AnimeOnline editor-in-chief Rob Bricken has announced that parent company Navarre Corporation and sister company FUNimation Entertainment have decided to close the website as of 6 p.m. today.
“Navarre and FUNimation have made the choice to pull the plug on our little anime news site and community while they re-evaluate their internet strategy,” Bricken writes.
The five-month-old website had served as a source for anime and manga news, and a community hub for fans.
Update: The website has been taken completely off-line, replaced with a message that points to technical issues discovered during beta testing as the reason for the abrupt closing: “Rather than frustrating our fans by cobbling together technical fixes and slapping them onto the site, we feel it would be better for us to fix the issues, evaluate all the items fans want and re-launch the site at a later time.
“Keep an eye out for the exciting re-launch.”
