· 6 min read · Anime Arc
WIT Studio Banned Generative AI: Nobody Checked the Opening
WIT had a stated no-AI rule, a president who called AI a threat and no step in the pipeline where anyone verified either one.
Blog
Product management, pop punk, anime, game dev and the spaces between.
· 5 min read · Open Mic
Valko's 8-Day Cancellation Didn't Fix What Broke Love and Deepspace
Infold Games cancelled Love and Deepspace's newest character eight days after revealing him and banned new characters forever. The resourcing complaint that caused the backlash is still unresolved.
· 5 min read · Metal Forge
Sleep Token Hid the Album Behind a Puzzle and Debuted at Number One
For three months in 2025, Sleep Token scattered clues across a weather forecast, a print interview and a page source. Then Even in Arcadia entered the Billboard 200 at the top.
· 8 min read · Open Mic
CD Projekt Red Called It Silosis, Almost Lost the Studio Over It
Cyberpunk 2077's launch exposed an org chart, not a bug count. The studio tore down how it built games to ship Phantom Liberty.
· 6 min read · Open Mic
A Sixth-Grade Teacher Ran a Forced Ranking System: The Kids Broke It Before Microsoft Did
In a 2005 Japanese drama, a homeroom teacher built a point system that turned twenty-four kids into informants. GE and Microsoft ran the adult version. Both failed for the same reason.
· 7 min read · Open Mic
Balatro Wasn't Poker: Everyone Read It Wrong
LocalThunk built a math toy in poker clothes. Then the world kept mistaking the costume for the product.
· 6 min read · J-Pop Drop
What Overfly Was Actually Casting For
Luna Haruna came from Gothic Lolita fashion, had one prior single and got the closing theme for SAO's messier second half. LiSA had the Aincrad OP. That turned out to matter.
· 6 min read · Open Mic
Sunraku Played 100 Terrible Games: Then He Beat the Boss 30 Million Players Missed
Rakuro Hizakura spent years hunting kusoge, broken games nobody else wanted to touch. When he entered Shangri-La Frontier, 30 million players were already there. None of them had found what he found.
· 7 min read · Open Mic
ConcernedApe Had Help on the Table and Left It There
Eric Barone spent four and a half years building Stardew Valley alone. Publishers offered teams. Fans offered help. Every offer assumed the problem was speed.
· 7 min read · Open Mic
Leslie Tickets
Build a Rocket Boy raised £233M with Rockstar's DNA. MindsEye launched in June 2025 with a Metacritic score of 37.
· 7 min read · Anime Arc
When Frieren's Creator Chose Health Over the Deadline, the Market Didn't Collapse
A massive manga hit pause twice in one year for creator health. The publisher held the line both times.
· 8 min read · Punk Playbook
Nobody Inherited the Torch: Why It Was Never About the Music
Green Day's Woodstock bet unlocked a decade of punk. Thirty years later, the torch is still burning. Nobody's holding it.
· 5 min read · Metal Forge
Japan's Guitar Factory
LOVEBITES and HANABIE didn't emerge from bedroom YouTube sessions. They came out of a system the West hasn't noticed yet.
· 5 min read · Open Mic
The Unnamed Headliner
Ten hours of Coachella 2026 and one artist was in every set. His name wasn't on the lineup.
· 4 min read · Open Mic
Tax on the System
Writing a pop-punk song to understand yourself is an unusually honest personality test.
· 7 min read · Anime Arc
No Cuts. Eleven Years. Then the Oscar
Hayao Miyazaki spent eleven years locked out of the American market rather than let anyone touch his films. Then the Oscar came.
· 7 min read · Open Mic
Shigesato Itoi Spent Twelve Years on MOTHER 3: Then He Said Never Again
The ad copywriter who made three games and stopped. Why that restraint matters.
· 7 min read · J-Pop Drop
The Permission Was the Product
In August 2009, 25,000 people sang along to a projection at Saitama Super Arena. Crypton Future Media had bet on something two years earlier that nobody else in the synthesizer business understood.
· 7 min read · J-Pop Drop
Kenshi Yonezu Spent Three Years Building an Audience Who Didn't Know His Name
Before 'Lemon' hit 85 weeks at number one, Kenshi Yonezu uploaded 30 songs to NicoNico as Hachi: no face, no label, no real name. The anonymity was the work.
· 7 min read · Anime Arc
When Netflix Stopped Trying to Make Anime and Actually Made Anime
Netflix burned $70M on Cowboy Bebop and got laughed out of the industry. Then they made Edgerunners. What changed wasn't the budget.
· 6 min read · Anime Arc
Tatsuki Fujimoto Killed the Character Everyone Loved: That's Why Chainsaw Man Works
Every other mangaka would have kept Aki alive. Fujimoto's instinct to follow through is the lesson most PMs never learn.
· 6 min read · Open Mic
Sony Said Demon's Souls Was Crap: Miyazaki Shipped It Anyway
In 2009, Sony's head of worldwide studios played Demon's Souls for two hours and called it unbelievably bad. FromSoftware published it without them. Then they built a genre.
· 6 min read · Anime Arc
Tatsuya Endo Built a Fake Family That Became Real
A creator spent 18 years failing, built a facade to get his real idea past the gatekeepers and accidentally made something true.
· 7 min read · Open Mic
Yoko Taro Built a Product That Asks You to Delete It. Nine Million People Said Yes
NieR: Automata's creator was a self-proclaimed loser who hid from his publisher, designed a game that lies to you for 20 hours and then asks you to sacrifice everything for a stranger. It sold nine million copies.
· 6 min read · Punk Playbook
The Pop Punk Guide to Roadmap Planning
In 2026, roadmap season means AI pressure, stakeholder FOMO and planning cycles that collapse before the ink dries. Pop punk solved this exact problem with constraints, not more output.
· 6 min read · Anime Arc
Hideaki Anno Shipped Evangelion Unfinished, Then Rebuilt It Twice
A depressed creator ran out of money, shipped an unfinished finale anyway, faced death threats and spent 26 years iterating on the same product.
· 3 min read · Anime Arc
From Demon Slayer to Jujutsu Kaisen: Crafting Product Journeys with Heart and Intent
Why great PMs must be great creators. Lessons from Demon Slayer and Jujutsu Kaisen on building products people obsess over.
· 5 min read · Metal Forge
HAGANE Lost Three-Fifths of Their Band: They Called the Next EP 'Life Goes On'
When three of five members walked out of a Tokyo metal band in 2023, the remaining two had a choice: fold or rebuild. They rebuilt and came back sharper.
· 2 min read · Open Mic
From Pixels to Punk: A Manifesto for the New Era of Product Management
Product management isn't dead but the old way of doing it is over. A rallying cry for PMs building in the middle of creativity and chaos.
· 6 min read · J-Pop Drop
YOASOBI Turned a Constraint Into the Biggest J-Pop Song in History
Every YOASOBI song starts from a written story. That constraint is the reason 'Idol' became the first Japanese song to top Billboard's Global chart.
· 5 min read · Punk Playbook
Tom DeLonge Left Blink-182 to Chase UFOs: He Built an Empire Instead
In 2015, Tom DeLonge walked away from one of the biggest bands on Earth to research UFOs. Everyone thought he'd lost it. He was building an ecosystem.
· 5 min read · Open Mic
The Most Important PM Lesson I Ever Learned Was Behind a Drum Kit
YouTuber Kize Bae gave herself 30 days to learn drums from scratch. The lesson she found behind the kit, and what turned up afterward, beats any PM framework.