Bandai Entertainment is an American subsidiary of Bandai America, itself a company specializing in translations/dubs of Japanese media for the United States. Based in Cypress, California, they work a lot with
BangZoom Entertainment and Studiopolis with dubbing and translating popular manga and anime, usually from Bandai and its sister company
Sunrise. They also ran one of the earliest experiments with selling anime online, "AnimeVillage.com". They localized most of Key Visual and
Kyoto Animation's titles.
On January 3, 2012, their future projects past February, as well as the opportunities for their associates and entertainment from the fans, were all dropped in one fell swoop by the president's announcement that they will no longer release any new anime or manga titles for DVD and Blu-ray after 13 years of being among the major American anime distributors! They will no longer produce dubs. They laid off most of their remaining employees. They restocked their DVDs until November 15th, 2012, when they discontinued them entirely. They are currently restructuring to become a licensor of media toward other companies. Some blame this move on the
fansubbers releasing anime illegally online, but some also blame Bandai's failure to have a business model that works in
The New Tens. The actual reason is that Bandai Japan didn't see any use for continuing to sell DVDs in a foreign niche market when they could just produce them locally and save more money.
Mostly unrelated to, and not to be confused with, Bandai Visual (their biggest licensor) or
Namco Bandai (the parent company).
Anime and manga released by Bandai Entertainment:
Anime and manga released by Bandai Visual USA under the "Honneamise" label before being acquired by Bandai Entertainment:
Anime and manga dropped due to their distribution discontinuation:
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