Tokyo Otaku Mode (TOM), a new media startup focusing on Japanese geek culture, announced today it has raised funds from three VC firms, including YJ Capital (the investment arm of Yahoo Japan), Itochu Technology Ventures, and DG Incubation (of Digital Garage). Financial details were not disclosed. Prior to this fundraising, the startup raised more than $500,000 from 500 Startups and several notable angel investors in Japan and the US.
TOM was founded in 2011 in Tokyo (registered in Delaware), and has acquired more than 10 million ‘likes’ on its Facebook fan page since then, with some posts getting more than 100,000 ‘likes’. The company is also noted for having ex-Apple iAd chief Andy Miller as an advisor, which should certainly help as it dips its toes into mobile. TOM recently introduced a smartphone app called Otaku Camera that allows you to turn your snapshots into fun manga-style pictures.
The startup is currently preparing to get into e-commerce as well, which should be a strong monetization channel for them. Given their enthusiastic fan base, it’s likely that same audience would purchase limited-production items such as the very geeky products often featured on the site.
Earlier in the month we did a feature on Tokyo Otaku Mode, and you can read even more about their story in that article.
Yahoo Japan (TYO:4689) has just released a very clever application called Face Stealer. It’s a fun camera app that lets you choose from an assortment of masks, including the Mona Lisa, US president Barack Obama, and a few others. I gave the app a quick run through, trying out the Obama mask and dog mask, and it works pretty well — although it is a little bit spooky (see my video above). Interestingly, users can also create their own masks to add to the list, simply by taking a photo of your friend and then wearing their face as a mask. Or you can select photos from your camera roll to create masks from. While posing in your favorite mask, you can take shapshots to share to Facebook and Twitter, or even video to share to Facebook and YouTube. It’s a fun little novelty photo app which I encourage you to try, especially if you’re feeling a little presidential. You can get it for free over on Apple’s App Store.
Yahoo Japan (TYO:4689) has just released a very clever application called Face Stealer. It’s a fun camera app that lets you choose from an assortment of masks, including the Mona Lisa, US president Barack Obama, and a few others. I gave the app a quick run through, trying out the Obama mask and dog mask, and it works pretty well — although it is a little bit spooky (see my video above).
Interestingly, users can also create their own masks to add to the list, simply by taking a photo of your friend and then wearing their face as a mask. Or you can select photos from your camera roll to create masks from.
While posing in your favorite mask, you can take shapshots to share to Facebook and Twitter, or even video to share to Facebook and YouTube.
It’s a fun little novelty photo app which I encourage you to try, especially if you’re feeling a little presidential. You can get it for free over on Apple’s App Store.
With Valentine’s Day almost here, Tokyo-based startup Gift Kitchen is running a campaign that allows 10 people to win a chance to get “giri-choco” (or literally ‘obligation chocolate gifts’) from a cute model at the startup. To enter, you need to tweet inspiring love confessions along with the designated hashtag #わたしバレンタインに告白します, meaning “I confess on Valentine’s Day”. If you’re lucky enough to rank in the top ten in retweets, you can win [1]. Gift Kitchen was founded last September by Manabu Ogawa and Shunsuke Usui (both of whom previously worked at Yahoo Japan) with intentions to improving the art of gift giving. A Japanese gift market survey says, more than 45% of women have not bee happy with the gifts men give them. And likely many of those women end up making a trip to a pawn shop or they resell them on an auction site. Gift Kitchen tries to solve this issue by allowing gift givers to create an online catalog, from which the receiving side can then choose their gift. A variety of products presented in the service are mostly brought from Amazon.com using an API, so the startup doesn’t have to worry about logistics or inventory, but…
With Valentine’s Day almost here, Tokyo-based startup Gift Kitchen is running a campaign that allows 10 people to win a chance to get “giri-choco” (or literally ‘obligation chocolate gifts’) from a cute model at the startup. To enter, you need to tweet inspiring love confessions along with the designated hashtag #わたしバレンタインに告白します, meaning “I confess on Valentine’s Day”. If you’re lucky enough to rank in the top ten in retweets, you can win [1].
Gift Kitchen was founded last September by Manabu Ogawa and Shunsuke Usui (both of whom previously worked at Yahoo Japan) with intentions to improving the art of gift giving. A Japanese gift market survey says, more than 45% of women have not bee happy with the gifts men give them. And likely many of those women end up making a trip to a pawn shop or they resell them on an auction site.
Gift Kitchen tries to solve this issue by allowing gift givers to create an online catalog, from which the receiving side can then choose their gift. A variety of products presented in the service are mostly brought from Amazon.com using an API, so the startup doesn’t have to worry about logistics or inventory, but merely generate revenue from sending affiliate traffic to Amazon. (correction: Their revenue comes from a service commission that the sender will pay.) They are planning to launch a gift recommendation feature as well, and social media-based algorithms could be a solution they will look at.
