Shopro Entertainment
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| Founded | July 1986 |
|---|---|
| Founder | Seiji Horibuchi |
| Headquarters location | San Francisco, California, U.S. |
| Distribution | North America South America United Kingdom Ireland South Africa India Philippines |
| Key people | Ken Sasaki (President & CEO) Hidemi Fukuhara (Vice-President) |
| Owner(s) |
Shueisha Shogakukan ShoPro |
| Official website | www |
Coordinates: 37°46′35″N 122°25′01″W / 37.776508°N 122.41706°W
VIZ Media LLC is a Japanese-American manga, anime, and entertainment company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It was founded in 1986 as VIZ LLC. In 2005, VIZ LLC and ShoPro Entertainment merged to form the current VIZ Media LLC, which is jointly owned by Japanese publishers Shueisha, Shogakukan, and Shogakukan-Shueisha Productions (ShoPro).
Seiji Horibuchi, originally from Tokushima Prefecture in Shikoku, moved to California in 1975. After living in the mountains for almost two years, he moved to San Francisco, where he started a business exporting American cultural items to Japan, and became a writer of cultural information. He also became interested in publishing Japanese manga in the United States, though he himself was not a fan of Japanese comics until a visit to Japan in 1985 exposed him to Katsuhiro Otomo's single-volume title Domu: A Child's Dream. His idea came to fruition after he met Masahiro Ohga, then managing director of Shogakukan, in 1985 and shared his vision. Shogakukan provided Horibuchi with $200,000 in startup capital, which Horibuichi used in 1986 to found VIZ Communications.
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