Sunrise announced a licensing deal with Sentai Filmworks that included a number of titles from Sunrise's library that were formerly licensed by
Bandai Entertainment during its
Otakon panel on August 8, 2013.
Later history In 2014, Sentai opened its in-house localization and recording facility,
Sentai Studios. On June 1, 2015, Sentai made an announcement on its website that
Akame ga Kill! had been picked up by
Adult Swim for broadcast on its
Toonami programming block, almost one week after its announcement at
MomoCon 2015. The show began airing on the broadcast night of August 8, 2015, and its premiere night was one of the most watched programs in the block's history with over 1.8 million viewers. Later that year,
Parasyte -the maxim-, premiered on October 3. Sentai has promoted the time that the two shows air as "#SentaiHour" on social media. On July 6, 2019,
Food Wars!: Shokugeki no Soma began airing on Toonami. In March 2017, Sentai signed a deal with
Amazon to stream the majority of its new licensees exclusively on its
Anime Strike channel on
Amazon Prime Video in the United States, starting with the Spring 2017 season. After Anime Strike was shuttered in early 2018, all titles previously exclusive to the service were made available to Amazon Prime subscribers in the U.S. at no extra charge. The company launched its own streaming service
HIDIVE in June 2017, which replaced
Anime Network Online. On July 18, 2019, Sentai Filmworks launched a
GoFundMe appeal in the wake of the
arson attack at Kyoto Animation. With a target of US$750,000, it surpassed the $1 million donation mark within the first 24 hours, and reached $2,370,910 at closing. On August 1, 2019, Sentai Filmworks' parent company Sentai Holdings, LLC announced that the
Cool Japan Fund invested for shares of the company, stating that "Sentai's independent status makes it a rarity in North America as a licensor of Japanese anime". On September 30, 2020, the Cool Japan Fund made an additional available, stating that Sentai had achieved better financial results in 2019 compared to 2018, with plans for medium and long-term growth, and strategic changes following the
COVID-19 pandemic. On September 5, 2020,
Crunchyroll announced that they had entered in a partnership with Sentai Filmworks to distribute Crunchyroll licensed titles onto home video and electronic sell-through, with
Granbelm,
Food Wars!: Shokugeki no Soma: The Fourth Plate,
Ascendance of a Bookworm, and
World Trigger being the first titles distributed through the partnership.
AMC ownership On January 5, 2022,
AMC Global Media (then known as AMC Networks) acquired Sentai Filmworks and its parent company Sentai Holdings, LLC, including the
Hidive streaming service, and the
Anime Network. Prior to the sale, in August 2021,
Sony's
Funimation Global Group (a joint venture between
Sony Pictures Entertainment and
Sony Music Entertainment Japan's
Aniplex) acquired Ellation, the parent company of Crunchyroll, from
AT&T's
WarnerMedia (later spun out by AT&T and merged with
Discovery, Inc. to form
Warner Bros. Discovery), and later on, in March 2022, Funimation would be rebranded as
Crunchyroll, LLC. This would eventually lead to several Sentai titles departing from the Crunchyroll streaming service on March 31, 2022. After
Right Stuf was acquired by Sony in August 2022, Sentai announced on March 7, 2023, that the distribution of all future home releases from them along with
Section23 Films would be managed by Distribution Solutions (DS), the releasing unit of wholesaler Alliance Entertainment, on April 3. On March 2, 2023, Sentai announced a partnership and distribution agreement with
Mainichi Broadcasting System. ==Foreign distribution==