Ladies and gentlemen, I come not to praise anime today, but to bury it. Well, sort of.

I'm prompted to do so because of a recent online commentary by Eric Sherman, president of Burbank, Calif., dubbing studio Bang Zoom! Entertainment.

Those of you who caught Conan O'Brien's all-too-short “;Tonight Show”; run might remember Bang Zoom! as the studio that O'Brien and sidekick Andy Richter visited, doing quick English dubs of Manga Entertainment productions (or as they said it, “;MAAAAAAANGAAAA!!!!!”;).

But there was nothing funny about what Sherman wrote about the anime industry. Fewer U.S. anime publishers are around today, he argued, and less anime is available for sale at retailers like Best Buy. He reasoned that illegal downloads from the Internet are to blame for their demise ... and could lead to the downfall of other publishers as well. As he wrote in bold letters, “;Anime is going to die.”;

Much online murmuring ensued. The Anime News Network discussion board tied in to the story had 930 comments posted as of Wednesday afternoon. Sherman's blog entry itself, available at goanimetv.com/?p=668, had 258 comments before comments were shut off. It's a morass of opinion that I dare not wander into because they are likely to be mostly varying degrees of the following:

» “;Yeah! He's right! Support anime publishers! Down with Internet piracy!”;

» “;Nuh-uh! He's a money-grubbing poopy-head! With cooties!”;

Sherman does make a good point. One of the biggest arguments for fansubs, or anime series that have English subtitles added by fans, is that they serve as a promotional tool. The theory goes that once the series is formally licensed by a U.S. publisher, fans will dutifully delete their copies and buy the DVDs. In practice, those series remain on hard drives and DVDs aren't being purchased. Multiply this by at least a few thousand fans, and that's a lot of money being sucked out of retail channels.

A bigger issue, however, could be the fact that anime doesn't have the same cachet it had a few years ago. Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming block, perhaps the most prominent anime block left on basic cable, now airs anime only on Saturdays. Most of its current lineup—“;Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood,”; “;Inu-Yasha,”; “;Cowboy Bebop,”; “;Bleach,”; “;The Big O”; and “;Ghost in the Shell: Stand-Alone Complex”;—have re-aired multiple times or are newer versions of what's re-aired. If casual fans who don't dabble in online downloads don't see other series on air, they certainly won't buy anything new. Consequently, a good amount of the series offered now aren't achieving sales needed to sustain the industry, forcing publishers to cut costs, which results in fewer English dubs being produced. And this leads anime dubbing studios to warn that anime is on the brink of extinction.

Which brings us full circle. There is no magic solution to the industry's problems. All we can keep doing is the right thing and encourage others to do the same.

ANIME AROUND TOWN

» MangaBento: This group of anime- and manga-inspired artists meets from 1 to 4 p.m. today at the Academy Art Center, 1111 Victoria St., Room 200. Visit http://www.manga-bento.com.

Jason S. Yadao is the author of Rough Guides' “;The Rough Guide to Manga,”; now available. For more anime and manga news and commentary, check out “;Otaku Ohana”; at blogs.starbulletin.com/otakuohana. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/jsyadao or e-mail him at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).