Everyone is ready to jump into crowdfunding after some high-profile and monetary successes. Anime and manga have found their own success in this new branch of business as well. Even as we write this, the Time of Eve Kickstarter is climbing its way to $100,000 with more than half a month left to go. So it seems only natural that we’ll be seeing more and more of these types of projects popping up.
AnimeSols is certainly an idea that several people have been playing with ever since Kickstarter has started to gain real traction as a method for seemingly impossible projects to get funding by going directly to the fans for support of things that would be seen as far too micro-niche to be profitable. After several successful Kickstarters around Tezuka manga and Kickheart there has been a growing interest into what other areas of anime and manga creation and licensing could become a reality with funding via crowdsourcing. It seemed like an idea that could work for more than what has been explored so far.
One of the more popular suggestions has been the idea that older manga series that most companies would pass over as being not financially viable via normal means or might have a chance with a well orchestrated Kickstarter. No one might normally be interested in picking up Aim for the Ace! using the traditional anime localization model. But with something that circumvents the risks that are inherent with older series might make them a more distinct possibility.
And so it seems while everyone else was talking about the idea Sam Pinansky and AnimeSols were already working on setting up a system to do this very idea on a much larger scale than almost anyone else had proposed. The idea behind AnimeSols is to bring together several major anime Japanese companies and have them create a site that lets them attempt to crowdfund the psychical release of older or more unusual titles that would not normally have a chance in the U.S.A. Instead of trying to drum up support for each title individually with different people involved each time AnimeSols would let people have a one stop shopping site with a wide variety of titles to choose from. Theoretically this allows the Japanese companies to see what titles can garner a small but devoted fan base that might otherwise be invisible to the standard U.S. licensors.
But the important part of that last statement is this is all theoretical. As much positive and hopeful conversation has come from successful crowdfunding projects the whole system has produced just as much negative and skeptical backlash from failed or troubled cases. Even some very successful ventures are engendering a good deal of rumination on the idea that maybe all the pie in the sky talk coming out of these is a bit misguided. And AnimeSols is grander in scope that any previous attempt in the anime and manga field. Some ideas just don’t scale well when you get them to a bigger size. Others thrive. So this post is an examination of the AnimeSols project as we see it so far. How well does it work as a website and what do we see in it as the future of anime crowdsourcing?
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