Central Park Media
Central Park Media is a anime/manga companyAt one point one of North America's biggest anime and manga publishers, although it has been very quiet of late due to several hard blows to its business.
History
Central Park Media, founded by John O'Donnell in 1990, was one of the earliest companies to devote itself entirely to anime and manga in North America. The company has published anime DVDs and manga in a variety of genres, including yaoi and hentai. Some of its most popular titles include Slayers (now handled by FUNimation), Revolutionary Girl Utena, and Record of Lodoss War.In 2006 the company was hit hard by the demise of Musicland and went through a massive amount of layoffs, leaving it with only a handful of employees and prompting rumors of a pending bankruptcy. The bankruptcy never came, but CPM's production slowed to a halt until they were talking up the publication of a handful of yaoi titles. Another blow came, this time from Japanese yaoi publisher Libre, who took over a number of CPM's yaoi licenses when their original Japanese owner Biblos went bankrupt. Libre declared on their website that CPM had never renegotiated these licenses and that they therefore declared them illegal. O'Donnell fired back that he had paid for the series and would sue Libre for libel, although the lawsuit has never materialized.
On April 28th, 2009, it was announced that Central Park Media was filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, meaning it would not be able to restructure and continue operating. Several of CPM's titles winded up having their distribution rights acquired by ADV Films days after the announcement of CPM's bankruptcy, which included Isao Takahata's classic anime war-drama film, Grave of the Fireflies.
