A new startup seeking to change the way the fan community experiences anime, Kitsu, announces it has raised $600,000 in a seed round, receiving funds from San Francisco-based VIZ Media and Manila-based entrepreneur Bernard Chong. Kitsu is putting the cash toward building out its content discovery platform, kitsu.io, Kitsu is designed to help anime and manga fans track, share and discover content, using a world-class recommendation engine layered with social, machine learning and more. Users have found the ability to track what they've already seen and what they are planning to see to be a key selling point, and "Version 3" -- a ground-up rewrite and redesign coinciding with the seed round investment -- heavily focuses on the social aspect, leveraging a machine learning engine to bring up content users are more likely to enjoy using complex interest clusters rather than show-to-show recommendations. "What makes me most excited about where Kitsu is going is how easy it's going to be to connect with other anime and manga fans," said Fabian.