The story
The company was founded in 1988 in Ithaca, New York, by Robert Woodhead and Roe R. Adams III while they were working on Wizardry IV: The Return of Werdna as a joke. Their first release was Metal Skin Panic Madox 01. The company later relocated to Wilmington, North Carolina, where it was run by Natsumi Ueki, Woodhead's wife. In July 2003, the company signed a deal with Koch Entertainment to help market and distribute their titles in the United States and Canada.
Between 2010 and 2013, the company lost a lot of its titles. For example, in February 2010, they announced they lost the rights to the Oh My Goddess! OVAs. In April 2010, the company announced they were unable to license the remaining episodes of Yawara!. They later lost the rights to the episodes they had previously licensed. In February 2011, the company announced they had lost the rights to Urusei Yatsura, one of their more popular titles. The company also lost the rights to the You're Under Arrest and Battle Royal High School anime series, as well as the Zatoichi, Lone Wolf and Cub, and Portrait of Hell live action movies.
In October 2013, AnimEigo launched their first Kickstarter campaign to crowdfund a new release, specifically to re-release Bubblegum Crisis as a limited edition Blu-ray. The Kickstarter was successfully funded in October 2013, and the Blu-ray was subsequently released in December 2014. They also successfully kickstarted re-releases of Otaku no Video, Riding Bean, A.D. Police Files, Gunsmith Cats, Megazone 23, Metal Skin Panic MADOX-01, and Macross II: Lovers Again.
In February 2024, MediaOCD, a post-production firm owned by Anime News Network founder Justin Sevakis, acquired AnimEigo's video distribution business. Woodhead and Ueki stayed on to assist in the transition and oversaw the completion of existing projects before they retired.
From Wikipedia’s article on AnimEigo, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4