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Aplix Sells Anime Studio AIC to AIC's Founder for 8,000 Yen/US$77
posted on by Sarah Nelkin
Aplix IP Holdings announced on Monday that it has transferred all of the stock of its animation subsidiary Anime International Company (AIC) to Tōru Miura, AIC's current representative director and Aplix's company director. Aplix sold the 8,000 shares for 8,000 yen (about US$77) total.
Miura established the studio that would become AIC on July 15, 1982, and the studio co-produced Megazone 23 in 1985. The company has since been involved in more than 200 anime titles, including AD Police, Super Dimensional Fortress Macross II: The Movie, Ai no Kusabi, Ah! My Goddess, Tenchi Muyo!, ToHeart - Remember my memories, Solty Rei, Special A, Heaven's Lost Property, and Oreimo. More recently AIC has produced Wandering Son, Persona 4, Humanity Has Declined, Date A Live, and Persona 3 the Movie #1 Spring of Birth. AIC has a number of sub-studios within itself: AIC Digital, AIC Spirits, AIC ASTA, AIC PLUS+, AIC Frontier, and AIC Takarazuka.
Aplix purchased AIC as a wholly-owned subsidiary for 700 million yen (at the time about US$8.5 million) in 2011. Aplix bought the company from pachinko maker Oizumi, which previously purchased 95% of AIC in 2010 for 530 million yen (US$6.3 million).
Aplix also announced on Monday that it is transferring all of the shares of its wholly-owned subsidiary game development company G-mode (total of 113,183 shares) to the company ONE-UP for 750 million yen (about US$7.2 million). Aplix will formalize the transfer on January 31.
Aplix made G-mode its subsidiary in January 2010, and then made it Aplix's core company of multimedia entertainment in December 2011. Aplix explained that after the sudden death of G-mode's president Takeshi Miyaji in 2011, the company's endeavors in the anime and manga markets did not improve as a result of the merger, even though the company made efforts to restructure. As a result, Aplix decided to sell G-mode even though G-mode's smartphone game development was profitable. G-mode's new parent company ONE-UP is a game developer that develops mainly for smartphones.
G-mode produced last year's Angel's Drop television anime, as well as 2012's Katayoku no Khronos Gear video anime.
Source: Social Game Info