Unlike in other countries, it is only women who give presents (mainly chocolates) to men on the holiday. Men will reciprocate on White Day a month later. ↩
One of the biggest Japan-related tech stories from 2012 was the success of Cygames’ social card battle game Rage of Bahamut on DeNA’s Mobage network. Whether or not Japanese social games can succeed in markets abroad is a very interesting question, and Bahamut so far is perhaps the most convincing evidence to date that they can. With over 10 million users around the world, Rage of Bahamut has been an unexpected success, and a fixture atop the iOS and Android top grossing charts for the majority of 2012. While the folks at DeNA couldn’t disclose exactly how profitable Bahamut has been, they did proudly refer to it as “one of the most valuable apps in history.” Of course, the mobile gaming space is still young, but the feats of Bahamut and its developer Cygames, both at home and abroad, are certainly impressive. DeNA was impressed too, picking up a 20% stake in Cygames back in November of 2012 for the price of $92 million. I recently got in touch with some representatives from Cygames to find out more about the process of bringing Bamahut to markets outside Japan. Cygames’ Yuito Kimura was one of three directors, along with Akihiro Iino…
One of the biggest Japan-related tech stories from 2012 was the success of Cygames’ social card battle game Rage of Bahamut on DeNA’s Mobage network. Whether or not Japanese social games can succeed in markets abroad is a very interesting question, and Bahamut so far is perhaps the most convincing evidence to date that they can. With over 10 million users around the world, Rage of Bahamut has been an unexpected success, and a fixture atop the iOS and Android top grossing charts for the majority of 2012.
While the folks at DeNA couldn’t disclose exactly how profitable Bahamut has been, they did proudly refer to it as “one of the most valuable apps in history.” Of course, the mobile gaming space is still young, but the feats of Bahamut and its developer Cygames, both at home and abroad, are certainly impressive. DeNA was impressed too, picking up a 20% stake in Cygames back in November of 2012 for the price of $92 million.
I recently got in touch with some representatives from Cygames to find out more about the process of bringing Bamahut to markets outside Japan. Cygames’ Yuito Kimura was one of three directors, along with Akihiro Iino and Koichi Watanabe who originally developed the Rage of Bahamut concept. I asked him if they were confident that such mobile game genre like card battle games – which at that point were only really proven in Japan – could excel in overseas markets.
To be honest, not really. Back then, no card games like the ones popular in Japan had become breakout hits overseas. We really felt that there would be no way to know without giving it a try.
Cygames had ridden DeNA’s Mobage platform to success in Japan, and they thought perhaps the success of the partnership could extend overseas. DeNA executive Junichi Akagawa noted that they did think that “the desire to collect cool cards should be something universal,” and because of great artwork and past success in the Japanese market, they certainly thought it had the potential to be a hit internationally.
Since then, as we all know, Bahamut has been performed amazingly well on top grossing app charts, displaying surprising staying power (see charts below). Kimura says one reason for the games success is because they are always updating and improving it. In terms of making the game appealing for English-speaking users, there was some reworking of the design as well to appeal to Western audiences.
When I recently spoke to the folks from app metrics firm App Annie, one representative also cited outstanding marketing as one of the main reasons why Bahamut has done so well. But it’s important to note that the game was marketed differently abroad than it was in its home market. While the game was heavily advertised on television in and with out-of-home ads in Japan, a referral code system played a large role in helping the game spread in overseas markets. I can attest to this first hand actually, as anything that I’ve written about Bahamut in the past tends to attract a ton of comments from gamers who want to share their codes with others [1].
The game’s impressive artwork has surely helped Bahamut’s popularity among gamers, and I’m told that Cygames illustrator’s have previously worked on Japanese ‘AAA’ game titles [2]. In fact, a collection of artwork from the game was recently published as a book and is now available on Amazon Japan.
Kimura says that in total, the amount of people who worked on Bahamut is roughly the same as would be required for a console.
Whatever the reason for Bahamut’s popularity to date, it’s certainly a good example of a Japanese export thriving on a global scale. February 21st will mark the one-year anniversary of Bahamut on ‘Mobage West,’ so it will be interesting to watch Cygames moving forward with this and other titles for the international market.
