Anime & AI

Pixta relaunches Anipops as a paid platform, opens an in-house AI anime studio

Tokyo-listed stock-content marketplace Pixta has rebuilt its short-anime site Anipops from an open AI-anime submission page into a subscription and pay-per-episode streaming platform aimed at overseas fans, relaunching on 12 August with five original series. The titles come from a newly formed in-house studio that Pixta says handled everything from planning and scripts to finished animation internally, using AI tools throughout the pipeline. Pixta frames the move as a bet on the fast-growing vertical short-content format, pointing to its own projection of a roughly ¥2 trillion Chinese short-drama market by 2027 as the kind of opportunity it hopes an anime equivalent can capture — a figure worth the usual scepticism reserved for a company’s own market sizing. The original open-submission AI-anime feature continues under a separate “Anipops Creators” section.

Source: PIXTA press release via PR TIMES

Industry Moves

HIDIVE and MBS sign anime’s biggest streaming output deal yet

US streamer HIDIVE and Japanese broadcaster Mainichi Broadcasting System (MBS) have expanded a partnership dating to 2023 into a new multi-year “output deal,” under which HIDIVE gets exclusive rights outside Asia to an upcoming slate of MBS-produced anime rather than licensing titles one at a time. HIDIVE’s parent, AMC Global Media, describes it as the streamer’s largest content deal to date — again, the company’s own characterisation. The first title under the new agreement, Nia Liston: The Merciless Maiden, gets its North American premiere at Anime NYC in late August ahead of an October debut in Japan. For producers tracking how Japanese broadcasters package international rights, the shift toward standing output deals — rather than title-by-title licensing — is arguably the more significant part of the story.

Source: Variety