Founder, CEO, Producer, Writer, Christiano Terry.

N LITE

One of the more interesting new anime companies of recent years is N LITE, and I recently caught up with its CEO, Christiano Terry, about their upcoming work.

Before we got to that, I wanted to learn more about Terry’s background and what he enjoyed doing as a kid.

“I grew up in Detroit, a place known for music, cars, and its budding underground art scene. My childhood was a melting pot of pop culture, music, art, and influences that any person would think were diametrically opposed. I was in church listening to songs by Aretha Franklin and the Clark Sisters, on Saturday mornings, I heard Marvin Gaye, and in my room, I had records from The Cure, Radiohead, Bjork, David Bowie, and Madonna. Music was a gateway to storytelling, and animation made its way into my life through Disney classics like The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Beauty and the Beast. I was also captivated by live-action films by Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola. However, nothing prepared me for watching Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away on VHS. It was Studio Ghibli that led me into the world of anime, and then I came upon anime classics like Ninja Scroll, Escaflowne, Grave of the Fireflies, Inuyasha, and Neon Genesis Evangelion.

“My love for film and anime led me to pick up a camera- a film camera to be exact, and I also started painting, drawing, and writing my own stories. I also played musical instruments and was in a symphony orchestra, jazz band, and a rock band. I was just a crazy kid who told everyone I was going to be a great artist and took myself way too seriously. I ended up moving to NYC for college at the Pratt Institute, stayed in a cramped Brooklyn apartment with art supplies everywhere, crashed some Vogue parties, ran up to Anna Wintour and gave her my card, spent time on film sets, you know, the usual NYC artsy things.

“When I left art school, I was writing screenplays and shooting film, but I looked around and didn’t believe the industry was open to telling the types of stories I wanted to tell. I was right, and decided business would be the vehicle that would allow me to create at scale. Naturally, I said, “Okay, I’m going to do my own thing”, and that turned into the past decade of building a creative dream brick by brick.

“I moved to Washington DC and got into the startup community, studied business, and started working for a startup company that had challenged me to collaborate with international business leaders, diplomats, and Silicon Valley types. I learned so much from that experience and gained many of the contacts I used to create N LITE. This period of my life helped me fully embrace being a multi-hyphenate. I love building businesses as much as I love being an artist and creative.

“After gaining this experience, I founded N LITE in 2022. I named the company N LITE because of my obsession with creative and spiritual enlightenment. The idea was that, through storytelling, we can take people on a journey, and hopefully they come out inspired on the other side.

“The thesis of N LITE was to place the black imagination center stage in entertainment from a holistic perspective, one that truly shows the breadth of culture across the African diaspora. This is still true today. Anime became our second north star for two reasons: the first was such a formative part of my creative upbringing and storytelling vision, and the second was that Black and Latino audiences are some of the biggest consumers of anime in the world, and our stories have yet to be reflected in the medium.

“So, I traveled to Tokyo with business partners in 2023 and met the anime legend, Masao Maruyama. Maruyama-sensei was gracious enough to embrace my creative vision and goals. I’ve learned so much from Maruyama and the relationships we’ve built in Japan over the past few years, which led me to create our subsidiary Studio N LITE in Tokyo, where we are producing MFINDA and other projects. It has been a blessing to be welcomed by so many Japanese studios, creatives, and producers we look up to. We’ve had to earn that trust, and we are still earning it through good business. There are certainly challenges to international co-productions and merging different cultures and creative approaches. At the end of the day, honoring our relationships in Japan is paramount.”

It was here that we got to MFINDA, and Terry was eager to explain the project further.

“Anime is a unique medium; you can tell virtually any story. Unlike Western animation, which is still looked at as mostly a family and children’s medium, Japanese storytellers have managed to bring so many varied stories to life through anime. As broad as anime is, it has rarely explored stories that are not of Japanese or European origin. African storytelling, or even stories from the Caribbean, Latin America, and more, have not been attempted at scale. There’s so much untapped cultural richness and mythology that we’re just now seeing explored in anime through the work we’re doing at N LITE and some other independent studios. For myself, stories like Nadia: Secret of Blue Water (with its African elements) or Coo: From Distant Ocean (which is based in Fiji) were early anime inspirations for what we look to accomplish with MFINDA.

