How Tanukiverse is redefining IP rights in the creator economy
Step into the enchanting world of Tanukiverse, where art, creativity, and web3 intertwine to revolutionize the anime industry. Meet Kush — the creator behind this extraordinary project challenging the traditional anime studio model.
After a few years spent in the anime industry, there seemed to be a gap with collaboratively contributing to the storyline and creative vision. Kush reveals how Tanukiverse connects creators directly with fans, bypassing the restrictions of conventional studios. The result? The best of both worlds — creative freedom for artists and a community of anime enthusiasts that co-create your vision.
The pillars of Tanukiverse stand tall: IP, Economy, and the DAO. Kush shares the strategic thinking behind their three prong approach aiming to grow hand in hand with the community. From defining characters to empowering fans through interactive games, every aspect breathes life into the universe of Tanukiverse.
Let’s dive in ↓
Whats your background?
Kush: With my love for Japanese culture and art since a kid, I decided to venture into Japanese anime. In 2017, I went to Nagasaki to study Japanese language for six months. I’ve learned the traditional anime industry and worked on plenty of shows such as JoJo, Yugioh, Danmachi, Edens Zero, and so on.
Do the people who you worked with at those “traditional” anime studios understand the value that you're bringing to creators?
Kush: So what we in web3 enabled is actually to cut through the creator and the fans directly. Something which undermines the studio’s value. The company's value. Some of them are trying to understand how web3 can be helpful for the future anime generations or how the technology can be helpful for everyone. I think it's a mix of both worlds.
How has the creative process changed working with some of these larger brands to now a community-led project?
Kush: The kind of principles of working that have changed for me is that I have more creative freedom right now, and trying to build what I have been wanting to build and then to be able to put more discussions from all our different angles that are a part of the community. When I was working in the normal anime studio environment, there was no creative freedom. Only to a certain extent. They have a certain way of what they want to show and how they want to portray a scene or drawing or entire sequence, and then you have to just follow that path.
There are 3 pillars of Tanukiverse. Give us some insight into why you decided those 3. What was the strategy?
Kush: What I wanted to do was grow along with the community and that's why everyone who's associated with the project right now wants to do. So IP is the overarching thing where we defined the characters. Then what the roles are going to be in every decision that our community or the other functionality would take place would reflect upon the IP. So that is the first part. Then second is to be able to functionalize this entire idea. We need to create a DAO and enable the governance. For the community, we had to create an economy. So economy, we have something called pebbles. People can own by playing a mini-game that we have created or going to the engagement that we have on the website and being active in our discord daily. The folklore storytelling happens through web3.
Can you talk a little bit more broadly about how you engage the community to build out the IP universe alongside you?
Kush: My forte being the art side of things and the creative side of things. This idea is very much inspired by bringing art and creativity to the forte. That is something which just strikes the imagination of our holders. They look at the website; they look at the content, what is this whimsical world of characters going around. So they would want to learn more about it. But then as you realize that in order to make a product, we can not just make an art product. We have to make a product, which is scalable, applicable, and it becomes a flagship model for all of the communities to actually follow and participate in. Because what happens by virtue of a holder right now in the community, in the market, everyone wants to understand what they can do with this. To be enabling those kinds of ideologies and why there's so much potential. We have seen that through blockchain.
What kind of media formats are you playing around with for Densetsu?
Kush: I would say one media format is the manga, but also animation shows, animation videos and mini-games. We have done different blogs, but creating manga is going to be on the forefront because, in Japan, all the IPs have to have manga. That's the first step. To be able to bring out the manga is the first step that we identified, and we are building it from manga because the anime comes from a manga. So even if there's an argument to be made in the future, I think manga is the focal point of the entire media.
Can you talk in detail about the decisions you want to keep in-house closer to the founders and the core team behind the project?
Kush: As a founder, you have to be the driving force, but simultaneously you can only give a small kind of interaction - because we have seen that people have the tendency to abuse power. We want to start by experimenting small. Probably a name of one of the character. We have some ideas, people putting in all the names, and then voting on the names, and then name is set by the community. Depending on the level of experimentation you want to do with whatever you're creating, you can build the entire narrative from nothing with the help of the community.
How do you think about growth strategies to build your community?
Kush: The attention span for people in web3 is so little, many just want to keep the hype going on. You have to run a blockbuster movie every other week. One special learning that I've gotten is that whatever kind of announcement or milestone announcement you do for the project is going to actually impact the perception of the entire project. We have always been clear to derive a functionality where different projects can be a part of us, what we're trying to build. That's how the ideal “network state” works. You have different communities, different people in the communities with their skillsets, with their language skillsets, and going to participate and coordinate with you to build this IP in the way they want to.
Walk us through how that informs your decision-making of what to build next?
Kush: Data is one of the primary factors that will determine what are you trying to build how the community's going to react. If you're not looking at the data, you're not doing it right guys. I mean, data is something that you have to be particular with. Because that's the honesty of who you are. Data's fact that never lies. Data could be manipulated, but data would still speak of the truth about whatever you're trying to do. We look at the data points. What kind of demographics and people are interacting with their homepage, right? Or what kind of community distribution on Discord or Twitter? If we look at the amplitude to understand how many interactions are coming on our website every day. What is the ways the community's feeling more attached to what they want to be a part of more? That's the core principle of how we work.
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