Trading Wars, the new AI

Philippines — Trading Wars, an upcoming Filipino-produced anime series by Mishkam Technologies, a start-up technology company based in Quezon City, aims to break barriers in the anime industry using synthography, a combination of human-directed and AI-assisted production methodologies

In an exclusive interview with Tech INQ, Matthew Apilado, Mishkam Technologies’ Chief Operating Officer (COO), stressed that Artificial Intelligence (AI) served purely as a tool in the anime’s production. At its core, the series relies on human hands: A director to anchor the creative vision and an artist to map out the storyboard while preserving human creativity and artistry.

Behind the story

The anime series follows the story of Ren, a failed stock trader who, after staking his entire savings on cryptocurrency, got rug-pulled and lost his money after the market crashed. Upon meeting his mentor Ginzo, he teaches Ren the fundamentals of trading, as well as how to spot social cues to look out for and avoid such scams. 

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From there, Ren was introduced to the trading competition of the titular name, where all participants are given access to the world’s wealth, and the winner can make global financial decisions that can shape the world. 

Matthew also described the anime’s storyline as dark and political, as the series aims to educate viewers on the fundamentals of cryptocurrency and the benefits of Artificial Intelligence used in the film<a href="https://comicvibe.com/why-did-apple-stop-making-the-pippin-video-game-console/” title=”Why Did Apple Stop Making The Pippin Video Game Console?”>making process.

“Like any other tool, it could be used to move us forward—to make us or to break us. That is how technology is. People will always be afraid of what they don’t understand, and that is why we are bringing Trading Wars to the people so that they would understand,” Matthew shared.

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Production process

For the production of the series, the production process involves “synthography”, a combination of human storytelling, visual direction, cinematic planning, content generation using Artificial Intelligence, and professional post-production, with each frame going through a strict quality check before being finalized.

During production for the second episode alone, the team crafted 97 frames across 10 scenes, mirroring the rigorous storyboarding process traditionally used by Japanese anime studios.

Behind the scenes, the studio also laid its own technological foundation during conceptualization—building their own Large Language Model (LLM) and pairing it with commercial generative AI to streamline the filmmaking process.

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“So the reason why we still can’t do it is, number one, we don’t have the rebecause we have our own artistic way of dealing way with things. We want the world to understand first what we do before we start letting in people,” Matthew told Tech INQ

“And that is why we are always saying it’s only AI-assisted. Because in the future, we have plans of hiring animators,” Matthew added.

Another issue to take note as the studio executives tackle the possibility of the series being tagged as an “AI slop”, they also stated that they have strict quality assurance in the post-production process, such as checking the smallest details of the animation before it is finalized for viewing.

“We are doing quality assurance in what we do by checking the small details, because that’s where things get tagged as ‘AI slop’. So what I do specifically is I check frames one-by-one. If one scene has 15 frames—I have to check all of them. I check the buttons, the fingers, the nose, how the mouth moves, how the eyes move, the ears. That’s how we assure that we provide the people the best quality of AI-assisted anime that we can do,” he discussed.

The studios are currently in talks with Crunchyroll and Netflix for the potential release of the anime series.

Plans beyond the anime series

Beyond the anime, Trading Wars plans to expand into ventures such as trading card games with both digital and physical formats, Blockchain and Web3 businesses, and an esports competition in the future.

While Blockchain and Web3 serve as the narrative spine of the Trading Wars anime, Mishkam’s vision doesn’t end on the screen. According to the studio’s COO, the team is actively preparing to take the brand into diverse new industries, turning the series into a gateway for a wider cross-sector footprint.

“We are not putting our eggs in one basket. That’s why we have anime, we have physical trading card games and upcoming merchandise in the future,” Matthew explained. 

“That’s because we don’t want to anchor everything to the blockchain technology or to the Web3 industry, as we made sure that there are other sectors of the business that could flourish, that could survive without the Web3 industry,” he added.

Matthew’s brother—Chris Apilado, also serving as the CEO of Mishkam, shared with Tech INQ that the project currently has yet to have investors on their cryptocurrency venture since the anime project itself is yet to be launched. 

However, he assured the public that once their brand launches, their team will closely monitor the market and token prices, and assured that they will comply with the legalities required to run their multi-model business.

The anime series aims to launch its first season by the first quarter of 2027.

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