This is part of our Crowdfunding in Japan series (RSS). Services like KickStarter have become a global phenomenon with the power to let creative individuals take their ideas to new heights. It’s happening here in Japan too, most notably on Campfire, the country’s answer to Kickstarter. Yuta Kayashima has been working as an illustrator while trying to realize his dream of becoming a manga artist. Ever since he was a student, he has been experimenting with the blending of manga and digital technology. His works Manga 2.0 (made with Adobe Flash) and Hack to the Brain were honored by the judicial committee for the Japanese Agency of Cultural Affairs. He has also distributed a special vertically written comic called Saiyu Shojo (A Young Girl’s Westward Trip) on the booklog site Puboo, a service where anyone can make and sell ebooks. From January through March 2013, Mr. Kayashima will participate in a modern art exhibition in Mexico featuring a Ukiyo-e theme. This Ukiyoe x Digital Comic project is a effort that combines traditional Japanese drawings and the latest media technology. He is planning to make an interactive comic, which will allow the audience to perform operations on the exhibit using a…
This is part of our Crowdfunding in Japan series (RSS). Services like KickStarter have become a global phenomenon with the power to let creative individuals take their ideas to new heights. It’s happening here in Japan too, most notably on Campfire, the country’s answer to Kickstarter.
Yuta Kayashima has been working as an illustrator while trying to realize his dream of becoming a manga artist. Ever since he was a student, he has been experimenting with the blending of manga and digital technology. His works Manga 2.0 (made with Adobe Flash) and Hack to the Brain were honored by the judicial committee for the Japanese Agency of Cultural Affairs. He has also distributed a special vertically written comic called Saiyu Shojo (A Young Girl’s Westward Trip) on the booklog site Puboo, a service where anyone can make and sell ebooks.
From January through March 2013, Mr. Kayashima will participate in a modern art exhibition in Mexico featuring a Ukiyo-e theme. This Ukiyoe x Digital Comic project is a effort that combines traditional Japanese drawings and the latest media technology. He is planning to make an interactive comic, which will allow the audience to perform operations on the exhibit using a mouse, and the scene will be displayed using a projector. The exhibit is described as follows:
Three beautiful sisters from the Ukiyo-e world travel through a time warp to the modern era. To their misfortune, in the present-day world their looks are no longer considered to be quite so attractive, but that does not curb their desire to be considered beautiful. They discover that many modern day anime characters are considered beautiful. As such, the jealous three sisters search for modern beauty, stealing various parts from other characters and competing against each other to enhance their own images.
It sounds like a pretty fascinating story, and if Kayashima’s past work is any indication (see video below), the exhibit should be equally impressive. For all our Mexican readers (we know there’s at least a few of you), do check out the exhibition if you get a chance.
The project recently appeared as a crowdfunding project on Campfire, and happily it turned out to be a success story, as the target of ¥250,000 (over $2,700) was successfully reached on Nov 3, 2012.
Dark Summoner, a card battle game from Japanese game developer A-Team (TYO:3662), has broken through the 5 million worldwide downloads milestone. The iOS game has been around for about a year, and the Android version launched this past summer. According to social games expert Serkan Toto, the game has seen some impressive profitability as well. The English version of the title has managed to stay in the 100 top grossing app ranks for iOS, and on Google Play both the English and Japanese versions have been in the top 10 or 15 since their release. A commercial featuring AKB48’s Haruna Kojima is currently in heavy rotation [1] on television in Japan promoting an in-game campaign that runs until February 15th allowing you to get special monster cards. You can check out the commercial below. They also have a ‘making of’ video online, if you’re into that sort of thing. I’ve only just begun playing this game, but if you enjoy the card battle genre you’ll probably like this one too. It takes a little while to get into, but the process of collecting rare monster cards and sacrificing other cards to improve them is pretty addicting. I hope to give…
AKB48’s Haruna Kojima, for A-Team’s Dark Summoner
Dark Summoner, a card battle game from Japanese game developer A-Team (TYO:3662), has broken through the 5 million worldwide downloads milestone. The iOS game has been around for about a year, and the Android version launched this past summer.
According to social games expert Serkan Toto, the game has seen some impressive profitability as well. The English version of the title has managed to stay in the 100 top grossing app ranks for iOS, and on Google Play both the English and Japanese versions have been in the top 10 or 15 since their release.
A commercial featuring AKB48’s Haruna Kojima is currently in heavy rotation [1] on television in Japan promoting an in-game campaign that runs until February 15th allowing you to get special monster cards. You can check out the commercial below. They also have a ‘making of’ video online, if you’re into that sort of thing.
I’ve only just begun playing this game, but if you enjoy the card battle genre you’ll probably like this one too. It takes a little while to get into, but the process of collecting rare monster cards and sacrificing other cards to improve them is pretty addicting. I hope to give it a short video review once I spend a little more time with it. In the meantime, if you have any tips or advice for the game, feel free to share it in the comments.
Masaru Ikeda
Rick Martin
The Bridge
