The Association of Japanese Animations

• 1. Introduction

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  The Association of Japanese Animations, known by its initials AJA, speaks for an industry that reaches every corner of the world. With 52 affiliate animation production companies under its banner, the AJA exists to solve problems no single studio could tackle alone. Most of its members are small to medium-sized businesses, the kind that animate beloved series on tight budgets with lean teams. What happens when piracy surges, when rights get violated, when a young animator in Tokyo needs somewhere to train? The AJA is where those questions go. This is the story of a trade association that became something larger: a bridge between Japan's animation industry and the global audience it serves.

• 2. Fighting Piracy Together

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  Intellectual property infringement became a defining crisis for Japan's animation industry as peer-to-peer networking software spread and illegal file sharing became routine. For a small production company operating with limited resources, a single pirated series circulating online could undermine an entire season's revenue. The AJA exists partly to absorb that threat collectively, bringing the weight of 52 member companies to bear on enforcement and policy where no single studio has the leverage to act alone. Beyond piracy, the association also steps in to resolve conflicts between members and to improve the general production environment, covering everything from working conditions to overseas operations. The challenges are structural, not incidental, which is why the AJA's mandate spans so many fronts.

• 3. Tracking the Global Market

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  Each year the AJA releases an annual report on the state of the anime industry, and the 2017 edition carried a striking finding: overseas markets had expanded to 1.5 times the size of the previous year, reaching a record high. China placed first in contracts that year while the United States dropped to fourth place. By 2019, however, the picture had shifted again. The United States reclaimed the top spot in contracts, with Canada rising to second place. These fluctuations matter because they guide where AJA members focus their licensing efforts and how they price their content internationally. The association organises events specifically to connect its members with major distributors in regions designated R1 for the United States, R3 for Southeast Asia, R2 for the United Kingdom, and R4 for Australia, among others.

• 4. Anime Tamago and Training

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  In 2010, the Japanese Animation Creators Association launched an annual project with funding from the Japanese government's Agency for Cultural Affairs, aimed at supporting the training of animators. The project produced a series of animated shorts from various studios each year. It was renamed in 2012, and then renamed again in 2016 to Anime Tamago, written in Japanese as "あにめたまご" and translating literally as "Anime Egg." Since April 2014, the AJA took over leadership of this project, absorbing it into its own institutional structure. The name "Anime Egg" carries a deliberate meaning: these shorts are incubators, a place where new animators can hatch their skills under professional conditions. The Tokyo International Anime Fair, which the AJA also organises, stands as the biggest anime-related event in Japan and gives the studios that produce these shorts a stage to reach the world.