“MFINDA is based on Congolese folklore. The Congo is such a special and mystical place; it is also in political danger, and through this film, we also highlight the people of the Congo and why they should be protected and respected. Aside from this cultural and political message, MFINDA is also a timeless fantasy epic. In many ways, it is like stories like Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, and other classic fantasy tales that have captured the imaginations of generations. No matter if you know anything about Congo, MFINDA will capture your imagination and be relatable to anyone from any background. We saw proof of this at Anime Expo in 2025, where hundreds of fans showed up to our panel to get a behind-the-scenes look at MFINDA and the production team. Fans from every background came and had audible gasps at much of the artwork we showed. It was such an inspiring moment.

“The execution of MFINDA, technically as a hand-drawn, hand-painted animated film, is equally as impactful. With the rise of AI, it has been doubly important to execute the film with traditional animation techniques. Our goal is to pass on the craft from previous generations to this new generation. We’re actively training animators outside of Japan, and through our collaborations with Japanese studios supporting MFINDA, we are learning so much that will help us execute the other films on our slate.

“Animation was built from technological innovation, but the traditional Japanese animation process and traditional 2D hand-drawn animation as a whole is an art form that is worth preserving through films like MFINDA.”

Kodansha has also played a big role in the development of this new IP, as Terry explains.

“When we thought about making the first anime IP that explores African storytelling, a manga was paramount for the story to grow into its own world. Doing it with an equally captivating medium is exciting to say the least. Funny story, I was told by someone in Japan, “If you can create a manga, we will take this IP seriously”. I’m not a person who takes challenges lightly, so if you put a challenge in front of me, I’m going to go for it! I’m happy that the challenge pushed us to create MFINDA: The Manga.

“The manga started with Tom Lintern (Art Director at N LITE), Patience Lekien, (Creator of MFINDA) and me. We decided to tell a prologue to the film, rather than re-create the film as a manga. I wrote the manga, and Tom has created all the art with close consultation from Patience, who was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It was a yearlong process of studying cultural elements and drawing the world before even putting them into manga sample pages.

“Kodansha has helped write the storybook to my life and other manga fans’ lives with titles like The Ghost in the Shell and Akira. We shared the MFINDA manga sample pages with them last year, and fortunately, they were impressed. It has been such an honor to collaborate with their Global Business Division and the Shonen Sirius editorial team to bring this manga to life. We’re working with the talented storyboard artist, Koma Warita, who’s directly collaborating with Tom and I on the pacing and storyboarding of the manga.

“I truly believe the manga will turn out to be a classic- but again, I tend to shoot for the stars! MFINDA: The Manga will begin serialization later this summer.”

In addition to working with Kodansha, Terry has also been involved with Tezuka Productions.

“I’m glad you brought up Tezuka; I’ve been a fan of Osamu Tezuka and Tezuka Productions for many years now. Like many others, I was exposed to Tezuka through Astro Boy, and that led me to titles like Jungle Emperor Leo, Black Jack, and even more obscure ones like The Legend of Moby Dick, Princess Knight, and Cleopatra.

“Tezuka Productions is celebrating its 100th anniversary soon, and they’ve been gracious enough to allow us to collaborate with them on a new Jungle Emperor Leo film. I first mentioned this during Anime Expo in 2025. The official title of the film is Jungle Emperor Leo: Path of Two. What I can say is that the film is based in Ethiopia and incorporates elements of reggae, Ethiopian mysticism, and folklore while staying true to the timeless hero that is Leo and his mission to protect the jungle.

“At N LITE, we aim for our anime to be culturally specific and explore things people have never seen before. This is true for adapting a classic IP for a new generation. I’m grateful to the team at Tezuka Productions for trusting us during this process as we work to create a unique take on Jungle Emperor Leo. We will announce more soon.”

Finishing up, I was wondering what future plans Terry had for N LITE.

“My hopes for N LITE are straightforward, and with the help of our amazing team, I believe we can accomplish them. Our goal isn’t to build a behemoth corporation that corners a market. We want to create timeless stories that people will enjoy for decades. We also want to preserve art forms that are being lost and honor the history that built them.

“Once you give a story to the world, it isn’t yours anymore. I hope N LITE can give something to the world that will ignite people’s imaginations and help them believe the world is filled with endless possibilities. I’m optimistic for the future.”

Follow me on X, Facebook and YouTube. I also manage Mecha Damashii and am currently writing regular columns in Japanese about mecha games and mecha anime for both Game*Spark and Automaton.