Yamauchi wants Nintendo in anime biz

TOKYO--The man who inherited his family's playing card business and turned it into an electronics giant now wants his former company to expand into animated motion pictures. According to various media outlets including the Kyodo News, former Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi, age 76, told reporters today that he has plans for Nintendo to break into the anime business.

If Yamauchi’s proposal passes through Nintendo during its business conference next month, the company will be expected to take a more prominent role in the creation of anime movies based on its games. In the future, the company may also make games that are based on characters that debut from its anime movies. Historically, few animated films have been made using the company's characters, and the ones that are green-lighted have always been licensed to other production companies.

“I'm thinking of suggesting that [Nintendo] make movies, and to have them run in conjunction with game releases," commented Yamauchi to the press. "I want them to be something that will be accepted overseas as well as in Japan. The production of games and animated movies are relatively similar. It's something that the management [at Nintendo] will decide, but it's the kind of field that we should be going into. Nintendo can take the risk."

As GameSpot reported last year, Yamauchi has been working as president of a foundation called the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu Project ever since his retirement from Nintendo in 2002. The foundation is dedicated to promoting the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu, an anthology of short classical Japanese poems between the 7th and 13th centuries. Yamauchi’s comments on anime were made to the press today during the a celebration of a newly established museum for the foundation, and he suggested that an idea for a motion picture anime would be to make one that focused on poets of the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu.