East London founded Clubhouse offers a community for aspiring Anime creators 

Anime and Manga consumption has blown up in recent years, thanks largely to COVID lockdowns. But its presence has always been a staple across the world. 

Naniverse is a creative technology company working across storytelling, platform engineering, publishing, community and culture, founded by East Londoners who have been anime fans for decades. 

Last month, Somerset House Exchange’s Black Business Residency programme housed NANIVERSE Clubhouse, a space to play, watch, read, create and connect with other fans and artists. 

I spoke with the CEO Anthony Charlery, all about the inception of Naniverse, his introduction to anime and manga, and where he sees Naniverse’s future. 

What was the inspiration behind bringing diverse manga talent together? 

Anthony: The mission is definitely to champion diverse storytelling. It’s not just about black manga artists. It’s about global storytelling. Whether or not it’d be Black, Asian, Polynesian or Filipino. There’s a lot of cultures that aren’t being shown, don’t have representation. I don’t think it’s just a black thing. It’s a global thing. 

Our founders are black, and that being said, it is quite close to our heart, that there is representation for the younger generation, especially as all the founders have children of their own. We just realised the importance of everybody else being able to see themselves, regardless of your colour. Because I’ve grown up in East London and I would say that it is probably one of the most diverse places to grow up in the world. And, I’m privy to so many different cultures that I think are cool as hell. I’d love to see their stories in anime form to the point where we didn’t just get the same old blonde hair, blue eyes. 

How did you get introduced to manga and anime? 

Anthony: My CTO, Christopher Charles, is my older cousin. And he was into it from as far back as I can remember. 

I mean, he’ll be able to tell you the exact year that he started watching anime, but he must have been 10 or so when he first started watching it. I’m 38 now. He is 42. The first thing that was the deciding factor that made me say “Okay, cool, this is my thing” was when he gave me like 134 episodes of Naruto on DVD one day and sent me on my way home. I don’t think I did anything else that summer holiday. It was literally just me and Naruto. From then I was super locked in, so it’s been from the age of about 13. 

How did growing up in East London impact your storytelling? 

Anthony: I’m certainly accustomed to drama. That was for sure. Growing up in East London does not come without drama. There’s navigating the streets as a teenager and just everything that comes with that. 

I was never really that guy that was like, gangster or anything like that. So it was definitely hard to navigate because if you’re on the streets in East London at the ages of 10 to 15, it can be quite daunting, um, especially if you’re not one of the strongest, one of the biggest guys out of all the kids that were growing up. You’re constantly navigating how people perceive you. I think that’s what you’re navigating the most as a young man growing up in East London is a bunch of egos trying to be bigger and badder than what they actually were. And I feel like that’s where there’s a lot of, um, misinformed identity between the young men right now, where they have this perception that they need to be something that they’re not. 

How did Somerset House become involved in Naniverse? 

Anthony: We have a business mentor called Dawood Gustave who ran a company called Reluctantly Great. That was all about talking to business owners, from across the diaspora, and helping them to find the best version of themselves. 

He took us on board outside of his business, mentoring my whole team one to one, to the point where he ended up coming on board onto the business as a director. 

Last year, Dawood ended up getting a contract with Somerset house for an event on the venue to mark its 25th anniversary being open to the public. That was our first time to actually showcase anime, art, and stories in Somerset house. Out of the 400 applicants we were one of the 25 that were picked for cohort six of Somerset houses, black business residency and our residency has been one of like the closest knit groups. The sense of community is almost like a brotherhood/sisterhood thing. 

It was a lot of learning, becoming a sponge, networking, creating new contacts, finding ourselves in a new space of business that we’ve never been in. 

What is your long-term vision for the NaniVerse community? 

Anthony: I see it becoming the middleman for Netflix, Prime, Disney, Crunchyroll. Don’t get me wrong. I feel like it’s a bit late in the game to compete. But I do think that there is a problem within Hollywood, there’s a problem within Japan. I think Hollywood’s in a bad moment where they don’t actually know what to produce. So they just repeat them saying it’s the same cycle. And I don’t know when you’ve last been to the cinema, but to me, it feels quite same-y and I’m hearing that all over. There is a culture in Japan that, in order to break through, you copy a well-done manga and put your own spin onto it. But because you know that people like that and it’s kind of like you pay homage to that as key. I don’t know if you know what Isekai means, but it’s a subgenre of Japanese fantasy and science fiction that revolves around a person who is transported to another world. But it’s like once you’ve seen 3 or 4 Isekais, you’ve seen them all, but there’s 100s of surprises being produced. 

Our focus is on a middleman space that allows creators to come and our product that will work, incubate themselves, learn business action, learn what they need, um, in order to get themselves ready for the bigger platforms. We’re trying to make this the creator’s hub, which is our back end for the creators of many of those for our Europe. So it’s easy for creators and that they just have all their tools there, like even to the point where it’s like, we don’t have to go and create a Patreon and bring your community to another space and hope that they track over. 

How was the Naniverse Clubhouse for you? Did it feel euphoric? 

Definitely euphoric. I never experienced in my life that I was lost for words. I had to do a presentation and I don’t normally have the right thing down. It was amazing. It was absolutely amazing. We’ve got a great online situation happening. But I feel like when you’re trying to build a real community, you need to have a great offline situation as well. Like, really new space to come together and actually connect. I feel like with what we’ve got going on with AI right now, that organic experience where you can see touch smell, I feel like that’s gonna be so much more important now than it’s ever been before. 

The biggest thing that we noticed with anime conventions right now, is you have to be a super fan. If you’re not a super fan, you’re not one of us. Our main aim was making it so that anybody could come, my mom wanted to come, your mom wanted to come. They could come and just appreciate storytelling because essentially that’s all anime is. 

The flow of how the clubhouse worked was great on the basis that you got to experience all the different creators that had IPs, you got to do live art, painting, there’s all these different dynamics of being a creator. 

The vibe was there, the energy was there, the community seemed like they absolutely loved it and in turn we loved it.