FUNimation Entertainment announced today that its previous owner, Navarre Corporation, has sold them to a group of investors for $24 million. The investor group includes Gen Fukunaga, FUNimation's chief executive officer. Navarre Corporation is a distributor of electronic goods and entertainment with a 25 year history. Although FUNimation Entertainment has been sold, Navarre will continue to act as the exclusive distributor. Much more after the jump.

One of the members of the new investor board is Darwin Deason who, according to Anime News Network, courtesy of forum users 'Charred Knight' and 'The King of Harts', " is the #1,140 richest on its list of billionaires worldwide. He also ranks #404 among American billionaires and #385 on the Forbes 400 list. He lives in Dallas." You can read the entire post, including a press release by Navarre, on FUNimation's blog and catch ANN's post about it here.

Although one of FUNimation's own executives is on the board of investors and FUNimation assures us that production will continue as normal, fan reaction in the blog comments has been mixed:

"...the problem with investors are, they usually buy companies, gut them out to give the allusion of making huge profits, then sell the company for a large profit. then the company that buys them, integrates said company into their own, and said company is no longer."

"So..... Is this good or bad?"

"In the short term this is a good thing as nothing has changed. Funimation now more or less owns itself meaning no one will be changing how they do things so that is good news. In the long term it depends on how well Funi's current plans work out. "

Anime News Network's forum contains much of the same:

"I'm very glad that Gen Fukunaga will continue to be involved. Time will tell whether this transaction was a good thing or a bad thing for us anime consumers. The one qualm I have about the few details we have so far is that Funi will be on its own without the potential cushion of a larger parent. Alone in the choppy seas of what is today's anme distribution environment. "

"This seems like good news- even if Funi's shrunk a bit, they're still viable and it looks like we won't have to worry about their status anymore."

"Am I the only person that finds it a little depressing that R1's largest anime distributor was sold for only $24 million? Wow! I guess that shows how much the market has shrank, considering Navarre paid over a hundred million for them. Hell, back in 2006 20% of ADV was sold for only a little less. But on the bright side, it means there will likely be few changes. But considering how tough the home entertainment market is getting, let's hope these investors are patient."

"The problem is that the "magic bullet" that allowed FUNimation to survive the anime crash when companies like Geneon were collapsing (and ADV and Bandai reduced to a shadow of their former selves) was that they simply had Navarre keep pumping more money into them the past six years. ... I think the important aspect of the failed sale of FUNimation the past several months, which no one has mentioned yet, is the drastic impact this has had on Navarre's stock prices. It doesn't exactly instill confidence in investors when very visibly, your publicly traded company cannot sell one of their major media subdivisions. It was becoming an embarrassment, and investors were starting to leave Navarre. "

"In a somewhat related note, there are better than 400 billionaires in the US? Goddamn. Spare a few hundred c-notes to help a brother out?" 

Only time will tell how this shift in ownership affects FUNimation Entertainment, and the North American anime market at large.