Why random rich fans don’t produce anime, or When your startup is an anime studio: how I, a gaijin outsider, tried to produce an anime to advertise my favorite anime, and why I haven’t succeeded (yet)

A while back, I fell in love with an unique anime. It has all features of the most cult classic titles in history, including commercial success, talented authors, loyal audience and unmatched creative level. In short, everything except one — the deserved popularity, so I decided to give it a good publicity.

My pathetic attempts to make it more popular by talking about it here and there haven’t been efficient. Then, I noticed when most people learn about old, forgotten anime:

• As soon as new entries in the franchise appear;
• As soon as similar, more popular anime appears.

And only then, since I don’t own the rights to the franchise and even the development of old franchises can, most often, pique the interest of the old fans only, I decided to achieve a production of another good anime as an advertisement for the original one (and to profit off it a bit).

What I did

I conducted a big study and figured out that the show didn’t have any problems that would make it less popular. The problem was the marketing campaign that advertised it to the wrong people, in the wrong place and at the wrong time.

1. I made a research presentation of the original product that describes its commercial success, artistic value, marketing failure, and explains why it requires a remake of sorts.
2. I wrote a presentation and an essay — a study of similar titles and their audience. It explains how to produce something that would be liked, based on:

• The most commercially successful anime movies in history;
• The reference anime that inspired the original product;
• Other anime similar to the reference one, including the original product.

The conclusions of the study are as follows:

• To make a product better selling, it has to be made more accessible for the least talented viewers;
• Beautiful and commercially successful products keep the balance between beauty and accessibility;
• For the best sales, the product must be made as interesting and announced to as much wide audience as possible, especially the audience of the least talented viewers. There is a ton of horrendous anime that sell well because they are so unsophisticated that they’re accessible for everyone (all products of the entertainment industry are prone to this disease);
• The original product — the best of its kind, even surpassing the reference one — has failed only due to a ill-conceived marketing campaign.

3. I conducted a study (based on Anilist data) what makes an anime similar to the reference one, because there are enough such anime, including the original product, and the understanding what people like in them is the key to the creation of something similar and no less successful. The study confirmed my conclusion about the need for the balance between artistry and accessibility.

4. I wrote a story as long as 33000 words, inspired by the original product and published in a niche journal to test the reaction of the target audience. It wasn’t acclaimed people unfamiliar with anime, but it was liked by the fans of the reference and the original products — they acclaimed it the most. That’s funny how, by choosing an inappropriate place to publish it, I repeated the mistake made by the authors of the original product!

So I have a goal (not just to make some money but to make something cool with money as a reward), enough time to pursue it (otherwise I wouldn’t be doing it) and a promising study of the market and the audience. Is it the time to look for investors?

Hold your horses.

The problems I faced

The idea isn’t convincing because it is too good
Reread the first paragraph another time.

There is a cult, commercially successful masterpiece that was made by some of the best people in the industry but that is not mainstream for some reason, and it is possible to profit off a production of a similar title that would advertise the original one and attract both the old loyal audience and the new fans.

Sounds like yet another AI-NFT-Ponzi-blockchain, doesn’t it? Except that everything said above is true. New viewers of the original product often get surprised that it is not a mainstream anime. Even I couldn’t believe that it ever exists after watching the first minutes of the first episode, and the more I learnt about it and its background, the more I understood that its existence is almost an actual miracle.

Unfortunately, despite being truth, it sounds too good to be it, that’s why it is so difficult to sell. Once I read the contents of the first paragraph to a japanologist, they stopped talking to me at all.

It’s difficult to avoid publicity and maintain trust at the same time
I am completely transparent with people who expressed interest in my project. I provide them with as much data as possible, encourage them to do own research and ask as many questions as they want. However, before people who aren’t yet interested, it is difficult to maintain transparency while keeping the details secret. Gatekeeping keeps unwanted attention out, but it also undermines trust.

The anime market is too niche for most
Nobody invests into anime except the Japanese entertainment industry corporations and not because it is impossible for foreigners (it is possible, though difficult). The problem is that anime is, anyway, a niche market. Venture capital funds aren’t interested in investing into arts, western studios aren’t interested in anime, and there are not many individual investors who are either already familiar with anime, or who can afford and are willing to devote their time and money for it.

I spammed dozens of cold emails, but so far I found less than 5 investors who also enjoy Japanese cartoons. We still exchange a mail or two per month. At least something is moving. Though slow. Painfully slow.

The original research is too good
My research contains the study of the original product, the audience and the “competitors” (similar shows), and also an actual product prototype (the story) that was acclaimed by the people from the target audience. That’s amazing!

Nobody has ever conducted any research of this scale in the anime industry. That’s horrible and right now I’ll explain why.

How are the decisions to produce most anime made? A producer — a representative of a company from the entertainment industry — finds some popular light novel or manga and decides to produce an anime based on it. He calls his industry colleagues, they gather a production committee and hire a studio that produces the anime.

Less often a producer may decide to create an original work and invite a popular author to write its screenplay.

Another well-tested method is to make an anime inspired by another one. That’s how entire genres are born and evolve. Some anime similar to the reference title mentioned above were created because their authors wanted to produce something similar.

What’s the thought process of a producer in each of these cases?

