>>11052647Bandai shit was happening in the early 00s.
I don't know about buying ads (they did, but nowhere near as close to funding entire blocks or shows), but they were basically handing out anime like Gundam and adaptations for their shows for free. They figured they'd make their money back through all the merch and its licensing.
If you don't remember, Bandai was super fucking invested in bringing out Gundam toys and a bunch of shit that was only popular in Japan into stores. They also expected to sell a shit ton of DVDs/HD-DVDs/VHSes, so they invested in that.
By the time 2007 rolled up, they were losing their shirts, as the anime and manga market was imploding from believing sales were going to exponentially have unlimited growth year after year.
Other Japanese companies who were nowhere near as big as Bandai were also expected to give out anime series. So they made a lot of bad deals and also burderened US anime distrubutors with unwanted anime series just to license popular anime series. These Japanese companies were also creating anime series for US taste, hence partnering up with US companies like Marvel and Hasbro.
This is how GI Joe Sigma 6 came about, which never finished airing all its episodes.
So many companies went bust in 2007 because they over-invested and sales started going down in 2007. Broadcast cartoon blocks like KidsWB ended in 2007. FoxKids/FoxBlock ended in 2008. Toonami ended in 2008. All because they didn't get their expected 10% growth and anime series with free money attached.
You can write a book about all this shit. I'm glossing over a lot and haven't even gotten into the long term ramifications for Kaiyodo, Goodsmile, Tokyopop, etc etc thanks to the 2007 implosion.
I'm sure there's people here who even remember when Gundams were going for $2 in stores like Walmart and TRU, who made big deals with Bandai to carry models and battle damage figures. KB Toys suffered a lot from this, hence their death in 2008.