Anime has long been accepted by many outside of Japan, and in recent years, the genre has become even more mainstream as manga begins to outsell western comic books.
With that in mind, the Visual Industry Promotion Organization (VIPO), with support from the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI), have decided to train anime producers to pitch ideas in English.
We understand the VIPO has been training producers since January of this year in the art of pitching ideas in English to investors from those outside of Japan and other parts of Asia. The task was difficult because English is not an easy language to learn, but the five producers on-hand performed well.
The five producers in question are Ryūnosuke Watanabe, Yuki Nagano, Takae Masuda, Emmy Ozawa, and Ken Yoshida.
Each pitched showed had drawings and other things to get international investors excited about a particular project. It looked great from our perspective, and that is good news for the future of anime outside of the Land of the Rising Sun.
Time will tell if everything goes according to plan. We should see more international folks gaining access to Japan, and that means more anime for us, the fans.