Origress raises funds from ANA and Mitsubishi UFJ Capital to fuel anime tourism push
What's the deal? OrigressDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, a Tokyo-based entertainment startup that blends intellectual property (IP) with real-world experiences, has raised a new round of funding from ANA Future Creation Fund — the corporate venture arm of ANA Holdings, managed by Global Brain — and existing backer Mitsubishi UFJ Capital. The exact amount was not disclosed.
The five-year-old company, which employs around 90 people across its group, says revenue is growing at 1,000% year over year, partly driven by strategic M&A that expanded its group last year. It has built relationships with more than 2,000 entertainment venues through its core product, Lejapass.
Why now? Japan's "content tourism" market — where fans travel to experience the worlds of their favourite anime, games, or artists in real life — is booming. The broader cultural shift from buying things to buying experiences, combined with the rise of "oshi-katsu" (fan devotion culture), has created a fast-growing niche at the intersection of travel and entertainment.
For ANA, the investment is strategic, not just financial. The airline group wants to pair its flight network, hotel properties, and customer base with Origress's IP relationships and experience-design capabilities to turn travel itself into part of the fan experience.
What could go wrong? Content tourism depends heavily on licensing agreements with IP holders. A shift in rights availability or fan tastes could undermine demand quickly. Scaling VIP-priced, experience-heavy tour packages also requires consistent quality — something harder to maintain as the company expands nationwide and eventually abroad.
The 1,000% revenue growth figure, while eye-catching, is partly M&A-driven, making it difficult to gauge organic momentum.
The signal: Origress is classified as an "early growth" stage company on Dealroom, and ANA's strategic bet underscores how Japan's legacy transport groups are actively seeking startup partners to capture the content tourism wave rather than building in-house. The combination of an airline's distribution reach with a startup's IP relationships is a model that could be replicated across Asia, where fan-driven travel is similarly accelerating — but Origress will need to prove its organic growth story once the M&A tailwinds fade.
Read more: prtimes.jp
