A few days ago the anime Twitterverse received the announcement that Anime News Network, an anime-related news website founded in 1998, has been acquired by a subsidiary of manga and anime titan Kadokawa. Read my thoughts on what this might mean for anime fans!
Kadokawa Buys Anime News Network. What’s Next for Anime?
Anime News Network is a Canada-based news site founded in 1998 which quickly became a leader in distributing anime news on the early Internet. In 2005 the company acquired Protoculture Addicts, a well-regarded anime news magazine, and published it until 2008.
Kadokawa is a massive publishing conglomerate founded in 1945 by Kenyoshi Kadokawa as a publisher of literary works before breaking into film production in the 70s and manga publishing in the 80s. Today they’re one of the major mega corporations funding and producing making the anime we love. Through its merger with Dwango, Kadokawa also controls fan favorites like Niconico Douga and Mages.
First, Some Congratulations
As I wrote in my blog post about Sony and Crunchyroll buying Right Stuf, as a business owner, I’m always happy any time someone gets recognition for many years of hard work. In my interactions with publisher Christopher Macdonald over the years, I’ve seen how much work he has put into ANN. So kudos to him on the deal!
Possible Downsides for the Anime Industry
While I am positive there’ll be no changes in the anime coverage by ANN, there are certain questions raised by the site being owned by an anime publisher.
Kadokawa might get overly aggressive in promoting its own properties. When the company launched Nyantype, hoping to re-create the success of Gakken’s Megami Magazine, it found success for a while… but it soon became apparent to fans that the company was heavily promoting works it published over other studios. How will ANN’s coverage change in the future?
Each news source or blog has a different tone and appeals to different fans. But some have pointed out that many ANN writers have not been kind to some of the best-loved anime series of recent years. They protested that Ilulu from Kobayashi Dragon Maid “looked underage” because she’s short yet busty. They called the relaxing anime Helpful Fox Senko-san “baby waifu shit” and apparently believe How Heavy Are the Dumbbells You Lift? should not exist. I love all three of the above titles though I’m happy that there are thousands of alternatives if any fans disagree with me.
Politics aside, there’s the potential for more mismatches between the site’s writers and the new ownership. I gather that some of the reviewers dislike tropes that are common in anime and will sometimes take the tack that “there are many too many isekai anime and I don’t like isekai, therefore this show is bad.” What happens when that show is a Kadokawa-produced work? On the flip side, if the writers take issue with the fanservice in Uzaki-chan (a Kadokawa property), will they be asked to get on board with what’s good for the company? What if they take to Twitter and cause a lot of drama?
No company is free from criticism, and Kadokawa has gotten its share over the years, like when it fired Kemono Friends director TATSUKI. It will be interesting to see ANN’s coverage of such topics when their parent company is involved.
Running a popular anime community can be difficult, and all it takes is one translator to use an overly creative translation to get all fans riled up. How will Kadokawa respond if there’s a fandom war over something? Probably what Funimation did during the Interspecies Reviewers debacle: hunker down and communicate with fans as little as possible.
I Have Some Issues with Anime News Network
My main frustration is ANN’s strict “no hentai news coverage policy.” There’s nothing like working for 2-3 years on a visual novel I think fans will love and then having the leading anime news source tell me they won’t do any coverage because some of their writers have a personal thing against hentai. How does it serve anime fans in general to never report on major game releases, pretending that hentai isn’t a valid part of the “big tent” that is anime? It’s one reason we started the J-List blog.
Thanks for reading this article on Kadokawa purchasing Anime News Network. Got any thoughts on the buying up of well-known anime websites by Japanese companies? Tell us below, or reply to us on Twitter!
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