Background
Fukunaga was born in Itami, Hyōgo, Japan, and grew up in West Lafayette, Indiana in the United States.
founder president of Funimation
Fukunaga was born in Itami, Hyōgo, Japan, and grew up in West Lafayette, Indiana in the United States.
He graduated from West Lafayette High School in 1979. Fukunaga attended Purdue University where he got his Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering in 1982 and his Master of Science in Electrical Engineering in 1984. He then attended Columbia Business School, obtaining an Master of Business Administration in 1989.
As of October 2011, Fukunaga was named chairman of online video game publisher GameSamba. He later moved to Boca Raton, Florida to work as an engineer for International Business Machines Corporation. He held a position with Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) before getting a job with Tandem Computers in Sunnyvale, California. EchoLight initially shared office space with Fukunaga"s Funimation.
Originally Toei Animation told FUNimation that they could not have the Dragon Ball series.
However Fukunaga"s uncle, Nagafumi Hori, was one of the producers for Toei and helped Fukunaga convince Toei Animation to give the licence to FUNimation. So General went to a coworker named Daniel Cocanougher whose family owned a feed mill in Decatur, Texas and convinced the Cocanougher family to sell their business and invest in creating a production company.
With that, FUNimation Productions was established in 1994. In 2005 Funimation was acquired by the Navarre Corporation for United States$100.4 million, Fukunaga still remained the company"s Chief Executive Officer. In 2011 the company was sold to a group of investors which included Fukunaga himself.
