As anime continues to grow globally and become available on various streaming platforms, how overseas licensing works from a Japanese perspective remains very much a mystery. We had the chance to chat with KADOKAWA's Yuna Kishita as she talked about sales, international marketing, etc.
Thank you for taking the time. Can you talk about your role and responsibilities at KADOKAWA and Overseas Licensing?
Yuna Kishita: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak with you here. I appreciate that because I usually work behind the scenes and don't have much contact with the public.
By the way, Japanese names often have different pronunciations even when they are spelled with the same kanji, and this can be very complicated to translate them. So sometimes you may see my name written as “Yuna Kinoshita” on the internet, but it is actually “Yuna Kishita”.
Japanese animation is built on many different types of rights management. Part of that rights management problem is international sales. KADOKAWA's international sales team is divided into two groups: one focused primarily on Asian territories and one focused on Western territories. I primarily work for the western territory group.
The core job of international sales is to make licensing agreements with other companies. These offers allow customers outside Japan to do things like watch our programming on their video streaming service or purchase related merchandise and Blu-ray/DVD discs from stores in their country.
In today's industry, the production of 12 typical anime-episode productions costs several hundred million yen. It's an expensive proposition. Part of the business model to recoup that money is to sell internationally.
The services we work with include Netflix, Disney+, Crunchyroll, Sentai Filmworks/HIDIVE, bilibili, Tencent, MUSE, Medialink, Aniplus, etc. As an anime fan, I'm sure you're familiar with at least one some of these. My team does business with a lot of different companies around the world, so that's not an exhaustive list, but basically, we reach out to companies like these—we call them “promoters.” licensing”—and said, “This is an interesting program we have. What do you think?” Then we will proceed with the price negotiation process. We also negotiate the territories and languages in which the video can be distributed, airtime and other licensing rights. That is our main role.
Recently, we've also gone a little further. We asked ourselves, “How can we get this to as many people as possible? Even just one more person?” We tested many different ideas and saw what worked. Most recently, for programs such as [OSHI NO KO] and Fun in the dungeon, we created an X (Twitter) account suitable for overseas fans. We read all your answers and mentions!
© A x Y/S, OP
Recently, 【OSHI NO KO】Ichigo Production☆Fan Festival 2023 was held in Japan and is available for international streaming. However, there is a fee (both domestic viewing in Japan and international viewing) that may not be popular with international fans. Can you talk about that? What can international fans do to make more events and content in Japan available for international streaming or availability?
Anime series 【OSHI NO KO】 Special Event Ichigo Production☆Fan Festival 2023 event includes live dialogue performances and live music. Events like this have a lot of moving parts, both human and physical: not only do you have performers, but you also have the technical and production staff needed to put on a show on the field. stage, along with the equipment and materials that need to be arranged for. So, unfortunately, there are quite big obstacles to holding these events abroad.
However, when there is very high support from foreign fans for a particular show, I don't think it is impossible to overcome these obstacles and make it happen. So I hope you all will continue to support the shows you love.
I often see fans asking, “Why can't I watch similar shows outside of Japan?” If you truly want to support a program, I ask that you support it in formal and appropriate ways.
International fans can support anime series such as [OSHI NO KO] and The Eminence in Shadow in what way from your side?
I actually lived in the United States for a while as a student. I barely knew English when I came here so there were a lot of difficult times. However, even when I have difficulty with English, I can still chat with people through manga and anime topics. I was deeply moved by that. And now the phrase [OSHI NO KO] has become part of our common vocabulary, even across different countries and languages. Is that wild? (laugh).
Now, when I go to work every day, I try to help as many people as possible watch anime and experience more joy in their daily lives. No matter how much we want it, unfortunately it is difficult to give each of you everything you want at the same time. But to help lay the foundation that will allow us to realize more of those wishes, I want you to support our distributors. You can do that through things like watching shows on the official streaming services I listed earlier and purchasing pirated goods from reputable stores. These are the types of actions that give us numbers that we can count and include in a program's performance report.
How many Blu-ray and home video copies sold in Japan is sometimes considered a case study number for whether an anime is successful or not in the 2010s. With the diversification of anime through streaming and other avenues, are there other ways that an anime series can be considered “successful”?
When it comes to the state of Japan's anime industry, the Japan Animation Association's detailed survey report is a good reference. AJA publishes online English-language summaries of the report each year, which I think are worth checking out.
As you said, the diversification going on makes it very difficult to decide on measures of success. And there's also the problem of the difference between a show's actual performance numbers and its popular reputation, since those two things sometimes don't match up. I think in the end, what matters will be the total sales of the show across all global revenue streams: streaming, broadcast television, home video sales, merchandise, events, etc.
Can you share some observations with fans as they look forward to more anime series and sequels?
We will continue to make Japanese animation, so I would really like to ask for your support towards our official distributors. That way, when we say, “Look how many foreign fans are looking forward to shows like this,” we have evidence to prove it!
I also want to tell everyone one more thing. Because my team wants as many people as possible to know about our show, we've been experimenting with things like putting English Subtitles on our videos, creating English websites and so on, but we There's not nearly enough time or language talent to do everything I want! We want to expand these efforts into more languages where possible. If any of you reading this would like to join our efforts, we'd be happy to talk to you about translation!
There are a lot of KADOKAWA anime coming out that I'm personally very excited about. Please look forward to them!
