Ougi, Jiyuu

Anime producer. Jiyuu Ougi was a producer at Anime International Company's (AIC) AIC ASTA production system. Jiyuu Ougi would also be a producer for other anime produced by AIC's divisions, for example "DATE A LIVE" (AIC PLUS+), Oreimo (AIC Build), "Kotoura-San" (AIC Classic), "Haganai" (AIC Build) and others. In February, 2013, he left AIC with Yoshiyuki Matsuzaki, a producer at AIC Spirits, and founded Production IMS Co., Ltd, or otherwise known as Production IMS. On June 7th, 2017, Production IMS began consolidating their debts, and their board of directors were considering filing for bankruptcy. Production IMS did later file for bankruptcy on September 21, 2018, and shutdown operations on October, 11, 2018, with a debt around 250 million yen. Production IMS disappeared as a legal entity on September 23, 2020. Production IMS did try to restructure, and closed down their Hikarigaoka Studio in Tokyo back in December 2017. However, that appears that wasn't enough to mitigate the issues at Production IMS. Production IMS blamed the increase in production costs, and increase of payment to subcontractors, combined with deteriorating cash flow, as to one of the main reasons why the studio bled so much money.