Illumitoon Entertainment was a production company based in Fort Worth, Texas that specialized in anime. It was founded in January 2006 by former Funimation executives Stephanie Giotes, Richard Ray, and Barry Watson.[1][2] Illumitoon's goal was to have its shows aired on television and offer unedited dual language DVDs.[3][4]
History
Illumitoon shared facilities with CRM Productions in Fort Worth, Texas and Westlake Entertainment was used for distribution.[1][5] The company's first anime license was Beet the Vandel Buster and Beet the Vandel Buster Excellion.[6] They also licensed AM Driver, B't X, and BT'X Neo.[7][8] Illumitoon joined with Westlake for the licensing of Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo.[9][10] Several Illumitoon releases had production issues including music being changed, the use of dubtitles (subtitles created from the dub script), and inoperable discs.[3][4][11][12][13] Replacements with translated subtitles were offered for the first DVDs of Beet, Bobo, and B't X that were later found to be DVD-Rs.[4][14][15] AM Driver and B't X were licensed by The Anime Network for VOD, but only 14 episodes of each series had a complete dub.[4][16][17] After Westlake ceased distribution of their titles, future releases from Illumitoon were cancelled in late 2007.[4][18]
Post Illumitoon
AM Driver was never released on DVD and all series remained incomplete until S'more Entertainment relicensed Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo.[4][19] This release also experienced issues due to the lack of subtitles.[3][4] B't X was relicensed in 2016 by Anime Midstream.[20][21]
