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Bushiroad Acquires More of Sanzigen Studio

Bushiroad announced last Friday that it has acquired more shares of SANZIGEN Animation Studio through a third-party allocation, with Bushiroad now owning 14.4% of the studio's shares. The companies did not disclose the shares' underwritten value.

The company's ownership is split between studio president Hiroaki Matsuura, the Ultra Super Pictures holding company, and Bushiroad. The announcement did not reveal the new respective shares of each shareholder following Bushiroad's new acquisition.

SANZIGEN Animation Studio was founded in March 2006. The studio has worked closely with Bushiroad on anime based on Bushiroad's intellectual property, most notably BanG Dream! (beginning with the anime's second season), with its most recent work on the franchise being the BanG Dream! It's MyGo!!!!! and the Ave Mujica - The Die is Cast - anime. The company has also produced such anime as 009 Re:Cyborg, its original anime BBK/BRNK, ID-0, Monster Strike the Animation, Wooser's Hand-to-Mouth Life, the Initial D: Legend trilogy, and Miss Monochrome, and has worked on 3DCGI on many anime series and film. The studio produced Guilty Gear Strive: Dual Rulers, an anime based on Arc System Works' Guilty Gear fighting game franchise, and is producing the upcoming Rooster Fighter television anime and Shōji Kawamori's upcoming original film Labyrinth.

The studios SANZIGEN, Ordet, and Trigger founded the Ultra Super Pictures joint holding company for their studios in 2011. Game and visual novel studio Nitroplus and artist website pixiv also contributed to the holding company's founding, and LIDEN FILMS later joining the holding company. Ordet ceased operations on March 1 earlier this year, and merged with Ultra Super Pictures.

Takaaki Kidani founded Bushiroad in 2007. The company owns a number of cross-media franchises, some of which originate from its card games. Bushiroad's Cardfight!! Vanguard and Future Card Buddyfight series have both inspired long-running television anime series, and its Luck & Logic card game inspired two television anime series. Bushiroad also owns the Weiß Schwarz anime crossover card game. The company owns the Tantei Opera Milky Holmes franchise, as well as the BanG Dream! franchise, both of which have television anime series. The company owns the Revue Starlight franchise, which once had concurrently running active smartphone games (Revue Starlight's game only recently ended service in September 2024). Revue Starlight, primarily a stage musical franchise, also inspired an anime series and an anime film. Additionally, the company owns the New Japan Pro Wrestling promotion.

Sources: Bushiroad, Animation Business Journal (Tadashi Sudo)