Well, normally, I would look the other way, but I kind of suspect ulterior motives. That is, FUNi’s recent market devaluation suggests that they’re using old debts with Sentai as the scapegoat for their losses, rather than the fact that FUNi doesn’t actually sell must-own titles anymore. Plus, if they waited this long, I wonder if the reason they’re acting now is they lost money on the Eva Rebuild movies, due to their high licensing fees. So perhaps FUNi is really just inflating the value of those licenses, and Sentai only owes them a fraction of that money back, at best? And let’s be honest here. A lot of people were so cocky about 4Kids’ shaky financial situation that they thought the TV Tokyo suit would be a slam dunk. But look how well that worked out for TV Tokyo.

“American otaku fear that in-fighting between the Texas licensors will compromise anime licensing and distribution in America’s already diminished field.”

I don’t think Sentai’s gonna be in trouble, as long as it still has that Hollywood Eva movie money as collateral. If it were, it would have agreed to give back the rights to Gainax.

In any case, it’s like you say, all anime licensing or distribution hubs are small… really small. Most every anime company out there germinated from a handful of fans with a couple of ideas and some hearty ambition. I also wonder that if it weren’t for how geographically scattered anime licensing, distribution, and retail companies have been since the industry began, would more formal corporate mergers would be at greater play?