Animate

Animate Ltd. (株式会社アニメイト, Kabushiki gaisha Animeito) is the retailing arm of MOVIC and is the largest retailer of anime, games, and manga in Japan. The first and headquarters store of Animate opened in 1983 and is located in Ikebukuro, a district in Tokyo, Japan.

Retail Stores

Currently, there are 38 Animate stores in Japan, and two in Taipei, Taiwan.

Former Stores

• Sakaihigashi Station, Osaka
• Ximending, Taiwan store
• Los Angeles, California (closed in 2003).

Subsidiaries

• animate film (アニメイトフィルム)
• Libre Publishing (リブレ出版株式会社): Originally part of BiBLOS Co.,Ltd (株式会社ãƒ"ブロス）. Following the bankruptcy of Biblos on 2006-04-05 caused by the chain bankruptcy started by its parent company Hekitensha (碧天舎), animate, MOVIC, Frontier Works Inc. funded the company allowing BiBLOS Co.,Ltd to continue operation. On 2006-05-01, the company was renamed to Libre Publishing and became a subsidiary of animate Ltd. However, the company was still registered as established on 2000-12-28.

Group companies

• Movic Co. Ltd. (株式会社ムーãƒ"ック)
• Movic Promote Service(株式会社ムーãƒ"ックプロモートサーãƒ"ス)
• Marine ENTERTAINMENT Inc. (株式会社マリン・エンタテインメント)
• coade (株式会社コアデ): The company name was derived from its own slogan 'Code Anime Design'.
• Frontier Works Inc. (株式会社フロンティアワークス)
• ANIBRO Ltd. (株式会社アニブロ): On January 23, 2008, Animate's rival company, Broccoli, announced that they collaborated with Animate and made a new company "AniBro", with Animate holds 70% of the company, while Broccoli holds 30%. The president of the company will be the CEO of Animate, although he will continue to manage Animate along with AniBro. AniBro plans to expand using the AniBro brand to many places in Japan.
• SHOSEN (株式会社書泉): Became part of animate Ltd. on 2011-06-29.

Marketing

Meito Anisawa (å…„æ²¢ å'½æ–—, Anisawa Meito) is Animate's mascot character, affectionately known as the Anime Tenchō (アニメ店長). He is depicted as a wild anime character with spiky hair and rippling muscles, clad with the Animate uniform, going to extreme measures to promote Animate's goods. An original video animation based on the character was produced by Gainax and released in 2002. Another OVA was released in 2010. An animation project which crosses over Anime Tencho with the Touhou Project was produced by ufotable and aired on November 20, 2010 at the Animate Ichioshi Bishojo Anime Matsuri to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Animate's mascot character. Meito has also made various appearances in other media, such as the Lucky Star anime series and video games such as Disgaea 4 and Touch My Katamari. Meito is voiced by Tomokazu Seki in his anime appearances, and is voiced by Lex Lang in the English dub of Lucky Star.

References

External links

• Animate Group Homepage (Japanese)
• Animate Official Homepage (Japanese)
• Animate USA Official Webpage