The Campaign Launch Videos

Opportunity

Last year, Crunchyroll launched a standalone digital manga app. I directed the films that introduced it to the world.

The campaign theme was The Perfect Pairing. Manga is where anime begins. Crunchyroll now had both. The films made sure everyone knew it.

My role: Creative Director// Motion Director// Concept// Story// Co-Writer// Music Director

The Challenge

Manga is the original comic book format behind One Piece, Jujutsu Kaisen, Demon Slayer, Attack on Titan. Fans know the shows. The app was giving them access to the pages those shows came from, hundreds of titles worth.

So the films had to feel as massive as the library. If they felt small, the product would feel optional. And they had to feel as exciting as the shows themselves, without animating a single character or altering a single panel of legally protected artwork, on everything from a six second social ad to a Times Square billboard.

The Solution

The panels had to stay largely untouched, so momentum had to come from everywhere else: camera, timing, typography, composition, graphic punctuation. Making the space around the art do what the art itself could not.

Once that language was established, everything locked in. Anime clips cut to their exact manga counterparts so fans understood Perfect Pairing. Panels flew out of devices and filled frames with the kind of density that makes "hundreds of titles" feel true rather than claimed.

The System

The product needed a system that could scale. So we built a flexible visual language for paid, lifecycle, and OOH, with reusable rules for type, layout, manga SFX, and campaign composition.

Retail Extension

The campaign extended into physical retail through MangaSpot, an offline-to-online activation built on the same Perfect Pairing logic. Branded shelving, a Manga Finder quiz, QR codes routing into Crunchyroll accounts, anime monitors playing clips next to the volumes that inspired them. Take someone standing in a store and walk them directly into the platform.

Impact

Outperforming pre-registration volume and premium tier upgrades. Times Square during launch week. And fans who thought Crunchyroll meant anime understood it meant manga too. That perception shift was the whole game.