News
Imagica Group, OLM Change Representative Directors
posted on by Alex Mateo
Imagica Group's director and executive officer Shunjiro Nagase will take over Nobuo Fuse's role as president, representative director, and chief executive officer. Fuse will then have the role of director. Toshiaki Okuno is resigning as the president and executive director of OLM, and current vice president and director Hideki Kama will take his place. Okuno will remain a director.
Fuse, Okuno, and Atsushi Shinohara are resigning from their roles as executive officers of Imagica Group. Meanwhile, Kama has been appointed executive officer in charge of animation business and content creation. The executive officers who are shifting their roles include Nagase (newly appointed in charge of film, commercial business, and content creation in addition to role as president and CEO), Masashi Nakamura (now in charge of leading entertainment media business, production technology services, and global business), and Masaharu Yoshizawa (newly moved to group business development and promotion). Other executive officers include senior managing executive officer Masakazu Morita, Akira Shimura (TV and commercial post-production services business, production technology services), and Takashi Takimizu (imaging systems and solutions and group technology development) will remain in their current roles.
The company will announce other changes of management of subsidiaries on February 29.
Imagica Group's subsidiary Oriental Light and Magic (OLM), the anime studio for Pokémon, and several other firms established a venture capital fund for media content in March 2021. Imagica Group acquired OLM in 2015.
OLM is best known for production on such anime as the various Pokémon television anime, films, and video anime, as well as the Yōkai Watch television anime and films. The studio also animated the Future Card Buddyfight, Berserk, BanG Dream!, Atom The Beginning, Inazuma Eleven, To Heart, and Utawarerumono anime, as well as the Miss Hokusai film
Imagica Group moved part of the animation production and webtoon business of its IMAGICA Image Works subsidiary company to its publishing company subsidiary Shufunotomo Infos in April 2023. IMAGICA Image Works has done supporting animation production on such anime as Pokémon the Movie: I Choose You!, Sword Art Online the Movie: Ordinal Scale, and Fate/Apocrypha.
Imagica Group established IMAGICA Lab., a company formed by the merger of its subsidiaries Imagica, Imagica West, and IMAGICA Image Works is "IMAGICA Lab." in October 2018 as part of the holding company's restructuring. Imagica Robot Holdings restructured in October 2018, and changed its name to Imagica Group. The holding company was established with the name Imagica Robot Holdings after a merger between the Imagica and Robot video production companies in 2006.
Sources: Imagica Group, Animation Business Journal (Tadashi Sudo)
