A new report claims that Sony is looking to acquire FromSoftware’s parent company Kadokawa Corporation, but that could be uncomfortable news for manga fans.
A report emerged today that says Sony is apparently having “ongoing” talks with Kadokawa regarding the tech company’s acquisition of owner FromSoftware. Obviously, on the gaming side, consolidation is always bad, as we’ve seen with companies like Embracer Group buying up tons of studios and then closing them. But as some have pointed out online, Sony’s potential acquisition of Kadokawa has another concern: anime and manga. Kadokawa Group owns a large number of manga and light novel publishing subsidiaries, one of them is Kadokawa Shoten, which has published some popular titles such as The Summer Hikaru Died, Nichijou, and the manga adaptation of Neon Genesis Evangelion.
On top of that, he owns Doga Kobo, best known today for the smash hit Oshi no Ko, and also co-owns Western manga publisher Yen Press, and much more. The worrying thing about this is that Sony already owns Aniplex, a huge Japanese entertainment company that has produced great series like Fullmetal Alchemist, Madoka Magica, Sword Art Online, Demon Slayer and Gurren Lagann, just to name a few. He also owns Crunchyroll, 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 were unhappy when this happened, not to mention the fact that this already meant that Sony had a huge stake in the anime and manga industry in general. Adding Kadokawa to the mix simply extends that reach even further, something that’s always a cause for concern – have you ever heard of Monopoly, Sony? It is not intended to be a fun board game.
It’s still up in the air whether the acquisition goes through, but a deal is expected to close “in the coming weeks,” so we’ll see if Sony really ends up with so much control over the manga and anime industry (it probably will).
