{"id":615076,"date":"2024-03-31T17:24:58","date_gmt":"2024-03-31T14:24:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/anime-overseas-licensing-with-yuna-kishita\/"},"modified":"2024-03-31T17:24:58","modified_gmt":"2024-03-31T14:24:58","slug":"anime-overseas-licensing-with-yuna-kishita","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/anime-overseas-licensing-with-yuna-kishita\/","title":{"rendered":"#Anime Overseas Licensing with Yuna Kishita"},"content":{"rendered":"
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As anime<\/a> continues to grow globally and become readily available on various streaming platforms, the way in which overseas licensing from Japan\u2019s perspective has been left in a lot of mystery. We had the opportunity to talk to KADOKAWA\u2019s Yuna Kishita as she talks about international sales, marketing, and more.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Thank you for your time. Could you talk about your role and responsibilities at KADOKAWA and Overseas Licensing?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Yuna Kishita: <\/strong>Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak with you here. I app<\/a>reciate it, since I normally work behind the scenes and don\u2019t get to interact with the public much.<\/span><\/p>\n

By the way, Japanese names often have different pronunciations even when they\u2019re spelled with the same kanji, and it can be tricky to translate them. So you may see my name written as \u201cYuna Kinoshita\u201d on the internet sometimes, but it\u2019s actually \u201cYuna Kishita.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Japanese anime are built around various different types of rights management. One piece of that rights management puzzle is international sales. KADOKAWA\u2019s international sales team is subdivided into two teams: one which focuses mainly on Asian territories, and one which focuses on Western territories. I work mainly on the Western territory team.<\/span><\/p>\n

The core job of international sales is to make licensing deals with other companies. These deals allow customers outside of Japan to do things like watch our shows on their video streaming services or buy related merchandise and Blu-rays\/DVDs from stores in their countries.<\/span><\/p>\n

In today\u2019s industry, producing a typical 12-episode anime costs several hundred million yen. It\u2019s an expensive proposition. Part of the business model for recouping that money is international sales.<\/span><\/p>\n

The services we work with include Netflix, Disney+, Crunchyroll, Sentai Filmworks\/HIDIVE, bilibili, Tencent, MUSE, Media<\/a>link, Aniplus and more. As anime fans, I\u2019m sure you\u2019re already familiar with at least a few of these. My team does business with various companies all over the world, so that isn\u2019t an exhaustive list, but essentially we approach companies like these\u2014we call them \u201clicensees\u201d\u2014and say, \u201cHere\u2019s an interesting show we have available. What do you think?\u201d Then we go through the price negotiation process. We also negotiate which territories and languages it can be distributed in, how long it can stream for, and other licensing rights. That\u2019s our primary role.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lately we\u2019re also going a bit further. We ask ourselves, \u201cHow can we get this show to as many people as possible? Even just one more person?\u201d We\u2019ve been testing various ideas and seeing what works. Most recently, for shows like \u3010OSHI NO KO\u3011<\/a> <\/em>and Delicious in Dungeon<\/a>,<\/em> we\u2019ve created X (Twitter) accounts tailored to overseas fans. We read all your replies and mentions!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 A x Y\/\u200bS, OP<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Recently, \u3010OSHI NO KO\u3011<\/em>Ichigo Production\u2606Fan Festival 2023 was held in Japan and was available for international streaming. However, there was a fee (both domestic viewing in Japan and international viewing) which may not be common for international fans. Could you talk about that? What can international fans do to get more events and content in Japan to be available for international streaming or gain availability?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The anime series<\/a> \u3010OSHI NO KO\u3011<\/em> Special Event Ichigo Production\u2606Fan Festival 2023 event contained live dialogue performances and live music. Events like these have a lot of moving parts, both in terms of human and physical resources: you have not only the performers, but the technical and production staff needed to make a stage performance work, plus the equipment and materials that need to be arranged for. So there are unfortunately pretty high hurdles to holding these events overseas.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, when there is a very high degree of support from overseas fans for a particular show, I don\u2019t think it\u2019s impossible to overcome these hurdles and make it happen. So I hope you\u2019ll all keep giving your support to the shows you love.<\/span><\/p>\n

I often see fans ask, \u201cWhy can\u2019t I see such-and-such outside of Japan?\u201d If you truly want to support a show, I would ask you to support it in proper, official ways.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What are ways international fans can support anime series like \u3010OSHI NO KO\u3011<\/em> and The Eminence in Shadow<\/em> that could be seen from your side?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I actually lived in the United States for a while as a student. I hardly knew any English when I arrived, so there were a lot of tough times. And yet even with my English struggles, I was able to have conversations with people through the topics of manga and anime. I was profoundly moved by that. And now the phrase \u3010OSHI NO KO\u3011<\/em> is part of our common vocabulary, even across different countries and languages. Isn\u2019t that wild? (laughs).<\/span><\/p>\n

Now when I go to work each day, I try to help as many people as possible watch anime and experience more fun in their daily lives. As much as we may want to, it\u2019s unfortunately very hard to give each of you everything that you want all at once. But to help lay a foundation that will enable us to grant more of those wishes, I\u2019d like you to support our distributors. You can do that through things like watching shows on the official streaming services I listed earlier and buying non-pirated goods from reputable stores. These are the sorts of actions that give us numbers we can count and include in a show\u2019s performance reports.<\/span><\/p>\n

How many Blu-ray and home video copies sell in Japan has sometimes been looked at as a case study behind whether an anime is successful or not in the 2010\u2019s. With the diversification of anime with streaming and other avenues, what are other ways an anime series could be viewed as \u201csuccessful\u201d?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

When it comes to the state of Japan\u2019s anime industry, the detailed survey reports by The Association of Japanese Animations are good reference material. The AJA publishes English summaries<\/a> of each year\u2019s report online, which I think are worth checking out.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Just as you said, the ongoing diversification makes it very difficult to decide on metrics for success. And there\u2019s also the issue of discrepancies between a show\u2019s actual performance numbers and its popular reputation, since those two things sometimes don\u2019t match up. I think that ultimately, the important thing will be the show\u2019s combined total sales numbers across all global revenue streams: online streaming, TV broadcast, home video sales, merchandise, events, etc.<\/span><\/p>\n

Could you share some comments to fans as they look forward to more anime series and sequels?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

We will keep\u00a0\u00a0 making Japanese anime, so I\u2019d really like to ask for your support of our official distributors. That way when we say, \u201cLook how many overseas fans are looking forward to more shows like this,\u201d we have the proof to back it up!<\/span><\/p>\n

There\u2019s something else I\u2019d like to tell everyone, too. Since my team wants as many people as possible to know about our shows, we\u2019ve been testing things like putting English subtitles on our videos,<\/a> making English web pages,<\/a> and so on, but we don\u2019t have nearly the time and linguistic talent that we need to do everything we\u2019d like to do! We\u2019d like to expand these efforts into more languages if we can. If any of you reading this would like to join our efforts, we\u2019d love to speak with you about translation!<\/span><\/p>\n

There are a lot more KADOKAWA anime coming up that I\u2019m personally excited about. Please look forward to them!<\/span><\/p>\n

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For inquiries, please email us at contact@anitrendz.net with subject line \u201cKADOKAWA\u201d. Thank you to KADOKAWA and Yuna Kishita for the insightful interview.\u00a0<\/span>\n <\/div>\n