Many years ago, Hanabee Entertainment was proving to be a rising star in the Australian anime publishing industry. As years went on, they pivoted towards gaming merchandise, serving as the local distributor for Rooster Teeth merchandise. While they had gone quiet in recent years, in December 2019, an email from their CEO Eric Cherry announced that they were “all good” and laid out their plans for 2020. From there, presumably due to the COVID-19 pandemic… things went quiet once again. But clearly, some work has been happening in the background all these months.
A newsletter sent out to their follows this morning confirmed that things have been moving the last few months, and their warehouse managed to open its doors just before Melbourne re-entered Stage 4 lockdown. With this, you can now begin purchasing items from their online store once more.
This was not the big announcement, however. Hanabee has officially bought the game retailer Dungeon Crawl – the Melbourne-based gaming store which shuttered its doors in May 2020. Although the online store will not be selling video games, it does offer a collection of merchandise and apparel of games based off Kojima Productions and Sega titles.
The Hanabee Online Store is live right now. Anime fans can still purchase a number of their physical anime releases. These include Devil Survivor 2, Toradora, Bakemonogatari, Little Busters! and more. It is currently unknown whether Hanabee see themselves entering the anime licensing sphere once more.
