The Association of Japanese Animations
The Association of Japanese Animation (AJA) (日本動画協会 Nippon Douga Kyoukai) is an industry group consisting of 52 affiliate animation production companies.
AJA's Duties
AJA's scope of duties are to work on various issues concerning the Japanese animation industry, which most members are a part of.
Most of AJA's members are small to medium-sized companies, hence the need for AJA to unite together to overcome some of the bigger problems, like infringement of intellectual properties, as rampant piracy and illegal file sharing has risen due to the introduction of P2P networking software.
Besides the aforementioned, AJA also serves to resolve problems, and provide improvements of the general production environment, talents and oversea operations.
AJA is striving everyday to address these problems, even if it is a difficult task.
Events
AJA also organises events to promote the work of their members to the major distributor of licenses of other regions, R1 (US), R3 (SEA), R2 (UK), R4 (Aus) and so on, in bid to promote Japanese animation to the world.
One of their events is the biggest anime (Japanese animation) related event in Japan, the Tokyo International Anime Fair.
Since April 2014, the AJA took leadership of Young Animator Training Project (若手アニメーター育成プロジェクト Wakate Animētā Ikusei Purojekuto) an annual project first launched in 2010 by the Japanese Animation Creators Association and funded by the Japanese government's Agency for Cultural Affairs in order to support training animators. The project features a series of animated shorts produced by various animation studios each year. It has since been renamed Anime Mirai (アニメミライ).[1]