Kadokawa Raises Publishing Goal After Sony Acquisition

Kadokawa is aiming to expand its operations after Sony acquired approximately 10% of its shares (this number includes the shares Sony previously owned). The total investment amounts to 50 billion yen (around $322 million) and was completed on January 7, 2025.

While these two conglomerates have been working together on many projects, this deal brings their collaboration to a whole new level, and will potentially have a huge impact on the anime industry in the medium term and also in the longer term.

Kadokawa’s CEO, Takeshi Natsuno, recently told Nikkei they are raising their initial target of publishing 7,000 volumes (of novels, manga and other types of books) to 9,000 volumes per year.

The Original Target Was Set In 2023

The initial target was already a bold one, as it was announced back in 2023 alongside their goal of increasing their anime production. Before that, in 2021, they had announced a goal of producing 40 anime (TV shows, movies and other formats) annually by 2023, and then presented an even more ambitious target in 2023.

Not only do they want to deliver more content, but they also want to deliver it for a wider audience. For many, Kadokawa has been trying to expand more than the industry can handle, as many anime series produced by them have suffered delays due to “production circumstances” and other quality issues.

Kadokawa Wants To Reach A Wider Audience

Kadokawa has been investing in expanding to other countries and continents, and translating their content to several languages. The recent announcement that Crunchyroll Manga is “coming back” can be seen as a sign that Sony will be key to its strategy — Kadokawa has stated that the deal included partnership regarding the distribution of its books.

We should remind that Kadokawa is also a co-owner of Yen Press, so it doesn’t entirely depend on Sony for publishing its titles in English. However, Crunchyroll is able to reach a wider public in many other countries, so it could provide an “easier way” for Kadokawa to expand their publications to countries where people don’t speak English and in which Crunchyroll already streams anime subtitled in local languages.

However, we should also keep in mind that the “previous” Crunchyroll Manga had never translated its titles to other languages, even after Crunchyroll started expanding to other countries — this could be more related to contractual issues though, as Crunchyroll could not have been contractually allowed to translate those manga to languages other than English.

Source: Nikkei via Animenomics