John Ledford

John Ledford is an entrepreneur and leader in the North American anime industry. In 1992 he founded A.D. Vision ADV paving the way for other businesses and the exponential growth anime has had within North America. With ADVs success Ledford turned his sights to making the imaginative world of anime even more accessible with Anime Networks founding North Americas first cable TV network dedicated to anime. He later partnered with Kadokawa Publishing and began Newtype USA with translated Japanese content and exclusive U.S. material related to all things anime manga and model reviews. This endeavor expanded into ADV Manga which obtained licensing and publishing rights for hundreds of Japanese manga and Korean manhwa. In 2008 Ledford founded a new animefocused company called Sentai Filmworks Sentai. Since its founding Sentai provides thousands of hours of content across traditional and digital platforms. Sentais dedication to bringing captivating stories including acclaimed titles such as Grave of the Fireflies Ninja Scroll and High School of the Dead to audiences is ongoing. Ledfords most recent success is with the 2017 founding of the streaming service HIDIVE. Since launching HIDIVE is now available via a web browser mobile devices gaming platforms and more. HIDIVE offers new simulcasts every season an evergrowing collection of dubs and exclusive titles. The service features DUBCAST SM editions early access locallanguage dubs of simulcasts directly produced by HIDIVE as early as two weeks after the original Japanese broadcast. For nearly thirty years now Ledford continues his goal to further the expansion of anime and the Japanese culture as a whole.