Hello everyone. It’s been a few months since we gave any news about the progress of our projects, especially the GTO project. Today is the opportunity to do so.
First of all, before detailing the progress of the GTO project, we are going to explain to you why Kumiai has changed its URL, you may have noticed it but the URL of Kumiai.moe has changed into kumiai.sukai.moe.
Why “Sukai”?
To answer this question, let’s first explain where we got the idea of this name.
Since the creation of Kumiai, we have been facing a lot of difficulties in explaining what Kumiai is to people not initiated to anime culture but also to weebs, which is very problematic knowing that this is our target audience. Indeed, as we explained in our first article, Kumiai is a “concept” which means several things:
- A manga
- A light novel
- A community
- A company
- An artificial (virtual) island
What a mistake! And above all, what a beginner’s mistake! With the idea that Kumiai is a “concept” that is several things simultaneously, you don’t know what Kumiai is, so you don’t understand anything. And there is nothing worse as a creator or entrepreneur than people not understanding what you do. We found ourselves too often “embarrassed” to explain our concept because we knew that people would not understand it. This creates a lack of interest from our “prospects” and potential investors and therefore a loss of visibility. A beautiful vicious circle, among others.
We understood that it was essential to be able to explain in one sentence what Kumiai is, not only for our target audience but also for ourselves to have a clear and precise vision of where we are going. A complex concept makes everything complex, from planning to execution. That’s why we can proudly sum up Kumiai today in one sentence: Kumiai is a fictional artificial island from our light novel “Kumiai, Cookies & Genki Club”.
That’s all you have to remember. It’s immediately clear that we’re talking about a fictional universe and I think it’s much simpler and clearer for everyone, although we could expand on the content of our universe.
So, what is “Sukai”? Let’s get to it…
To differentiate well, “Kumiai” to our entrepreneurial activity. It is essential to differentiate between what is real and what is virtual. You may not know it, the company Kumiai.moe LTD is real, but to explain that Kumiai.moe LTD publishes a light novel called “Kumiai, Cookies & Genki Club” which takes place in a virtual world called “Kumiai”…. we come back to what I said before: it’s the movie “Inception” so it’s incomprehensible without a lot of thought.
I will give a very precise example to illustrate my words with the game “Genshin Impact”, which is a game (but also a manga) very well known in the anime/manga community, and the company Hoyoverse which is the publisher of the game (and the manga).
With our previous logic, it is as if Genshin Impact was published by the company Genshin Impact, which is immediately confusing.
With our new logic, our light novel “Kumiai, Cookies & Genki Club” will be published by Sukai. As you may have guessed, Sukai is the new name of our company, which is a publishing company. All this brings clarity to our communication.
What does “Sukai” mean?
“Sukai” which can be pronounced in a quick Japanese way “Skai” => “Sky” in English. It also forms the combination of “Suki” (which means love in Japanese) and “Kai” (which means “meeting” or “group” in Japanese). In short, we can form many puns, which I will let you find. We appreciate the symbolism evoked by “sky”, that’s why we have a particular affection for this term. The advantage of this new name is that we are no longer limited only to the Kumiai universe, we can propose other things in the future besides Kumiai, but it is not for now.
So much for the explanation of Sukai and why it was created. As I write this, we don’t know if we will choose just “Sukai” or “Sukai.moe” as the final official name, we will make a final decision soon.
Part 2 coming soon…