A new report claims that Sony is looking to acquire FromSoftware’s parent company Kadokawa Corporation, but that could actually be uncomfortable news for manga fans.
Earlier today a report emerged saying that Sony is apparently having “ongoing” conversations with Kadokawa about the tech company acquiring the FromSoftware owner. Obviously on the video game side of things, consolidation is always bad, as we’ve seen with companies like Embracer Group buying up tons of studios only to later shut them down. But as some have pointed out online, Sony’s potential acquisition of Kadokawa has another concern: anime and manga. Kadokawa Group owns a huge number of manga and light novel publishing subsidiaries, one of them being Kadokawa Shoten which has published some popular titles like The Summer Hikaru Died, Nichijou, and the manga adaptation of Neon Genesis Evangelion.
On top of that it owns Doga Kobo, best known these days for the massive hit that is Oshi no Ko, as well co-owning western manga publisher Yen Press, with a whole lot more besides. The thing that’s worrying about this is that Sony already owns Aniplex, a massive Japanese entertainment company that has produced some huge series like Fullmetal Alchemist, Madoka Magica, Sword Art Online, Demon Slayer, and Gurren Lagann, just to name a few. It also owns Crunchyroll too, which merged with Funimation a few years ago.
That in itself proved controversial, particularly when Funimation’s streaming service went down, as it also took everyone’s digital libraries with it. Many Funimation subscribers and users weren’t happy when this happened, not even mentioning the fact that this already meant Sony held a huge stake over the anime and manga industry at large. Adding Kadokawa into the mix just extends that reach further, something that’s always a cause for concern – ever heard of Monopoly, Sony? It’s not meant to be a fun board game.
Whether the acquisition even goes through is still up in the air, but a deal is meant to be sealed “in the coming weeks,” so we’ll see if Sony really does end up with that much control over the manga and anime industry (it probably will).
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