Kadokawa raised its publishing goals after the Sony acquisition

SUMMARY

  • Sony's 10% investment in Kadokawa is worth 50 billion yen and aims to expand operations.

  • Kadokawa is raising the publishing goal to 9,000 books a year under the leadership of the CEO.

  • The collaboration between Kadokawa and Sony will affect the growth of the anime industry and reach the world.

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Kadokawa aims to expand its operations after that Sony received about 10% of its shares (this number includes the former Sony shares). The total investment is 50 billion yen (about $322 million) and will be completed on January 7, 2025.

Although the two conglomerates have worked together on many projects, this deal takes their collaboration to a whole new level, and could have a huge impact on the anime industry. in the medium term as well as in the long term.

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Kadokawa CEO, Takeshi Natsuno, recently told Nikkei that they will raise their original publishing goal of 7,000 books (of novels, manga and other book genres) to 9,000. every year.

The first goal was set in 2023

The first goal is already bold, as it was announced in 2023 with their goal to increase anime production. Earlier, in 2021, they announced a goal of producing 40 anime (TV shows, movies and other formats) per year by 2023, and then presented a more ambitious target of the year 2023.

Not only do they want to deliver more content, but they also want to deliver it to a wider audience. To many, Kadokawa tried to expand beyond what the industry could handle, as many of the anime series they produced suffered delays due to “production conditions” and other issues. about quality.

Kadokawa Wants to Reach a Wider Audience

Kadokawa invested in expansion into other countries and continents, and translated its content into many languages. The recent announcement that Crunchyroll Manga is “back” can be seen as a sign that Sony will be key to the strategy – Kadokawa announced that the agreement included a collaboration on the distribution of his books.

We should remind that Kadokawa is also a partner of Yen Press, so they are not completely dependent on Sony for publishing the title in English. However, Crunchyroll can reach audiences in many other countries, so it could provide an “easier way” for Kadokawa to expand his book to non-English-speaking countries. and Crunchyroll has already streamed local language subtitles. .

But we should also remember this Crunchyroll Manga “previously” never translated its titles into other languageseven after Crunchyroll started expanding into other countries—this may have more to do with marketing issues, as Crunchyroll was not contractually allowed to translate these manga into languages other than English.

Source: Nikkei via Animenomics

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