I’ve spent decades watching people backed into corners. Usually holding something sharp. But sometimes you meet a bloke who’s been cornered for fifty years and won’t stop smiling.
That’s Hiroshi Matsuyama. CEO of CyberConnect2. Absolutely fuming.
Not the LinkedIn Kind of Angry
I’m talking about the slow-burn kind. The kept-me-awake-since-nineteen-seventy-seven kind. The sort you only recognise when someone laughs mid-sentence while describing how an industry is bleeding its own talent dry.
I’m still angry.
The laugh isn’t amusement. It’s a pressure valve. Releasing steam built up since he was six years old and picked up his first copy of Weekly Shonen Jump.
Forty-Nine Years of Not Missing an Issue
Here’s what stops me cold: Matsuyama hasn’t missed a single issue. Not when Dragon Ball ended. Not when Slam Dunk finished. Not when suits declared print dead.
- He kept buying it.
- He kept reading it.
- He kept watching.
While the rest of us declared the medium obsolete, he watched Jump reinvent itself. One Piece. Demon Slayer. Jujutsu Kaisen. Learning something corporate dinosaurs never grasped:
Survival isn’t about protecting your patch. It’s about turning the page.
Three Hundred and Fifty Films a Year
Now he’s watching that many films annually. Launching CyberConnect2 Film because he can’t stomach seeing animators paid in exposure and gratitude while the ecosystem crumbles.
He’s not having a laugh. He’s diagnosing a haemorrhage. Reaching for the tourniquet.
How do you keep that fire stoked for half a century without burning down the house you’re trying to save?
When you look at those films—all those stories about heroes who refuse to quit—what makes you think the industry is ready to turn the page with you?
Rather than just re-reading the same chapter until the book falls apart.
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