Just like in your favorite anime, this is the story of a young group of twenty-something who started with nothing, traveled the world and ended up with a global license to develop official Naruto consumer apps.
Originally founded in early 2022, French startup Sekai describes itself as a studio that wants to create entertainment experiences with official anime licenses. Unlike Marvel superheroes or the Harry Potter franchise, the anime and manga industry has barely branched out to other forms of entertainment. Sure, there are versus fighting video games from Bandai Namco (or Sega, Konami…). Sure, you can buy plastic miniatures, but that’s about it.
“Today, there are 600 million anime fans in the world. And it’s an intrustry that’s really controlled in Japan. The original manga is produced in Japan, the anime is produced in Japan, distributed in Japan, and all the merchandising is produced in Japan,” Sekai co-founder and CEO Samy Therain told TechCrunch.
And yet, One Piece, Naruto, Bleach or Dragon Ball are some of the most popular entertainment franchises of all time — and not just in Japan. That’s why Sekai spent the first 15 months of its existence negotiating with TV Tokyo to secure official rights, leading to this deal around Naruto.
So what can Sekai do exactly? Sekai can develop consumer mobile apps with Naruto’s characters and storylines. It can be interactive entertainment experiences with a social element. The company is still actively developing its first app.
“We’re testing a lot of social experiences right now. That’s why I can’t tell you exactly what’s coming out right away, because we’re still in the experimentation phase. But the goal is to make people feel like ninjas, essentially,” Therain said.
At this point, you might be thinking about Pokémon Go, the mobile game that instantly became a viral hit. “Niantic came up with the perfect IP-fit. They created something where the goal is to catch Pokémon. And it worked extremely well,” Therain said.
Sekai also tried to build its own GPS-based interactive entertainment app. But it didn’t perform as well in the world of Naruto. While it was an early inspiration, the first Naruto app isn’t going to be a Pokémon Go clone.
“The goal is to make people feel like ninjas”
Samy Therai
But given the number of illegal Naruto copycats and clones in the App Store and Play Store, there’s strong interest for Naruto apps.
“When we first started testing in Canada, we were shut down by TikTok, Meta, everyone, because everyone said, ‘no, you don’t have the license’ – IP infringement. And we said, ‘we do, look, the contract’s here’ and everything. And it took us three months to get unblocked, because nobody believed us,” Therain said.
Sekai can also release digital collectibles, including trading cards. The startup can also organize real-life events and fan conventions. And this five-year license covers the entire world except Japan and China.
Sekai isn’t going to do everything in house. But they have the final say on the Naruto license. “We’re absolute fans. So our aim is to really control the way things are done and validate them with Shueisha [Naruto’s publishing company]. We don’t rule out working with people who are experts in their own field to do a particular thing,” Therain said.
The startup has already raised €10 million ($10.9 million at current exchange rates) from Skycatcher with Makers Fund, 776 (Alexis Ohanian’s fund), New Wave, Cygni, Motier Ventures and Kima Ventures also participating. Laurent Ritter and Alexandre Yazdi from Voodoo, Nicolas Julia and Adrien Montfort from Sorare, Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda, French rapper Orelsan, athletes Rudy Gobert and Randal Kolo Muani are also investors.
Naruto is just the first step as Sekai doesn’t want to be known exclusively as “the Naruto company.” It plans to roll out a new IP every year. “Why are we called Sekai? Sekai means ‘world’ in Japanese,” Therain said.