GM gals, and guys 👋
I realized this is the first post I wrote dedicated to one NFT project. But I’m pretty excited about it, and since I’m going through serious Sailor Moon nostalgia, there’s no project more perfect than 新星ギャルバース/ Shinsei Galverse.
Of course, none of this is financial advice. You should not buy stuff just because I did. How I spend my money is my decision, my consequences. The same goes for you. No one solicited me to write this; I am just in love with the vibe.
Let’s start with the basics.
What is Shinsei Galverse?
As a linguist, the first thing I do is split words. Same with Shinsei Galverse
Shinsei (新星) is japanese for new star, nova 🌠
Galverse is a combination of gal x metaverse x universe
While the term gal is also used in English to speak of young women, in Japan, it has further connotations with a tribe of headstrong, optimistic women, often with a style that sets them apart. I remember during my teens, Gals would have a dark tan, adhesive lashes, colored contact lenses, brightly dyed hair, and like to wear pink, beige, furry hoodies, and other cute items.
The Shinsei Galverse is an NFT collection of 8,888 unique gals that explores the themes of beauty and the fragility of life. Looking at it, you’ll immediately get the Japanese 80s showa anime vibes.
It tells the story of these gals on a mission to bring peace to the galaxy, one planet at a time. But there is a lot more to it than just a storyline. The Shinsei Galverse team is planning to be the first web3 nft community to launch an actual anime.
Or as they like to put it: WAGMAA = We’re gonna make an anime together.
The neat part is that any holder will be able to directly contribute to the storyline, the character development, the design, the naming, and more of the anime.
So who is behind the Galverse?
In case you haven’t guessed it — which you probably have — the team behind Galverse has its creative heart set in Tokyo.
Two artistic women lead the project.
Ayaka Ohira is a director and animator who has made a living working independently with some of the most prominent Japanese hip hop artists, such as m-flo, LEX, and Peavis. While initially self-taught, she later studied under renowned artists like Yoji Kuri and Manabu Ohashi, polishing her style.
Emi Kusano is often seen on Japanese TV speaking about NFTs and Web3. She is a director and a singer for the Japanese band Satellite Young. She also lectures at the prestigious Tokyo university of arts.
The third on the team is Devin, a creative technologist who held senior roles working in design across major Web2 companies such as Google, YouTube, and DropBox.
And lastly, Jack is responsible for the 3 Cs at Galverse and can be found day and night (or so it seems) on discord, taking care of the community, communications, and collaborations.
The founding story
Whenever some new company launches, what people want to hear about is the story behind it. I enjoyed learning about the story behind Galverse, so you might too.
Ayaka and Emi met in 2018 when Ayaka was hired to make an animation video for a new song that Emi’s band had recorded. It was then when they both realized they shared a love for fashion, a Gal mindset, and both liked the retro anime style. Below is the video for reference.
They both dreamed of creating an anime together that would focus on strong female characters — as Hayato Miyazaki has done, or Sailor Moon. However, they didn’t immediately get to work as both had their own projects, and producing an anime requires significant funding.
In the meantime, Emi’s son would become somewhat of a phenomenon with his summer holiday project, drawing pixel art of zoo animals. The Zoo Art Project soon garnered attention in the NFT space and in the Friends with Benefits DAO that Devin was part of.
He reached out to Emi to explore creating something more experimental based on her son’s project. Her son, however, refused. He probably didn’t want to work on top of homework 😆.
Nevertheless, Emi, Ayaka, and Devin realized how they could leverage web3 to make Emi and Ayaka’s dream of an Anime become a reality and started working on it together.
Looking to the future…
Roadmap
Shinsei Galverse launched in April 2022 and sold out in just 5 hours (at a mint price of 0.07 ETH), making it one of the biggest successes coming from Japan. The roadmap is set based on sell-through rates. Over the first 12 months since launch, it includes:
- launch of the community, already happened with over 9k Discord members and 28k Twitter followers
- stuff page: where holders can download assets featuring their gals, and social templates
- Gal-lery: to learn about the stories of all gals
- collaborations with other artists and airdrops to holders
- galverse merch
- galverse manga one-shot: a holders’ only manga. Holders can already enjoy the first chapter of the gals' story on the website.
Ultimately, the goal is to turn the galverse into iconic IP. Which isn’t that far off if you think about the anime you grew up with. Japan is highly competitive when it comes to IP. And since Murakami’s flowers, Galverse has been one of the few projects from the land of the rising sun to enjoy international success, even climbing to the #1 spot on Opensea after launch.
One of the big reasons behind their international acclaim is that from the beginning, the team understood well that they’d have to market to an international audience. Suffice it to say; that they pulled that off well.
But they also get their share of coverage in Japan. Most recently, galverse was featured on the front page of Business Insider Japan, and an article in Vogue Japan is coming soon.
Turning us all into Vtubers
Last but absolutely not least, the most exciting recent announcement from the team has been that we’re all gonna become VTubers.
In partnership with Voltaku Studio, every gal will be animated and turned into a Vtuber. And if you have no clue what any of that even means, check out the short clip they shared:
I must admit, I can’t wait to see my gal become a Vtuber; who knows, I might start an entirely new career. In the meantime, I’ll enjoy the discord live streams that Sally does, showing us how a static jpeg turns into a fully-fledged animation.
I bought the gal just because I loved the vibe, and looks. After researching, I’m even happier with my choice. The team behind galverse has put a lot of effort into creating this (for example, they added 2000 individual traits, normally projects settle for 200–500) and continues pushing toward making their dream a reality. I’m looking forward to getting involved in the anime creation with feedback, and seeing my gal come to life.
If you now feel like you want to check it out as well, here’s their website: https://www.galverse.art/ and the opensea page for those who want to invest in a badass women team from Japan: https://opensea.io/collection/galverse.
So long, じゃね～。
WAGMAA