• It is popular, so it may be profitable, so it must be adapted (most often);
• That author has already wrote successful works, so he can write another one that could be adapted (less often);
• This anime is popular and successful, so people like it, so something similar could be produced (least often).

And what was my thought process? It’s enough to say that the short summary of my research states everything most important to know, but that’s not enough — to not appear unfounded, one has to demonstrate the methodology, too.

So “let’s produce something similar” doesn’t sound convincing enough, but nobody has enough time to read 12 A4 pages (fortunately, page breaks included) of the market and audience analysis with the explanation why “something similar” would not be enough. For this reason, it’s going to be difficult to introduce the representatives of the companies from the production committee to the research. That’s also one of the reasons why I’m in search of independent investors: if someone for some reason wouldn’t be quick enough with their decisions, a majority shareholder can always help them.

The unavailability of the key financial indicators
Profits and losses of anime is generally not a public information. In the best cases you can learn how much one or another movie made in box office, or how many blu-ray sales of one or another title were made in Japan. Sometimes it is impossible to find even these indicators.

Investors love numbers. How to demonstrate how much money can be made with a work targeted at the fans of another one? To demonstrate the profits of that another work. How to do it when the numbers don’t even get published? Two convincing arguments would be the sales volume of blu-rays and merchandise, but that’s not enough.

Moreover, when deciding to produce an anime, the popularity of the source works (both for anime adaptations and similar works) or the authors has more weight than financial data, for two reasons:

1. Popular works and authors generate profits;
2. Valid financial data is not available to anyone except the copyright holders of the original works.

How can I demonstrate the indicators that nobody can calculate except the copyright holders of the titles I studied? And are they even necessary if nobody in the industry even cares about them?

Lack of non-money resources: time and connections
Fortunately, I have enough time (otherwise my story wouldn’t be written this quick), but others are catastrophically short on it, and my waiting lasts painfully. I also don’t know anyone from the anime industry. That’s good that it is a solvable problem because one Japanese citizen volunteered to help me, but the lack of time in everyone’s schedule except mine depresses.

Here’s another problem: people without connections are not trusted, but the connections can’t be made without funding. The talented people won’t work for free, but you can’t get funding without attracting talented people. That’s the very catch-22!

The lack of freely available information
I was surprised when I learnt how much the platforms like Pitchbook want for their services. All freely accessible lists of venture capital funds and individual investors don’t contain enough info, and one has to pay for verified, up-to-date data (pun intended).

Tech limitations: high tech low life
The inability to recall sent emails is annoying on its own: when there are important news, it would be better to recall a sent email and write another one than to clog one’s mailbox with unnecessary junk, but sadly the SMTP protocol doesn’t let it.

What did I learn?

You have to be quick
I lost so much time trying to find necessary connections among my acquaintances and the acquaintances of my acquaintances. If only I first tried to find professional investors, I wouldn’t have lost months of my time. Unfortunately, I’m a slowpoke.

If they keep promising to jam tomorrow — that’s a red flag
Regardless if they have valid reasons, if they won’t devote time to you, it means that you’re not their priority. Find those who would find interest in you and your project. If anyone comes too late, it would be a lesson for them.

Time exists to use it and not to abuse it
I wrote the story for the research while waiting for another email response, and finished it just as soon as I was given a permission to publish it to test the reaction of the audience. During the writing process, I understood that the story is also good enough to become a candidate for an adaptation. If I’d been being stupid and waiting for someone else’s decision whether to start writing or not, I’d waste a month!

I’m not always short and to the point
Long emails and documents take away time to read them. There is probably a way to shorten my study without sacrificing its major takeaways, but I couldn’t figure it out. I have to redeem myself!

Spam works
Cold outreach has low efficiency, but it is still efficient. People get upset for spam as much as you are upset to annoy them, but you never know if you’re going to stump into someone who is going to be actually interested in your offer. One indie director told me how simple advertising helped him to gather funds for his movie — and I thought that it doesn’t work!

What to do next

While I keep waiting until I finally get a response for my another email, you can:

• Ask me about my experience as viewer and as an artist;
• Give me any advice that you deem necessary — feel free to force me to face reality if I missed something;
• Introduce me to anyone who can help me;
• Pay for my Pitchbook subscription so I would annoy everyone around with my cold emails in an attempt to pique the interest of someone (if you’re as shameless as me).

But of course the best case would be if someone of you is rich enough and no less crazy than me to make this idea a reality. In his case, feel free to send me your:

• Investment portfolio (if any);
• The number of $ that you can afford investing into the production of a real anime;
• A description of anything else you can do to be useful;
• Any your contacts. Email, Telegram, Signal, Matrix, Discord — anything, but convenient to use for less tech literate people;
• The number of finished anime titles, at least approximately (if you’ve watched any);
• Years/months/weeks of anime watching experience, at least approximately (if you have any);
• Top n of your favorite and hated anime titles, where n is any number you deem necessary (if you’ve watched any);
• Your guesses what are these reference and original titles;

You can reach out to me via walkthejewels@proton.me (or just subscribe to my Medium and I’ll reach out to you via your email). Don’t forget to remove Proton from your spam filters. If you don’t want to disclose your actual email, you can always register another one. I’ll introduce the coolest of you to my research and we’ll go do something great together!