John Robert Ledford II (born August 19, 1968, in

Houston, Texas Houston ( ) is the List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in the U.S. state of Texas and in the Southern United States. Located in Southeast Texas near Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, it is the county seat, seat of ...

) is an American

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value in ways that generally entail beyond the minimal amount of risk (assumed by a traditional business), and potentially involving values besides simply economic ones. An entreprene ...

and producer in the anime industry. He founded

A.D. Vision A.D. Vision Holdings, Inc. (known simply as ADV and also referred to as ADV Films) was an American multimedia entertainment distributor headquartered in Houston, Texas, and founded in 1992 by video game fan John Ledford and anime fans Matt Gr ...

Anime Network Anime Network was an American video on demand (VOD) network dedicated to anime owned by AMC Networks. History The network was launched in North America in late 2002 and is marketed to multi system operators (MSOs) as both a free and subscr ...

, ''

Newtype USA is a monthly magazine originating from Japan covering anime and, to a lesser extent, manga, voice actors, science fiction, , and video games. It was launched by publishing company Kadokawa Shoten on March 8, 1985, and has since been released i ...

'' and

Sentai Filmworks Sentai Filmworks, LLC (or simply Sentai) is an American entertainment company. Located in Houston, the company specializes in the dubbing and distribution of Japanese animation and Asian cinema. Its post-production arm is Sentai Studios. The ...

, and has been an executive producer for hundreds of

anime is a Traditional animation, hand-drawn and computer animation, computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, , in Japan and in Ja ...

titles including '' Halo Legends'', '' Appleseed Alpha'', '' Short Peace'', ''

Sailor Moon is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Naoko Takeuchi. It was originally serialized in Kodansha's Shōjo manga, ''shōjo'' manga magazine ''Nakayoshi'' from 1991 to 1997; the 60 individual chapters (later reorganized into ...

'', '' Hello Kitty'', and the dubbing of ''

Neon Genesis Evangelion , also known as ''Evangelion'' or ''Eva'', is a Japanese mecha anime television series produced by Gainax and Tatsunoko Production, and directed by Hideaki Anno. It was broadcast on TV Tokyo and its affiliates from October 1995 to March 1 ...

''.

Life and career

John Robert Ledford II was born on August 19, 1968, in Houston, Texas, to Gayle Greer (1945–2009) and John Robert Ledford. His mother, Gayle, was a harpist and an equestrian. A fan of

video games A video game or computer game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device) to generate visual fe ...

, Ledford began his career in 1990 by founding Gametronix. The business grew to become America's second largest importer of Japanese video games and consoles such as

Mega Drive The Sega Genesis, known as the outside North America, is a 16-bit Fourth generation of video game consoles, fourth generation home video game console developed and sold by Sega. It was Sega's third console and the successor to the Master Sys ...

Famicom The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan on 15 July 1983 as the and was later released as the redesigned NES in several test markets in the ...

Super Famicom The Super Nintendo Entertainment System, commonly shortened to Super Nintendo, Super NES or SNES, is a Fourth generation of video game consoles, 16-bit home video game console developed by Nintendo that was released in 1990 in Japan, 1991 in No ...

and

PC Engine The TurboGrafx-16, known in Japan as the , is a home video game console developed by Hudson Soft and manufactured by NEC. It was released in Japan in 1987 and in North America in 1989. The first console of the fourth generation, it launched ...

. John's interest in anime began after being introduced to ''

My Neighbor Totoro is a 1988 Japanese animated fantasy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and animated by Studio Ghibli for Tokuma Shoten. It stars the voices of Noriko Hidaka, Chika Sakamoto and Hitoshi Takagi, and focuses on two young sisters a ...

''. In 1992, he and his business partner

Matt Greenfield Matthew Brian Greenfield (born January 12, 1965) is an American producer, scriptwriter, director and voice actor. He produces English-language versions of Japanese anime, including '' Neon Genesis Evangelion'', and was the co-founder of A.D. V ...

turned their attention to the anime industry and founded A.D. Vision.

(aka ADV Films or ADV) became a global leader of anime entertainment, innovation, media diversity, branded consumer products, licensing and publishing. By its 10th year, ADV was the largest employer of actors in the Southwest United States and expanded to include Tokyo and UK branches. Within a decade, ADV cemented its status as a major distributor of anime in North America, releasing titles such as Neon Genesis Evangelion, Sailor Moon, and Hello Kitty. The company also released live-action films on DVD, such as

Gene Roddenberry Eugene Wesley Roddenberry Sr. (August 19, 1921 – October 24, 1991) was an American television screenwriter and producer who created the science fiction series and fictional universe ''Star Trek.'' Born in El Paso, Texas, Roddenberry grew up ...

's Andromeda and Earth: Final Conflict as well as the Sci-Fi Channel and

Jim Henson James Maury Henson (September 24, 1936 – May 16, 1990) was an American puppeteer, animator, actor, and filmmaker who achieved worldwide notability as the creator of the Muppets. Henson was also well known for creating ''Fraggle Rock'' ( ...

hit series

Farscape ''Farscape'' is an Australian-American Science fiction on television, science fiction television series conceived by Rockne S. O'Bannon and produced by The Jim Henson Company and Hallmark Entertainment, originally for the Nine Network. It prem ...

