An Important Announcement

Hey, everyone.

This is something we plan on sharing later this week with the public, but choosing to announce this early here so our biggest supporters can process the information a little longer than the rest of our followers. There are also some images in this post that will make more sense as you read on. The Twitter announcement will be a very abridged and much more casual version compared to what you're about to read, but some of this information will also be amended to the FAQ on our public Discord for whomever would like some more details about what this announcement means.

To our Patrons,

Our group and its team members have always prided themselves on their mission to save beloved and important films, especially those of Japanese animation, like no fans have done before. We pride ourselves on the impact we've had, setting new standards and expectations for captures and fan restorations while constantly improving with each project. That said, we have been pondering this for a long while now, and we feel we're finally ready to make a very significant change. Henceforth, our group will be permanently rebranding with a new name/identity/brand, and its new name shall be Kineko Video.

So you are probably wondering what brought about this change and what it means for the group. You see, my team and I never once thought we would get to the amount of following and attention we do now. The name was always meant to be a joke that just stuck up till now. We've enjoyed compelling official outlets to not only take notice of our work, but to also be forced to say our name in the process. From Crunchyroll and Polygon, to ANN and IGN, we've laughed along with you as articles and acknowledgments all utter the name "Femboy Films" (or, even more hilariously, try everything they can to omit it) all while praising our work. With the release of our "Super Mario Bros.: The Great Mission to Resuce Princess Peach!" restoration, we feel we've shown our efforts to be more than simply a meme.

With that said, we also know the meme comes at a cost. In order for our work to grow, we feel it's time to put the name behind us, but to never forget it. Our mission remains the same and, in the spirit of the old name, we will continue to be that driver of disruption within the preservation and restoration space, forcing new standards of quality in media from the ground up.

So what does this new name mean, and why did we choose it? "Kineko" (キネコ) in Japanese means "kinescope", the film recording of a television or video monitor that was relatively popular to store TV programs on that otherwise would have been wiped from tape altogether. In British English it is also called a "telerecording". In the most basic sense of the word, a film camera would be pointed at a video monitor, recording its images onto film, sort of like nowadays when you record your TV or computer with your phone. It produced very poor-quality results, but was still ultimately an important step on the road to the importance of what we consider to be media preservation today, and without kinescopes there'd be even more important media lost completely. We want to follow in that track and add our own footprint onto media preservation how we can, and how we have been doing up to this point, so we feel that the name works to reflect that.

Another aspect of the name we thought was fitting was that the "neko" in "Kineko", which means cat in Japanese, still shows our roots as a group; our love for Japanese film and animation that inspired us to form and take on this undertaking in the first place. We don't want to take away all our personality away after all! As a result of this, our mascot Crystal has received a tasteful update: she now has cat ears and a tail, to match the theme.

One more thing, why the "Video" part? Well, wouldn't "Kineko Video" sound like a cool name for a video store or something similar? It also reflects what we do; we work with film and video. To go with this theme, we're also giving Crystal an alternate outfit with a bit of lore attached: she may be a film archivist at heart, but that doesn't pay all the bills. She also works at Kineko Video on the side to make ends meet the best she can. And she loves it! Film and video... the best of both worlds for her!

Couple all this with a new logo for us, and we got a recipe for a brand new image. And we are excited to see where it may take us in the future.

As a result of all this, all our social media accounts and platforms have changed their names to kinekovideo and from now on, we are abandoning any and all reference to the previous one. Please be sure to let others know about this change so they are not confused when they see us on their feed, and share this post around.

To our supporters: Thanks for sticking with us through it all. This continues to be a wild ride and Kineko Video wouldn't be what it is now without your viewership and support. We look forward to showing off and preserving more media in the future.

Thanks again for reading. This will also slightly affect the way we set up the tiers on Patreon. We will be removing support for the Private Tier for private server entry (though current Patrons in that tier will not be affected). Currently we have no plans for a specific reward for it, but maybe we will in the future. Also, there won't be a user poll for the upcoming month's exclusive scan, but we have something really cool prepared for you!