I’m Thomas Larrigan, the author of this article and co-founder of Kumai. I’m going to tell you where Kumiai came from and why Jessie Ka and I decided to create this universe.
You may have arrived on this website asking yourself: « What is Kumiai? What is this website? » and you would be right to ask yourself the question because Kumiai is a unique concept (at least to our humble knowledge) in the « manga/anime » universe it is simultaneously :
- A manga
- A light novel
- A community
- A company
- A (virtual) artificial island
- And surely more in the future
In short, Kumiai is a lot of things and it may seem confusing at first glance but it is not so confusing when you understand the ideas of the founders.
Kumiai means « union », « association » or « guild » in Japanese. This represents exactly what we want for our community: to be united in one place. We want you, as a member, to participate in the development of Kumiai and to contribute your ideas to the future of this universe. What better place to listen to you and implement your ideas than in a universe like Kumiai. The idea of a community involved in the development of a large universe is very exciting and opens the door to many possibilities.
Who are the founders of Kumiai?
Thomas Larrigan, left, « Jessie Ka », right
I’ll start by introducing myself, I’m French-Irish, I’m 23 years old at the time of writing this article and I have a small entrepreneurial experience with more or less success in various fields, but hit by the economic crisis related to the restrictions in the fight of the COVID-19, I have more or less lost everything. After several weeks of introspection and searching for my Ikigai, I had to do something that was really important to me and that would make a difference.
Being passionate about Japan (since my first trip in 2015) and a fan of anime and manga for a short time, I thought « Why not combine my (small) experience in entrepreneurship with my passion? » and this is how I came up with the idea of Kumiai: to create a sustainable business serving its community around a manga universe. The problem with this concept is that I am cruelly lacking experience in the field of anime, I started to be interested in it in 2017, I love it but I lack a lot of references related to this field, I love creating stories but I am not the best, so I need to partner with someone talented, creative and with a lot of experience and references, I was lucky to know someone in this situation, my best friend: Jessie Ka.
« Jessie Ka », is French and has an incredible experience in the field of manga and anime: this person has read and seen more than 1000 different series! Incredible, isn’t it? This is what we call a real Otaku. When I told her/him about the idea of Kumiai, (s)he immediately loved it and decided to join me in the adventure. And so, Jessie Ka is the real brain of this universe who created all the characters and places. S(he) is the one who writes the stories.
I am the manager of Kumiai and Jessie Ka is the creative one. This complementarity allows us and will allow us to accomplish a lot.
Now that the introductions are done, I will explain why Kumiai is so versatile:
Kumiai is a business first and foremost and the goal of any business is to be profitable in order to be sustainable. We started from a premise: In order for you, the community members, to want to contribute financially but also in terms of time in Kumiai, we need to create a vast and attractive universe with engaging characters. This is what we did! Today, as I write, we have created a Yonkoma and a Light Novel to share this universe.
- The Yonkoma Kumiai : Daily Short Stories
- The Light Novel Kumiai, Cookies and « Genki » club
These two formats tell the story of Rina, a young student, in search of recognition, at the high school located on the artificial island of Kumiai, this island was built somewhere in southern Japan. Rina, along with her two best friends, Aya and Sophie, aims to create a new club (Genki Club) within Kumiai in order to help those in need. Countless encounters and adventures await the heroine Rina during her years of study, let’s hope for her that she manages to achieve her goals and dreams.
Other formats, we hope, will be created, like Youtube videos or maybe even an anime (let’s think big!). We really want to bring the Kumiai universe on video.
What about the community? Jessie Ka and I want the community to be able to participate in the development of the universe in various ways, so we have created a Discord server dedicated to Kumiai: This way you can discuss Rina’s adventures with other members of this server, submit your ideas, play games that will have direct repercussions on the development of the Kumiai story. We also have a Minecraft server dedicated to the island of Kumiai that you can participate in.
Imagine if your idea, your concept, becomes popular in the community and you find it in Yonkoma or Light Novel read by thousands of people around the world! This is how we want to reward our community.
If we can become profitable in 2021, we will accomplish a lot in the coming months:
- We are going to create a structure in Japan in 2022 to have the best possible environment for content and product creation. Japan is the country of manga, there is no real alternative so far.
- We will also launch a Vtuber project for the main characters of Kumiai: Rina, Sophie and Aya.
We think a lot to offer you the maximum content possible and we will continue to innovate even if we have few financial means.
If you still haven’t discovered Rina’s adventures, I let you do it and if you already did and you like Kumai’s universe, you can support us through our Kumiai VIP pass for only $1.99/month, not only you will contribute to the continuity and success of Kumiai’s project, but you will also receive certain benefits such as access to all Yonkoma chapters, early access to the light novel chapters, privileged access to the Kumiai VIP channel on our Discord and more! Other features will be added to the Kumiai VIP pass.
That’s it, I’ve finished writing this article, I hope it will have allowed you to understand what Kumiai’s project is and if you like this article, don’t hesitate to comment and share, it’s with great pleasure that we will read your comments.
See you soon dear Kumiai member. 🍪