Unfinished chapter (Patron update)

Hi everyone,

Today we were supposed to release our portrait of Hiroyuki Takei, the mangaka behind the world-renowned Shaman King series. We were really looking forward to that release ourselves, as it was our first video in a while (if we don't count the recent TGS short videos). 

Unfortunately, yesterday we received some bad news. 

Upon sending the video for Takei's team to check, we were asked to change an element (that had been previously validated during the shoot), which ends up affecting the video's whole structure and how we built our edit - leading us to now consider even reshooting the interview altogether. 

We rarely mention it, but we send every video we put on Archipel to check before publication, most of the time because rights-holding companies or management require us to do so - a practice that is quite common in Japan (not meaning that we adjust our content in any way because of said check). This has sometimes led to some debates in the past on the use of certain elements (maybe a story for another post?), although we obviously don't want to release anything that the creator would feel uncomfortable with.

Back to our portrait on Hiroyuki Takei, we can't hide the fact that we are disappointed to not be able to publish the video for end October as we had announced. Working on it has been really motivating, also liberating in a way as it would allow us to catch a breath from some hectic work projects. We often get that adrenaline rush before we release a video, trying to fine-tune as many details as possible, all impatient to see people's reactions and more than anything, being able to share a new story. We're not giving up on Takei though, we're exploring our options, while we look for another timeframe for when we'll be able to publish the video, in what we hope will be its best possible shape.

We would also like to apologize again to our patrons for not being able to share more frequent updates. As conscious as we are of that fact, it's hard to juggle between our personal and work projects, and while we truly appreciate your support, we are far from being able to be independent from our Patreon revenue.

Nevertheless, there's more to come for Archipel. We still want to make creator portraits & long-form content, we keep planning on other projects, some moving forward quicker than others, some that are popping more unexpectedly, such as a followup "drinKING" tour with game creator SWERY (almost 4 years after our first session together), an opportunity that we definitely don't want to pass on. We hope we'll be able to share more soon.

Thank you again for your support, it really means a lot to us.

- the Archipel team