AuraAnime Licensing



''This article is about the American licensor, AuraAnime Licensing. For the Australian equivalent, see AuraAnime Licensing (Oceania).''

AuraAnime Licensing, d/b/a simply AuraAnime, is an American licensing company spun-off from NickFamily Studios as NickFamily Licensing. The company licenses anime series for distribution within the United States and Canada; the company also rescues out-of-print anime for re-distribution, and thus acts as an indirect competitor to Discotek Media. Besides licensing anime, the company works with other licensors (mostly those without an in-house dubbing unit) to produce dubs. From 2018 to 2019, the company licensed manga, with most being sublicensed to Creation Publishing Media. AuraAnime's manga division was eventually sold off on October 4th, 2019.

AuraAnime Licensing's content is currently distributed by Aura Television Productions in North America, with the licensor itself being owned by a joint-venture between Aura Television Productions, Aura Japan, and TV Akihabara.

In the United States, the majority of AuraAnime Licensing licenses have aired on either Nicktoons Family, Nickelodeon Family (including its late-night AuraNightfall block), or AnimeCore Extra. A potential non-exclusive deal with OrbitAnime (which, ironically, replaced NickFamily's rerun-only anime network) was considered, but fell through. Beta Cartoon currently runs former AuraAnime Licensing licenses that have expired and were rescued by other companies, as well as certain current AuraAnime titles produced prior to June 2009 (both with pre-existing dubs from before AuraAnime rescued the licenses and with subtitles) as part a Saturday-night block used to promote SurgeAnime Classics on SurgeAnime Action.

On July 20th, 2018, NickFamily Licensing announced that a plan for their dropped licenses would be to have their dub air on the network that re-licensed the rights, unless they choose to make a new dub (ex. OrbitAnime opted to make a new dub of Lighting Attack Express rather than airing the NickFamily dub).

On March 15th, 2019, Aura announced that the licensor would be rebranded "AuraAnime Licensing", effective April 2nd, 2019. What was left of Jetix Cymru's North American anime licensing division at the time was folded into the new licensor by the end of May 2019. No imprints have been announced for the renamed company at the time of the announcement, though AuraToon Licensing was established as an imprint for non-anime animation licensed for North America. The licensor rebranded on April 2nd, 2019 and have announced plans to sell off its Duel Masters licenses within 10-13 days after the rebrand. The Duel Masters licenses were eventually sold on April 11th, 2019.

Following the licensor's rebrand, Jetix Cymru announced plans to rebrand and spin-off its UK anime licensing division into AuraAnime Licensing UK.

In July 2019, AuraAnime Licensing announced that some of its catalog, including Monster Coins and the intiial release of Mushibugyo, would be released on DVD and Blu-ray in a partnership with Funimation, beginning with a "Collector's Edition" of all three Pretty Rhythm anime AuraAnime licensed in North America. AuraAnime have stated that they would self-distribute SD on BD releases of their licenses. The partnership would end after December 2021 (most future releases)/2022 (for the Monster Coins franchise), as a result of Funimation parent company Sony's acquisition of Crunchyroll. However, several AuraAnime titles continued to stream on Funimation until Funimation began the process of merging its library with Crunchyroll in March 2022, after which AuraAnime announced that its titles available on Funimation would also slowly move to Crunchyroll and Flare+. AuraAnime subsequently entered a revised collaboration with Crunchyroll, LLC in late March 2022, this time only covering physical releases of Monster Coins ReFINAL in a partnership between the two.

In February 2021, it was announced that Aura Television Productions were seeking to sell off a 30% stake in AuraAnime Licensing to other companies. Aura Japan and the holding company for TV Akihabara bought a 15% and 5% stake respectively later in the month.

On May 1st, 2021, it was announced that, following the sale of the AuraAnime channel the unit was named after, AuraAnime Licensing and its overseas divisions would rebrand as simply AuraAnime.

On May 4th, 2021, the AuraToon Licensing imprint was discontinued and most of its licenses returned to the original rights-holders in order to focus on AuraAnime's main business. AuraToon licenses that haven't expired on that date were transferred over to Aura Television Productions proper.

On August 8th, 2021, AuraAnime mentioned that they were looking towards forming a live-action/tokusatsu imprint; their first third-party live-action series was the dorama adaptation of Attack No. 1. Later on October 11th, 2021, AuraAnime announced they were looking to revive AuraToon Licensing as simply AuraToon as soon as they acquire the necessary licenses.

On March 30th, 2022, AuraAnime launched two new Flare+-exclusive livestreams: AuraAnime Saturday Memories and AuraAnime Shoujo. The livestreams lasted less than a year before being cancelled due to larger cutbacks by Aura.

On June 18th, 2022, AuraAnime entered a distribution agreement with Netflix where they would release several anime hosted on the platform to home video. These titles include A.I.C.O. -Incarnation, Dino Girl Gauko, Lost Song, Rilakkuma and Kaoru, and the first season of Ultraman (2019).

In July 2022, AuraAnime announced that they would start doing Blu-ray releases primarily intended for sale at conventions, starting with releases for the uncut Little Battlers eXperience (in collaboration with Dentsu USA and Cinedigm) and Josephina the Whale for their booth at the 2022 Anime Weekend Atlanta. Most of the releases intended for conventions would be of titles whose licenses are about to expire/be dropped or whose audience is too small for a retail Blu-ray release.

Catalog
Main article: List of titles distributed by AuraAnime Licensing