About the studio
Docomo Anime Store, known in Japan as d-anime Store, launched as a joint venture between telecom giant NTT Docomo and Kadokawa Shoten, established May 16, 2012 and going live that July. Based in Tokyo, it grew into one of Japan's major anime subscription streaming services, at its peak carrying a catalog of over 6,000 titles. *A phone carrier and a publisher teaming up to build a streaming service, which honestly makes more sense than it sounds like it should.* Originally exclusive to Docomo subscribers, the service opened up to everyone in 2014, and it's run its own d-anime Store Awards since 2019. It's worth noting this is a distinct service from NTT Docomo's separate general video-on-demand lineage (D Video, later dTV, now Lemino). Over a decade in, d-anime Store remains one of the more anime-dedicated streaming platforms in Japan, built specifically around the genre rather than treating it as one category among many.