Folks from The Japan Research Institute came by to our office today.
They’re a think tank / consulting company, and they formed a group to do research on the anime/manga global market.
It seems like they already did a ton of research & interviews in Japan, and they are now gathering data from the US and Europe.
Of course they needed to start somewhere, so they had read VIZ president Horibuchi-san’s book “Moeru America” and asked us how our business fits or is different from the distribution & market data that was in the book. So Broccoli USA president Kaname and I gave them our data for anime & manga, although the anime data we have is from many many many years ago.
They’re spending a week in LA talking to various companies & visiting retailers, so other industry folks should be seeing them around for the rest of this week.
JRI’s impression of the anime/manga market so far seems to be that there needs to be a change in the business model for how anime is made & sold in Japan. It’s definitely something that the industry-side has been talking about for a while, but there seems to be a lot of issues with making changes from “how it’s been done.”
More on that tomorrow.
We’re hoping that JRI continues their study of the anime/manga market. They’re in the unique position of assembling anime companies together, AND have the influence of government agencies & officials. The Japanese government has dabbled in the anime/manga industry in bits and pieces, but it hasn’t made a big impact yet. And the trade association (and there are many of them)… I just don’t know what they really do, but you don’t really hear about them outside of Japan.
Of course our company is dissolving at the end of this month… so whatever JRI can do won’t help us directly, but I think it can help the US companies in the future too.
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