Shopping Guide
The freshly established Studio Trigger has made a huge step forward with a project that involved their fans worldwide. They succeeded in gathering funds for the production of their next anime, Little Witch Academia 2 (tentative title), collecting about $625,000 (approx. ¥60 million) from roughly 8,000 fans around the world. From these funds, Trigger will produce a 40-minute-long short anime in 2014, making it an anime born from fans’ support.
The origin of this project is the short anime Little Witch Academia which was first created within the scope of the “Young Animator Training Project” of the Agency for Cultural Affairs. This anime is roughly 25 minutes long and it has received many glowing reviews.
Because of this, Trigger decided to venture into crowdfunding, a method that has gathered attention in recent years, for collecting the production fees for the sequel. Crowdfunding is a form of fundraising in which individuals spend their own money to help fund an incomplete project and in return are offered rewards called “pledges.”
Trigger solicited support for the production of Little Witch Academia 2 through a major American crowdfunding service called Kickstarter. Their initial goal was $150,000, an amount sufficient for producing a 20-minute-long sequel. However, when this goal was met in merely six hours after fundraising began on July 9, they raised the goal to the next level. As a result, in the one month recruiting period, they succeeded in earning the support of 7,938 people in the form of $625,000 (¥60 million). It is astounding that the sequel to such an under-the-radar short anime could gather the support of nearly 8,000 people.
However, prior to the project, Trigger uploaded Little Witch Academia in its entirety to the Internet for free, and it was viewed by many people from overseas and received overwhelmingly positive support. Furthermore, synched with the start of the project, they participated in the biggest anime event in the U.S., Anime Expo, at which they organized talks and fan events. There is no doubt that the steady promotion and interactions with fans had a great influence on the outcome of this sequel.
Recently, even anime staff in Japan are taking a growing interest in crowdfunding. However, it is unknown to what degree crowdfunding would be beneficial in gathering funds for anime with relatively bigger budgets. Trigger’s success in undertaking funding for Little Witch Academia 2 gives a hint at the answer to this question.
Meanwhile, Little Witch Academia was released on Blu-ray earlier this month. It is being sold in a ¥6,000 (tax included) package that contains the 26-minute anime, a documentary video titled When Magic Is Born (66 minutes), the original soundtrack CD, and a 112-page book. It has subtitles in Japanese and six other languages: English, Spanish, Chinese, German, French, and Italian. It is planned to release at the same time in America, which is also a way of showing consideration for overseas fans.
Good Smile Online Shop is currently accepting orders for the BD, and it was also sold in advance between Aug. 10-12 at BB Shop at Comiket 84.
Below is a comment from Masahiko Otsuka, representative, board member, and company director of Studio Trigger.
>The support we received greatly surpassed our expectations; I was very surprised and deeply moved. But at the same time, I also feel a huge amount of pressure, because the real sense of the success or failure of this new experiment depends on the anime we are going to make. We are going to tightly grab the baton our fans gave us and run with our full strength!
Source: AnimeAnime
© Y. Yoshinari / Trigger Inc.
