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CrunchyRoll and a whole world of tasteful anime beyond sushi - Mitchell Berger Cannes Film Festival Interview
In this delicious post-lunch interview we discuss local tastes, anime catalogue appeal, title acquisition, and the success story of Solo Leveling with the SVP of global commerce at the animation streamer. Solo Leveling footage © Solo Leveling Animation Partners
Audio transcription
"So I attended this beautiful panel by the beach in Cannes, which was about anime and then we had lunch. We didn't eat any crunchyrolls. We did not, no. But we now can talk CrunchyRoll. Thank you so much for having us, Mitchell. Thank you."
"This has been an ad hoc, but thank you so much. So one of the points of your panel was about resonating with the younger audience with anime. I know you talked several points, but which would you say is the key to resonating with this audience? I think what this audience, the reason it does resonate with them is it reflects back to them how they see the world and it helps them express who they are. There's a lot of talk in anime about collective success and looking for the greater good. It's not about personal glory. I think that's something that really resonates with a younger audience. It resonates with their worldview. So that is a way for them to help express who they are and that is why I believe they're so drawn to this medium and these stories. That's a fantastic summarise. Now let's go to the extreme, the full audience. A later discussion point was about how mainstream can it get. So where are you at right now? It depends on how you define mainstream. I would argue that anime is mainstream now. It's certainly much more mainstream than it's ever been before. There's a billion people worldwide that are anime interested or aware of it. There's a huge audience there so there's tons of room to grow. I think for us it's about bringing anime to the fans themselves and helping them express that. As I said before, that is kind of that mainstreaming of it. It's not something that you don't talk about. I mean we're here talking about it today which is in itself I think a comment of how mainstream it's already become. People know about anime and that's a wonderful thing for the genre and for the business. For the festival as well to kind of protect this and surround it. Alright, so how do you go about finding new projects? For example we have Solo Leveling. How do you consider what fits your audience and your catalogue? I think you said you sign like 50, 40, 50 projects a year. 40, 50, a quarter. A quarter? A quarter, yes. Alright. For us it's all about finding stories that resonate, that have an authentic voice, a good point of view, something that we think will appeal to the fans. But that can take a wide variety of things because we have a very large fan base. So it's finding things that we think are high quality, that have a good story to tell, that we think a portion of our audience will like. Those are the projects that we want to dive into and we support. I mentioned Solo Leveling and you said I think during your panel you said something like storytelling and message can come from anywhere in the world for anime which is beautiful. So both things, how do you think Korea is gonna play a role into this and perhaps any other region that you see that we will be watching a lot of anime from? Yeah, like I said stories do come from anywhere. Solo Leveling as you mentioned is a great example. It's based on a Korean manhwa comic which was a great piece of source material and it just goes to show then again great stories will find an audience and will find a place to be made. So I do think there are stories being told all over the world. There are voices that need to be heard. There are points of view that need to be looked at and all of those are on the table whether it's video game adaptations, it's novels, it's completely original ideas, it's different comic books. Anywhere you can find that right story if it resonates I think there's an opportunity to tell those stories through the medium of anime and reach that audience. I've been traveling around the world. I know you are based in the U.S."
"I'm from Spain. Our headquarters are in Denmark. We are in France. So what can you tell me about how the different countries are responding to your different subscription models and those that are free, the free content, one with advertisement, etc.? I think every territory has its own flavor. Every territory reacts slightly differently. Every territory likes different flavors of content and then the audiences within there. So we really try to focus on making sure that we do have a great offering for everybody regardless of where you are. We want to have a local voice and local authenticity but make sure that we're bringing you a wide breadth of content that is coming from a global audience perspective as well. All right and final one, I know you're traveling to Japan very soon so please tease us about something that's gonna come to the catalog in the near future that we have to be looking forward to. I don't know if I can give you any teases from that perspective. I would tell you one, go to theaters in August and September and see the Demon Slayer film. I want to see everybody at the theater but I can tell you there's a lot of great content on the way. A lot of great content but you're gonna have to come to the site and the theaters to find it for yourself."
"So subscribe, come to the theaters and we'll bring you some good stuff. Looking forward to all that. Thank you so much for your time, Mitchell. Thank you very much.
Enjoy the show and safe travels."
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