When Dr. Essam Bukhary joined Manga Productions as CEO in 2017, he embraced its vision for a better, brighter future and set out to help make it a reality with its team.
“The dream was to inspire the heroes of tomorrow,” says Bukhary, who led the animation company to bring authentic Saudi stories to global audiences using world-class production values. “I believe in the power of creative content to shape the future of young generations.”
More specifically, Bukhary’s ambition was to use Japanese manga in its many forms — anime, comics, games — to tell Saudi stories after falling in love with Yōichi Takahashi’s legendary manga and anime series Captain Tsubasa when he was a boy, bowled over by both its animation and its messaging. “Anime changed my life,” says Bukhary, who was inspired to study industrial and systems engineering in Japan and later worked as a cultural attaché there, during which time he commissioned a series of manga as a means of illustrating Saudi and its culture to the Japanese, before returning to the KSA in 2015.
Two years later he was CEO of Manga Productions. “When I started, all I had was a vision,” he recalls. “We didn’t have a studio. We didn’t have schools to teach anime, manga or games. But we had a lot of stories from Saudi Arabia and the Arabian Peninsula that we wanted to tell the world about.”
In the decade and a half since its inception, Manga Productions — a subsidiary of Mohammed bin Salman Foundation “Misk” – aimed at cultivating youth learning and leadership — has become a global animation powerhouse, with offices in Riyadh and Tokyo, and a workforce of almost 80 staff from Saudi, the UK, France and Japan.
’Henna’ at Annecy
Manga Productions’ latest animated project is an eight-minute, hand drawn short titled Henna, which was announced at Annecy International Animation Film Festival on June 24. Produced in collaboration with Chinese streaming platform BiliBili, the film, which is almost complete, follows Reema, a deaf girl in 1950s rural Saudi Arabia who finds her voice through the art of henna. The short is entirely the work of Saudi artists and creatives.
“Henna, for me, is a new initiative,” says Bukhary. “What can our talents do alone without relying on Japan? Let’s see what we can do. Let’s see what the Saudi style might look like. That was the start. Our team brought a story about a deaf girl who can’t speak, facing a lot of issues. But even though she cannot speak, she can tell her stories by using the art of henna. It’s an original tale, inspired by Saudi. But it’s not just a story about a girl. It’s not just a story for Saudi people. It’s a global story. A story of a girl who will inspire a lot of young people.”
Henna also promises to be unique stylistically. “We applied new techniques for the first time in the history of anime – a Saudi anime style,” he explains. “It’s very Saudi in terms of story, character designs, motion, music, even the making of. I think audiences will really enjoy something different, something unique coming from Saudi Arabia.”
Henna was formally unveiled at Annecy where further details of the project will be revealed.
Toei collaboration
Manga Productions and Japan’s Toei have collaborated on animated series Asateer (Future’s Folktales) which is set in Riyadh in 2050 and revolves around Asmaa, an old woman who narrates folktales from the Arabian Peninsula to her three grandchildren.
The series was released on more than 100 platforms, was the first Arab IP available on Chinese streaming platform BiliBili, and has so far amassed more than one billion viewers globally. It ran for two seasons and a further season is planned.
Manga Productions and Toei’s second collaboration was 2021 animated feature The Journey. Directed by Kōbun Shizuno, the story follows a potter named Aws who joins a battle to defend his home city of Mecca from foreign raiders. The Journey won the Septimus Award for best experimental film and was released theatrically in Saudi and MENA as well as in Japan – available in English, Japanese and Arabic-language versions. It also became the first Arab film to premiere at Los Angeles’ world famous Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and is available to stream on Crunchyroll in the UK and US and on BiliBili in China.
In addition to Henna, Manga Productions is soon set to announce several other animation projects. “Henna is more of an R&D project,” Bukhary explains. “We will try to examine and test the markets. It’s a prototype and we’ll try and learn from it, to move forward to the next milestone.”
As well as its collaboration with Toei, Manga Productions signed deals with Tokyo-based Dynamic Planning in 2022 to license anime series Grendizer U and with Tsubasa Co. for Bukhary’s childhood idol Captain Tsubasa for Saudi and the Middle East.
“We are the global distributor of [Grendizer U] outside Japan,” he says. “We publish a game with that IP. We built a statue of Grendizer in Riyadh that was 33 metres high and made the Guinness World Records. We put it on potato chips. We are providing Japanese companies with 360-degree business opportunities.”
Manga Productions first attended Annecy in 2025 and Bukhary, who spends one week per month in Japan, expects the company to have a major presence going forward. “Annecy is a great platform for us, and I hope that every year we can have an announcement there,” Bukhary adds. “We are collaborating with Japan and China but are very open to collaboration with other countries. We have very good relationships in terms of game publishing in different countries, in Europe and in the US. I hope we can have even more, because content is a great tool for achieving a more peaceful work for all humanity. Which we all need.”
Contact: info@manga.com.sa
Website: manga.com.sa
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