is a Japanese video game developer and entrepreneur born in

Kanazawa is the capital city of Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 466,029 in 203,271 households, and a population density of 990 persons per km2. The total area of the city was . Overview Cityscape File:もて� ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

. He is the founder and representative director of

Bushiroad is a Japanese entertainment company, producer of collectible card games and trading cards, publisher of mobile apps and games, promotional items and many other venues, which was founded in 2007 by Takaaki Kidani and is headquartered in Tokyo. ...

. Kidani has also served as the chairman of

New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW) is a Japanese professional wrestling promotion based in Nakano, Tokyo. Founded on January 13, 1972, by Antonio Inoki, the promotion was sold to Yuke's, who later sold it to Bushiroad in 2012. TV Asahi and Amuse, Inc. own minority sha ...

(NJPW). He continues to be involved with NJPW through Bushiroad, in which owns the company.

Early life

After Kidani graduated from

Musashi University is a university in Tokyo, Japan. The university grew out of the leading boys private high school, Musashi Junior and Senior High School, first established by businessman Nezu Kaichirō in 1922. The university has faculties of economics es ...

with a degree in economics, he worked at Yamaichi Securities. He handled American duties.

Broccoli

Kidani formerly from Yamaichi Securities in 1994. On March 25 of the same year, he founded

Broccoli Broccoli (''Brassica oleracea'' var. ''italica'') is an edible green plant in the cabbage family (family Brassicaceae, genus ''Brassica'') whose large flowering head, stalk and small associated leaves are eaten as a vegetable. Broccoli is cla ...

as a

startup company A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship refers to all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses that never intend ...

. At first, his business focused on event management, but from 1994 to 1998, he started Comic Castle for

dōjinshi , also romanized as ', is the Japanese term for self-published print works, such as magazines, manga, and novels. Part of a wider category of '' doujin'' (self-published) works, ''doujinshi'' are often derivative of existing works and created ...

. In 1996, he established his first chain of retail stores . His company has its center focus on anime and video games. Their company performance increased after producing the anime series

Di Gi Charat is a Japanese manga and anime series created by Koge-Donbo. The series follows a catgirl named Di Gi Charat " Dejiko" who was adopted as the mascot of Broccoli's retail chain store, Gamers. The original anime series and its ...

and his company was then listed on the

JASDAQ Securities Exchange , formerly the is one of the sections of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. It was formerly an independent stock exchange. JASDAQ is not related to NASDAQ in the United States, but has operated an electronic trading system similar to NASDAQ. History In 1 ...

Bushiroad

He founded Bushiroad in May 2007 as a company that produces card games and assumed the position of president. The origin of the name Bushiroad comes from the failure to make ''

Neppu Kairiku Bushi Road is a Japanese media franchise that was originally announced in 2003 by the title ''Neppu Kairiku Bushi Lord'' as a collaboration between the companies Gainax, Takara and Broccoli. After the death of story creator Sunao Yoshida in 2004 and the ...

'' into a film due to various reasons when he led the project in the days of Broccoli. The film was restarted in March 2013 with Kidani as the executive producer. The company would create numerous

media franchise A media franchise, also known as a multimedia franchise, is a collection of related media in which several derivative works have been produced from an original creative work of fiction, such as a film, a work of literature, a television program ...

s including '' Tantei Opera Milky Holmes'' and ''

BanG Dream! ''BanG Dream!'', also known as , is a Japanese music media franchise owned by Bushiroad. Created by Bushiroad president Takaaki Kidani in January 2015 with original story by Kō Nakamura, the project began as a manga before e ...

''. On October 2, 2017, Bushiroad announced that Kidani would be stepping down as the company's Representative Director on October 20 and joining its

board of directors A board of directors (commonly referred simply as the board) is an executive committee that jointly supervises the activities of an organization, which can be either a for-profit or a nonprofit organization such as a business, nonprofit orga ...

Awards

*''

Wrestling Observer Newsletter The ''Wrestling Observer Newsletter'' (''WON'') is a newsletter that covers professional wrestling and mixed martial arts. Founded in print in 1982 by Dave Meltzer, the ''Wrestling Observer'' website merged with Bryan Alvarez's ''Figure Four W ...

'' ** Promoter of the Year (2014, 2017, 2018)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kidani, Takaaki Japanese business executives Japanese anime producers Japanese animated film producers Professional wrestling promoters Japanese game designers People from Ishikawa Prefecture Living people 1960 births