Hobby Industry Inside Vol.28: The Past and Present of Tetsuro Akiyama, the Man Who Pioneered the "Profession" and "Market" of Figure Sculptor

Today, there are countless figure products on the market, ranging from garage kits produced by amateurs as a hobby to finished products and plastic models produced by major manufacturers. The market is well established, and there are many people working in the figure industry.
However, more than 30 years ago, in the early 1980s, the hobby industry was limited to modelers who created their own bishojo characters and had their submissions published in model magazines. There was a man who single-handedly struggled to make his hobby of figurines, which seemed like something that would fly away, into a "job. He is Tetsuro Akiyama, whose works were published in "Hobby Japan" and "Model Information. We visited Mr. Akiyama, who is currently the managing director of MIC Corporation, and asked him about the behind-the-scenes of figure culture from the 1980s to the present.

I called the publisher out of the blue and obtained the merchandising rights on my own!

─ ─ What kind of company is MIC Corporation, to which Mr. Akiyama now belongs?

Akiyama: Most of our work is prototyping for Bandai's products. We make various prototypes including "S.H.Figuarts". The rest are for Banpresto and other manufacturers. We also undertake some OEM (OEM production on consignment for other companies' brands).

───How did you come to join MIC?

Akiyama: About 10 years ago, when I was still working as a freelance prototype maker, I heard that an acquaintance of mine whom I had worked with in the past was running a prototype company. That was MIC. At first I went to ask him for a job, but he asked me, "Since you are old enough, why don't you go to the producing side instead of making prototypes yourself? I found that interesting, too, and was allowed to join the company. For the first four or five years, I worked as a sales person, acting as an intermediary between the prototype maker in the company and the customer to promote the work. Now I am on the management side, but there are many freelance prototype designers who help MIC's work as well as within the company. I am working to create a situation where these people can continue to work in the figure business even after they get older.


───It seems that the figure boom has died down, but there is still a lot of work to be done, isn't there?

Akiyama: Yes, the number of products has not changed much from the boom days of the late 1990s and early 2000s, or it has increased depending on the genre. For example, there are many Gashapon machines lined up in game arcades and electronics retail stores. That is how much demand there is.

─ Mr. Akiyama, I heard that you started making figures through the Tamiya-sponsored "Doll Remodeling Contest" (a contest in which entrants remodel 1/35th scale commercial military figures into real people or characters, held annually since 1973).

Akiyama: The first time I entered the contest was when I was in junior high school, and I kept getting rejected without being selected. After entering high school, I stepped into the otaku hobby in earnest with Hideo Agatsuma's manga. I joined a fan club, and at that time we had regular monthly meetings at a coffee shop in Shinjuku. I brought a figure of the Agatsuma character that I had made myself to the meeting, and my friends were very pleased. At that time, Masahiro Oda, a modeler famous for his Gunpla creations, was writing about reproduction techniques in a magazine, so I made reproductions of my own figures using silicone rubber and resin casting and sold them to my fan club friends at first. Eventually, I began to sell them at Comiket, where I had a table, and I began to think, "Perhaps figure making could be a job?" I began to think, "Perhaps figure making could be a job. That was around the time when I was in high school and college.


─ Was it around the same time that your works began to appear in magazines?

Akiyama: As I recall, I made my own figure of "Magical Princess Minky Momo" and took it to the editorial department of "Fan Road" (published by Rapport). Satoshi Kato, the editor of "Model Information" (Bandai), saw it and asked me to make figures for him. The copyright for the "Wingman" garage kits I was selling was acquired by Model Information.


─ ─ The "Outlanders" heroine, Calm, was also a garage kit that you officially obtained the copyright to and sold.

Akiyama: I took the copyright for "Outlanders" myself. I called Hakusensha, which had serialized the manga, and explained verbally, "We want to sell garage kits, which are like plastic models. How many do you want to sell? I think they gave me permission to do so in a light-hearted manner. I think they gave us a light-hearted permission.