Japacon Tv #11 - 04 - The world of figures - Good smile company vol.2 - English subbed

Japacon TV In the figure world, Good Smile Company has made many headlines and gotten a lot of attention. They made the anime DVD for Black Rock Shooter and distributed it as a supplement to a magazine free of charge. Thanks to the awareness of the free DVD, the Black Rock Shooter figure they created became a big hit! Also, they formed a racing team and won first place with a racing car covered in Hatsune Miku drawings! It’s derived “Racing Miku” figure series then became popular. President Aki, who has grown the company with new strategies one after another, is now focusing on an expansion to China. In 2011, they established an overseas branch called Good Smile Shanghai. What’s the background on this expansion to China? In a nutshell, the number of otaku has increased. They love otaku content and quite a few young people take in anime and games as part of their lives. When those people exist, there is a timing in which their creativity stands out, and now there are more creators who want to create prototype figures. These creators open their booths at conventions. I asked if there are many of this type of creators and found out there are. So I thought we could do something with those creators. And this is the Hatsune Miku figure that a modeler from China made. I heard this is the third prototype figure he/she made, but it is well done. How do you find prototype creators? We try to recruit at events and from tryouts held all over Asia. What do they do at Good Smile Shanghai? For now, planning and marketing is decided in Japan. The Shanghai team produces and sells products and works as a distributor. How many bootleg versions are found in the market? Nendoroids are easy to copy, so there are many Nendoroid copies. There are three types of bootlegged items and someone wrote an article comparing them. It’s possible to estimate how many bootlegged items are sold by collecting data in the market. Bootlegged items sell five times more than official ones. As measures against these items, the differences between official products and fakes are posted on the website. Take this for example! The official one has vivid color, whereas the fake one is faded. It even has a key chain on its head and the colors of the hair and the belts are completely different. On the package, the official item has an official mark, but the fake one doesn’t, and the figure base doesn’t have the copyright sign. These are explained on the official site. What’s your next business vision? We’re interested in 3D printers. Many things can be done with reasonable printers, so we hope we can do something with overseas makers. The strategies of the leading company in the figure world, Good Smile Company, are to speed up the process with an optical modeling machine in order to have high efficiency. They also established the Shanghai branch for more prototype creators and more distribution, and are earnestly proceeding in expanding to Asia. After this, we will talk to the popular overseas figure maker Kotobukiya about the inside story of Star Wars!