Interview About The Upcoming Anime Streaming Service OceanVeil

Written by Eoghan O'Connell on 20 Feb 2025

With OceanVeil due to release in beta in March, I got the opportunity to sit down with Jason Roberson and Jade-Cassandra Mana to discuss this exciting new streaming service.

Why don't we start by introducing yourselves to our readers?

Jason: My name is Jason. I work here at WWWave Corporation in Japan. I work for the Global Distribution section so we primarily work on getting manga and anime out to the global audience.

Mana: Hi, nice to meet you. We're in charge of the English subdivisions that are anime services such as OceanVeil which we're going to talk about today.

Something that I thought was quite interesting was the name of it, OceanVeil. It's has a mysterious feel to it and when I took a look at the website, I saw the tagline was "Diving into our ocean of anime", "Secrets wait for you under the ocean's veil if you know where to find them". That's promising quite a lot there so could you explain how you came up with the name and the meaning of those phrases?

Jason: You're exactly right, the naming of our service was meant to have a mysterious nuance to the name because our company, WWWave Corporation, we produce in-house manga and anime. A lot of it tends to be BL, TL, Boy's love, Teen's love...so we use the manga that sell really well and we turn those into anime. We have a large selection, we have right now 36 adult content titles that are just produced in-house. Those are all produced from our manga so it's basically we wanted to make a site that provided some regular anime for day to day but at night you have the special secret section which is the adult section which is kind of what the name is trying to insinuate without actually saying it since there's a lot of controversy, credit cards and all that situation, so we were just make a service that kind of keeps your secrets so that it keeps you safe, I guess you could say.

Mana: That's the history behind OceanVeil. If I could add a little, Jason was the one who came up with the name and really pushed it forward. We are really going with the ocean theme.

Jason: Actually, our company is called WWWave Corporation because the three Ws simulate the waves of water, so our company, everything has a...

Mana: Ocean theme.

Jason: Ocean theme and ocean name for a lot of the things we do in-house and so we just decided to take that into our service basically.

One of the things you sent me was the press release you sent to Anime News Network and there was a lot of very interesting information on there, but mainly it left a lot of questions. In particular, there was a statement that really stood out to me which mentioned "shows that cannot be found on other platforms". Now, of course, one particular section of it is that adult content you were talking about. As far as I can tell, that's not really on any of the other streaming services currently but you've also mentioned the fact that there will be these daytime shows that are kind of more family-friendly. Could you give us an idea of what that entails?

Jason: So we are currently talking with various publishers and the licensors, people who have the licensing rights for a large selection of anime. We are trying to actually not get so much of the new releases so much as the works that haven't really gone from Japan to America. Some of the really good titles that have fallen through the cracks or ones that people have never really seen on an official platform before. Unfortunately, at this point in time, I can't actually divulge any of those. Shorter anime as well because a lot of foreigners don't really know there's this whole different section of anime where they have these five minute, three minute short anime.

Mana: It's really just trying to get out all those old titles that you can't find on any official platform...and we just give them a chance to watch it on an official platform and really enjoy it in a good quality, I would say.

That sounds pretty awesome. I'm a big fan of Osamu Tezuka myself so I'd hope to see some of his anime series on there someday. I wanted to go into a bit more detail on this hidden section you're talking about. I'm kind of struggling a little to visualise what it will look like on the service. If I were to come into OceanVeil, and I've got all of my shonen and shoujo and all that stuff out in front of me, how easy will it be for me to actually find this hidden trove of treasure?

Jason: I don't know how to describe it.

Mana: How to explain it?

Jason: Basically it's not super hidden but it's not on the top page.

Mana: When you enter the site...safe for work titles will be on the first view. You'll have to go into a menu, push the button and then go to the other section.

Will the shows be strictly in Japanese with English subs or will some of them have English dubs as well?

Jason: Currently I can say that of the titles that we have, we have about fourteen or fifteen titles that will have a dub near the launch of the website. Those will only increase. We do have a plan to try and do simuldubs as well. I know that's something that people are interested in and also thinking about and looking into dubbing some of the adult content as well. We have a company that is looking to do the adult content for us in dubbing. We are actually pushing for more dubs as we've found that there is a lot more interest in it than we thought there was at first.

You don't have to explain the behind-the-scenes but originally you were going to launch the beta for OceanVeil this month (February), but it's been delayed and now it's going to be in March. What's going to be available in this beta and how will people be able to participate?

Jason: For who will be able to participate in it, it will be completely open but we might have a special for people who join at the beginning. We're still kind of looking into how to exactly do it. It kind of depends on where the site is by March as well. There's a lot of things that go into the whole process. I'm really interested in getting as much feedback from the users and making a site that is for them and what they want. Having features that they want versus what we think they want so I really want to take in a lot of the opinions of the people out there.

Yeah, I noticed on your social media that you've been trying to get a lot of feedback. Just one last point on that, in terms of the titles, obviously no specifics, will it be a very limited catalogue of titles to start with in beta?

Jason: Because of how long it takes to procure contracts and the whole anime talks that have to go on, checks and balances that have to go on in place with producers, for graphics for everything like that, unfortunately on release, yes, it will be a limited catalogue. That is something we hope to change within the first few months of release and keep adding more content as we move along. We'll get as much feedback and implement as many features that are requested, we'll try and bring in as much anime as people request that we can but nothing goes as smoothly as it sounds when you say it.

Mana: We will keep on trying to bring new old titles and new titles to the platform and just keep everyone satisfied.

Just to quickly ask, will the content that's available immediately be a mix of the safe for work titles and the not safe for work titles?

Jason: Yes.

Another thing that I'm curious about is if this is going to be a purely subscription service or is there going to be some free content that is supported by ads? Will there be free trials for people to try out the service to see if it's their thing before committing to it? Can you give us some idea about how that will work and, particularly, with the beta next month, I think you mentioned something about potential rewards for early adopters?

Jason: It is a strictly subscription platform but there will be free content. It'll be limited free content. There will be no ads at this point in time. Maybe something we'll explore in the future. Free trials is something that we are exploring. We haven't currently set up the system for free trials but it is definitely something that we'll be considering in the future. For the launch, because of its limited content, we are contemplating how to start off everything, doing something for early adopters I think is something that would be really nice. There's no solid details I can really give on what that is going to look like at this moment in time but it is something we're discussing.

Mana: That is something we're discussing so it would be fair to everyone.

Before we finish, is there anything you wish to highlight or promote in particular with OceanVeil? Also, how can people keep up to date and keep track of things?

Jason: Reddit is going to be used as kind of a blog-ish situation so a lot of posts talking about the industry and how it works because the rating system in Japan is so different to the rating system in the US or UK. A lot of live updates and live conversations, anime they want to see is on Discord. For me at this current time, Discord is one of the major things that we use. X I use just to [follow] a couple of anime communities and stuff that are really fun to talk to. In terms of OceanVeil and what we'd like to highlight or promote, we'd really like to highlight the name. OceanVeil is meant to be secretive, it's meant to have the illusion of having something hidden and make you interested and make you want to go further and find secrets. The main objective of the site is to find a middle-ground for both the adult and non-adult content and getting people some older classics. If they want to keep up to date, X, Reddit and Discord are the main things that would be used for now.

Mana: The Discord community is the one that is most active so that's really the place to chat. We are giving out new information that we think the community would like.

Thank you very much for talking to me. It's been a lot of great information here.

You can follow OceanVeil on their Discord, X, Reddit and Facebook accounts and you can access the beta for OceanVeil in March.