This past week, I attended Licensing Expo in Las Vegas, my first time going since 2010. Catching up with my old licensees from my Capcom days as well as helping my current clients navigate the world of anime licensing made for an energizing(and exciting!) experience. Back home in Berkeley, I Read more…
When I was first learning Japanese, I often got tripped up with how we used the word mae (前). It means “before” in two very different senses: Let’s drop mae into a simple diagram to see where it appears to a reference person. I tend to think of time as Read more…
When Bandai Namco recruited me in 2011, I had experience with Japanese content from both Capcom and Crunchyroll. I was in the US for Capcom and primarily in Japan for Crunchyroll, but I had never worked in Japan for a Japanese company before. So when I got to Bandai Namco, Read more…
I joined Crunchyroll in March 2008 as their first business hire just five business days after congratulating them on announcing their Series A funding. The next day, we flew to Japan, and within six months we had lined up key Japanese rights holders to support the site with official streaming Read more…
I got to Capcom as a spunky kid who had worked all of a few months in game testing and run his own anime convention. So how, just a short time after my 2+ year stint at Capcom, did I end up becoming Crunchyroll’s licensing guy? Hint: it involves learning Read more…
Japanese manga, anime, and video game characters are beloved across the globe (and happen to generate big business), but when it comes to Japanese intellectual property (“IP“) rights, have you ever heard things like “They won’t accept any deals!” or “They won’t approve anything!” from your colleagues and peers? Such Read more…
Before I went to Netflix in April of 2020, I had never been in a role directly mapped to marketing. Throughout my career I’ve launched plenty of products — at big companies, startups, and even on my own — but “marketing org” was something new for me. Initially, I wasn’t Read more…