Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) has unveiled a new strategy aiming to expand overseas sales of Japan-made content to ¥20 trillion by 2033, dubbed the “Storytelling Superpower 5-Year Plan.” The plan sets targets of tripling to quadrupling sales across games, anime, manga, music, and live-action film. On 5channel, however, reactions were skeptical, with many pointing to the “Cool Japan Fund,” which was driven to collapse by massive losses, and asking whether the ministry is simply setting up to repeat the same failure.
On August 20, Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) announced it had compiled the “Entertainment and Creative Industry Strategy 2026,” aiming for ¥20 trillion in overseas sales of Japan-made content by 2033. Its subtitle is the “Storytelling Superpower 5-Year Plan.” Across five sectors — games, anime, manga, music, and live-action film — the plan sets a joint public-private target of roughly tripling overseas sales from ¥6.1 trillion in 2024, alongside roughly tripling private investment to ¥24.5 trillion.
The strategy builds on discussions held during the 2025 “Entertainment and Creative Industry Policy Study Group,” fleshing out the challenges holding back growth in the content industry, countermeasures for them, and structural reforms aimed at returning more profit to creators.
The overseas sales target calls for growth from ¥6.1 trillion in 2024 to ¥20 trillion by 2033, with an interim goal of ¥10 trillion by 2028. ¥20 trillion is comparable in scale to Japan’s automobile export revenue, reflecting an aim to grow the content industry into a pillar of Japan’s foreign currency earnings. By sector, the targets call for raising games from ¥3.4 trillion to ¥12 trillion, anime from ¥2.1 trillion to ¥6 trillion, manga from ¥300 billion to ¥1 trillion, music from ¥100 billion to ¥700 billion, and live-action film from ¥100 billion to ¥500 billion.
Source: itmedia.co.jp / Original article here
2Anonymous2026/08/22(土) 02:53:44.51ID:KHua9vdK
This kind of thing has never once worked out.
24Anonymous2026/08/22(土) 06:08:44.37ID:ORlMP/QB
>>2
Most of what actually sells overseas is IP content that's over a decade old. Failure is basically guaranteed, and yet here they go flushing more tax money down the drain.
4Anonymous2026/08/22(土) 03:35:30.76ID:mL841V5b
Anime and games would win overseas even without government backing. Feels like the ministry just wants to ride their coattails.
5Anonymous2026/08/22(土) 03:49:46.02ID:12jRYRQT
Music especially looks hopeless. Do they have any idea how many times it's already bombed?
6Anonymous2026/08/22(土) 03:56:15.08ID:Xx/ri/VY
Nothing but tough problems here. I'd like to avoid a handful of companies just sucking up all the wasted cash, but can Japan actually manage that?
8Anonymous2026/08/22(土) 03:58:29.19ID:sokKdG0X
This is dumb. By then "stories" will all be AI-generated anyway — feed it a prompt and it'll spit out endless content tailored to your taste forever. Well, this is probably just an excuse to line someone's pockets anyway (lol) ("ポッポナイナイ" — slang for officials skimming/pocketing funds).
13Anonymous2026/08/22(土) 04:08:22.02ID:UntL+8Yi
Must be fun cooking up armchair schemes with other people's money. Basically a scam lol
16Anonymous2026/08/22(土) 04:47:55.46ID:NiVdfrV4
The art of raking in money dishonestly without working ← bureaucrats are the special breed who get to spend citizens' tax money just by dreaming this stuff up → and they've wasted huge sums of it over and over again.
17Anonymous2026/08/22(土) 04:50:44.70ID:ODmI4/an
*This was doomed from the start — it's just a scheme to skim as much money as possible.
18Anonymous2026/08/22(土) 05:03:42.86ID:2330oKzc
"Don't watch manga or anime, it'll make you stupid — watch Sesame Street instead." People raised by parents like that are probably the ones who grew up to become bureaucrats. And now they want to cash in on IP? What a joke.
19Anonymous2026/08/22(土) 05:15:19.60ID:LnFO5wF+
Do these guys even realize Cool Japan was a failure?
20Anonymous2026/08/22(土) 05:19:40.68ID:zhcvdKrr
For the sake of the country's future, I wish someone would just quarantine them for a while.
23Anonymous2026/08/22(土) 06:04:43.80ID:ORlMP/QB
They should just invest in semiconductors. More idiocy. Invest in domestic manufacturing instead.
25Anonymous2026/08/22(土) 07:20:44.86ID:LZxtprxd
I doubt anyone actually expects anything from this.
26Anonymous2026/08/22(土) 07:44:42.59ID:P5BCfaf1
The next skimming scheme for the people who ran Cool Japan has been decided.
27Anonymous2026/08/22(土) 07:54:56.82ID:+up3gRBt
Has METI ever actually been useful for anything?
39Anonymous2026/08/22(土) 08:21:04.00ID:nntDF/YM
Reckless deficit spending where nobody takes responsibility for anything.
41Anonymous2026/08/22(土) 08:31:35.65ID:zhcvdKrr
I already posted this in a similar thread → Cushy post-retirement placements (amakudari) — work 10 days a year for tens of millions of yen, collect a retirement bonus, then do it all again — that's the winning square in the bureaucrats' board game. Unless how these people operate changes, the country falling apart is only natural.
76Anonymous2026/08/22(土) 17:47:34.81ID:OxsUMKEr
If money alone could make something good, we'd already be living in the Xbox era…
83Anonymous2026/08/22(土) 18:23:11.70ID:6C1KWShr
>>76
Well, if it's financial muscle you want, that's Microsoft for you — they bought up Activision, the Minecraft company, all sorts of game studios. And in the end they still haven't beaten Sony or Nintendo.
82Anonymous2026/08/22(土) 18:19:29.13ID:bVVgPUSJ
METI needs to be dismantled at this point, there's no other way.
93Anonymous2026/08/22(土) 19:32:33.66ID:ZLJveGHJ
>>82
Every ministry's the same, what are you even saying. If you want to "dismantle" it, just make all the bureaucrats part-time. Right now they've got full lifetime employment.
85Anonymous2026/08/22(土) 19:09:39.59ID:74UT2Do0
This is about Japan's revival, so let's all pitch in.
86Anonymous2026/08/22(土) 19:14:46.49ID:jnoMUkFr
It fails because they try to do it piecemeal. There's no overarching story.
89Anonymous2026/08/22(土) 19:28:25.37ID:EkjjRAQM
>>86
It fails because it's done with tax money. The real goal is just to funnel the funds through. A real investor wouldn't touch something unprofitable — they'd make it profitable. Tax money doesn't need to turn a profit. The fact that they keep doing this with tax money over and over is because the public is foolish. Only the people who receive the tax money come out ahead. Once you've got the money, all you do is pay back whoever handed it to you. The public is just being played for fools.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5channel (Business News+) thread “[Society] Aiming for ¥20 Trillion in Overseas Sales of Japan-Made IP — METI Announces New Strategy, the “Storytelling Superpower 5-Year Plan”.”
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