Déclic Images

Déclic Images is a French company specialised in the translation and sale of Japanese-style comics in the French-speaking world.

The Déclic Images trademark was born in 1999. As early as 2002, the company produced nearly half of all new Japanese anime published in France. The newly published series are often rich in episodes and their release dates come in quick succession.

The main goal of the company is to offer popular series that are accessible to all, containing at least 26 episodes. In order to ensure good sales, Déclic Images decided to produce both recent titles (Love Hina, Fruits Basket, etc.) and anime classics such as Heidi or Masters of the Universe.

A commercial war began in 2002 against Kaze animation and Dybex, Déclic Images' competitors in the anime market. This was despite the fact that both of the companies' products were distributed by Déclic Images' parent company, Manga Distribution. In order to guarantee its preeminence in the market, Déclic Images decided to offer Japanese copyright holders unprecedented licence-acquisition offers. Other publishers had the choice between offering equally interesting prices, falling back on less prestigious titles or hoping to find undiscovered talent.

At the height of Japanese anime sales in 2005, Déclic Images's sales reached 5.24 million euro. It sold its products in supermarkets, over the Internet and in specialised shops, and in 2004 launched a large marketing campaign that included TV ads. Despite this presence on the market, Déclic Images was in need of a coup, as each product generated only a small profit and Manga Distribution handled its supermarket presence badly. In 2005 everything changed for the young company.

After solid growth between 2002 and 2005, with a dozen titles being released per year, the company released Goldorak in August 2005. It was later revealed that Déclic Images did not hold the rights to the title. After extensive judicial travails, a French appeals court confirmed in 2009 a judgment of 4.8 million euro in damages against the company. Several matters remain in the courts, including the matter of a 2006 release of Captain Future without proper licensing rights.

Déclic Images has since gone through a number of restructurings and recovery proceedings, and currently seems to be in the impossibility of finding new licensing opportunities, nowadays only relying on re-releases of their current library of titles, having lost the confidence of Japanese distributors and producers, leaving sequels and remakes of anime series that they have licensed (such as Full Metal Panic!: The Second Raid and Last Exile: Fam, the Silver Wing) unlicensed. Their last license before they stopped licensing anime titles was Gakuen Alice. Black Lagoon, Black Lagoon: The Second Barrage, and X were relicensed by Kazé in 2012, and the company also licensed Black Lagoon: Roberta's Blood Trail. Full Metal Panic! and Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu were relicensed by Dybex in 2014, and the company also licensed Full Metal Panic!: The Second Raid.