Federico Colpi

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Federico Colpi (born January 4, 1969 in Padua, Italy) is a publisher, comic artist, translator, columnist and anime producer.

Contents

[edit] History

He started his activity as a comic artist drawing comic versions of popular Japanese TV shows, such as Leiji Matsumoto's Queen Millennia, Tiger Mask and Voltron, which were published by several Italian fanzines. Since 1998 he has been a translator of sociology and anthropology essays for several Italian magazines.

[edit] 1990s

After moving to Japan in 1990, he focussed in promoting the manga and anime culture in Europe, where it was still considered a mixture of violence and sex.

He was the first foreigner to sign a publishing agreement with Japanese giant Shueisha, which did not have an International Sales Division at the time. After he signed the massively successful Buronson's and Tetsuo Hara 's Hokuto no Ken and Masami Kurumada's Saint Seiya for the Italian publisher Granata Press and Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball for the French publisher Glénat, Shueisha eventually decided to appoint a person in charge for International operations.[citation needed]

He was also the first non-Japanese person to arrange deals for the foreign translation of successful titles such as Go Nagai's Devilman and Mazinger Z, Leiji Matsumoto's Captain Harlock, Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind and making deals with such companies as Shogakukan, Tokuma Shoten, Akita Shoten, Kadokawa Media Office (now Kadokawa Shoten), Shinshokan, Seishinsha amongst others.

He also translated into Italian most of the comic books that he licensed, including Rumiko Takahashi's Urusei Yatsura and Ranma 1/2, Sho Fumimura and Ryoichi Ikegami's Sanctuary, Masami Yuki's Patlabor and many works of Go Nagai, Masamune Shirow and Leiji Matsumoto.

By being the only foreigner in Japan in the early '90s to show a deep interest for manga and anime, at one point he attracted the attention of many Japanese magazines, radio and TV stations. He appeared as a guest commentator in shows by TV Asahi, Fuji Television, TV Tokyo, TBS and Nippon Cultural Broadcasting. In an interview to the Japanese weekly magazine "Spa!" (Fujisankei Communications Group) he indicated Masamune Shirow and the female group Clamp as the most promising Japanese mangaka.[citation needed] In a few years both did indeed became international stars, and Clamp returned the favor by asking him to write an introduction to the Japanese pocket edition of Tokyo Babylon. Later, an NHK crew followed him for two weeks around Europe and Japan to take a documentary of his life which was broadcast on the national channel.

He also published several essays on the Japanese manga and anime business in Granata Press' monthly Mangazine and Planeta DeAgostini's monthly "Manga Shonen".

Since 1992 he cooperated with Spain's Planeta DeAgostini and UK's Manga Entertainment, handling the licensing of many hits, such as Clamp's Tokyo Babylon and the OVA series Macross Plus.

[edit] Dynamic Group of Companies

Angered and frustrated at the behavior of some European licensees he was working for, in 1994 he decided to leave his business as a free agent and joined Go Nagai's Dynamic Planning as the Director of the International Department. Simultaneously, he started writing the popular column "Umi no Muko no Otaku na Hanashi" (Otaku stories from the other side of the Ocean) on a magazine published by Bandai and Mediaworks.

Predicating that the anime and manga business cannot be developed upon licensing, but that Japanese publishers and studios must directly enter foreign markets, with Dynamic Planning he promoted the "Dynamic Group of Companies", a network of companies throughout Europe and Asia specializing in publishing and distributing manga and anime internationally. At his peak in 2001, the "Dynamic Group of Companies" included Dynamic Italia (Italy), Dynamic Visions (Belgium), Dynamic Iberia/Selecta Vision (Spain), Dynamic Sk Espana (Spain), Dynamic Portugal (Portugal), Dynamic Multimedia Taiwan (Taiwan), Dynamic Multimedia Hong Kong (China) and Dynamic Entertainment Europe (The Netherlands) and, was reporting sales in excess of 20 million dollars.[citation needed]

Colpi, as a representative for Dynamic Planning established all these companies, supervised them and was in charge of all their acquisitions from Japan, which included international hits such as Dragon Ball, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Cowboy Bebop, Kimagure Orange Road, Serial Experiments Lain.

[edit] 21st Century

In Spring 2001, after a long disease which left him partially paralyzed for more than six months and after signing a deal with Sunrise for the Italian rights of Mobile Suit Gundam, he announced that his dream to bring the best manga and anime to Europe were finally fulfilled and that he was leaving the business to concentrate on his interests in anthropology and linguistics.

However, when Dynamic Planning chose to break their ties with the "Dynamic Group of Companies" in retaliation to delayed payments and the group broke apart, Colpi was called again to deal with the problems left by the former companies. Together with some fellow employees of d/world, the Dynamic Planning and Marubeni's joint-venture which was supervising the "Dynamic Group of Companies", he established in Tokyo d/visual and for the following two years he helped Dynamic Planning and other Japanese licensors to recover amounts unpaid by their European licensees. Simultaneously, he promoted actions against piracy in Europe jointly with several Japanese studios and publishers. In 2004 he decided to convert d/visual into a publishing house, in order to promote again Japanese manga and anime in Europe and South Asia, where the penetration of piracy has eroded a considerable part of the local markets.

[edit] List of works

[edit] Credited as producer and translator

[edit] Credited as Executive Producer

  • Go Nagai's "Mazinkaiser" (Dynamic Planning, Dentsu, d/world, Bandai Visual, 2001)

[edit] Credited as Author

  • "Lo sviluppo dei manga e le loro radici culturali" (Universita' di Venezia, 1995)

[edit] Credited as Contributor

  • Clamp's "Tokyo Babylon" (pocket edition, Shinshokan, 2000) (ISBN：4-403500-27-7)

[edit] References

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