, promoted original film releases and ventured into extreme wrestling with

Combat Zone Wrestling Combat Zone Wrestling (CZW) is an American independent professional wrestling promotion founded in 1999 by John Zandig. Commonly associated with the 2000s hardcore wrestling genre, early CZW shows showcased a brand of wrestling dubbed by the p ...

. Ledford then founded Anime Network, North America's first all-anime dedicated cable TV network, in 2001; it grew from just 500,000 households to reach over 40,000,000 households. The following year he started publishing Newtype USA in partnership with Kadokawa Publishing. The publishing operation grew to include ADV Manga, which licensed and published hundreds of Japanese

manga are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long history in earlier Japanese art. The term is used in Japan to refer to both comics ...

and Korean

manhwa Manhwa () is the general Korean term for comics and print cartoons. Outside Korea, the term usually refers to Korean comics. Modern Manhwa has extended its reach to many other countries. These comics have branched outside of Korea by acce ...

for North American distribution. Ledford co-founded J-Spec Pictures in 2008 with producer Joseph Chou. The company's first project revolved around

Halo HALO, halo, halos or haloes may refer to: Most common meanings * Halo (optical phenomenon) * Halo (religious iconography), a ring of light around the image of a head * ''Halo'' (franchise), a sci-fi video game series (2001–2021) Arts and en ...

, the hit video game franchise by developer

Bungie Bungie, Inc. is an American video game company based in Bellevue, Washington, and a subsidiary of Sony Interactive Entertainment. The company was established in May 1991 by Alex Seropian, who later brought in programmer Jason Jones (programme ...

and published by Microsoft Corp. In 2008, Ledford established separate companies from ADV called

and Sentai Holdings. Since then, Sentai has acquired roughly four hundred licenses including a number of acclaimed titles such as

Grave of the Fireflies is a 1988 Japanese Anime, animated war film written and directed by Isao Takahata, and produced by Studio Ghibli. It is based on the 1967 semi-autobiographical Grave of the Fireflies (short story), short story of the same name by Akiyuki Nosaka ...

Ninja Scroll is a 1993 Japanese animated ''jidaigeki''- ''chanbara'' film written and directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri, starring the voices of Kōichi Yamadera, Emi Shinohara, Takeshi Aono, Daisuke Gōri, Toshihiko Seki and Shūichirō Moriyama. The film ...

, High School of the Dead, and

Gatchaman is a Japanese animated media franchise about a five-member superhero ninja team created by Tatsuo Yoshida and produced by Tatsunoko Productions. The original anime series, which debuted in 1972, was eponymously entitled ''Kagaku Ninja-tai Gat ...

. In 2014, Sentai Filmworks acquired the North American license to Short Peace, an omnibus collection of four anime shorts including the 86th

Academy Awards The Academy Awards, commonly known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit in film. They are presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) in the United States in recognition of excellence in ...

-nominated Best Animated Short Film "Possessions" directed by Shuhei Morita. The film had a nationwide theatrical release in over 250 theaters. Ledford created the anime streaming service HIDIVE, which launched in June 2017. Sentai Filmworks continues to manage one of the world's largest anime libraries released across traditional and digital media platforms. Sentai Filmworks, Sentai Holdings, and the HIDIVE streaming service were sold to AMC Networks in January 2022. Ledford created Infinite Frontiers in 2010 to aggregate digital content through accounts such as

Hulu Hulu (, ) is an American Subscription business model, subscription streaming media service owned by Disney Streaming, a subsidiary of the Disney Entertainment segment of the Walt Disney Company. It was launched on October 29, 2007, initially as ...

Netflix Netflix is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service. The service primarily distributes original and acquired films and television shows from various genres, and it is available internationally in multiple lang ...

iTunes iTunes is a media player, media library, and mobile device management (MDM) utility developed by Apple. It is used to purchase, play, download and organize digital multimedia on personal computers running the macOS and Windows operating s ...

PlayStation is a video gaming brand owned and produced by Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), a division of Japanese conglomerate Sony. Its flagship products consists of a series of home video game consoles produced under the brand; it also consists ...

and

Xbox Live The Xbox network, formerly known and commonly referred to as Xbox Live, is an online multiplayer gaming and digital media delivery service created and operated by Microsoft Gaming for the Xbox brand. It was first made available to the origina ...

. Still an avid fan of games, two years later he founded Spectre Media as a mobile gaming start up to develop and publish games to

Apple iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

, Android and web browsers. The company's debut launch title was ''Mobile Infantry (Starship Troopers)'', based on the sci-fi movie, comic and book franchise ''

Starship Troopers ''Starship Troopers'' is a military science fiction novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein. Written in a few weeks in reaction to the US suspending nuclear tests, the story was first published as a two-part serial in ''The Magazine of ...

''.

References

External links

* *
LinkedIn Profile

Official Sentai Filmworks Website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ledford, John 1968 births Television producers from Texas Living people Businesspeople from Houston ADV Films 20th-century American businesspeople 21st-century American businesspeople

Life and career

References

Other articles

External links