Hayao Miyazaki’s Apprentice is Crowdfunding A New Anime On Anipipo

For all you anime lovers out there, this crowdfunding startup is for you. It allows you to crowdfund the latest up-and-coming anime artists. And just to show you that this isn’t just for kids, Anipipo got Kenji Itoso, one of Hayao Miyazaki’s main apprentices, on board.

If you don’t know who Hayao Miyazaki is, let me give you a quick primer. He’s the founder and main creative architect behind Studio Ghibli. A studio founded in 1985 in Tokyo, Japan, and which is worth up to $150 million today. Some of their hit titles include, Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro, Howl’s Moving Castle, and Spirited Away. All critically acclaimed titles (and more) that have put Studio Ghibli on the map, and often bring up comparisons to Walt Disney. Now, Kenji Itoso is fundraising his own anime project right on Anipipo.

Anipipo, according to founder Hiroaki Taira, feels that his startup is particularly timely:

Many animation creators are now suffering from low wages and are looking for a way to capture fans globally, but most of them do not have a channel or don’t know what to do to reach to the fans. We wanted to solve this problem by offering a crowdfunding platform where we can help them get funding for creation and also capture fans in advance.

Hiroaki, who has a background in animation, leveraged his network from Tokyo Polytechnic University and was able to reach out to artists who were open to the project. His eventual goal is a big one:

To produce a project that can win the Academy Award for ‘Best Short Animated Film’, and provide sufficient funding to create animation and also by connecting fans from all over the world through our platform.

The numbers at Anipipo

The project beta launched on May 23. It currently lists four projects, of which Kenji Itoso’s is one. Kenji has already raised ¥534,001 ($5,400). The latest project up for crowdfunding aims create a character to “cheer up reconstruction of the Tohoku region in Japan that suffered from the earthquake in 2011.” So far, the site has crowdfunded over ¥600,000 ($6,100) and the goal for this year is to fund a total of just over $500,000. In terms of Anipipo’s business model, like other crowdfunding platforms, Anipipo takes a 15 percent cut of the project for helping to promote the project.

Personally, as an anime fanatic, I’m excited to see projects coming out of the ecosystem that Hiroaki is trying to create. Especially as it now enables anime fans all over the world to crowdfund anime projects from their favorite artists – or even from unknown artists that have a lot of potential.

(Editing by Steven Milward and Enricko Lukman)