I'm flying to Los Angeles for Anime Expo today. My airport bookstore doesn't have ordinary manga, but it has business manga! These are published by Wiley under license from JMA Management Center.

Kodansha to print manga in India in first for major Japan publisher Company hopes to bypass pirates by going local with 'Attack on Titan,' 'Blue Lock' trib.al/xplfCMG

We will be having a Manga Loc (and more!) Meetup on June 5th in the evening! These casual meetups are open to people working in manga, light novel, game, etc. localization. Aspiring folks are also welcome to join! If you’d like to attend or want more information, feel free to DM me.

I'm in Rome, and the manga offering at Italian comic stores is incredible.

Private equity giant Andreessen Horowitz will open a Japan office after making its first Japan investment earlier this year: the startup Shizuku AI that built an AI VTuber as a type of AI companions.

Japan comes back from Golden Week holiday on Thursday. Get ready for a busy two weeks of earnings reports by anime companies whose fiscal year ended in March (which is most of them).

FFS anime professionals. Can you stop doing bad shit with minors? We hate writing about this 😭

I came across a large Akanebanashi advertisement in Shibuya Station yesterday.

The biggest news from AnimeJapan so far I think isn't about the anime themselves. It's that AnimeJapan is moving to Osaka for 2027 and 2028. No indication yet on whether the business days will also move.

AnimeJapan morning rush has begun.

Hello, Tokyo 🗼

Makoto Tezuka, Osamu Tezuka's heir, has a new interview in Japanese media outlet Business+IT that discusses the parallels between The Lion King and Kimba the White Lion, including alleging that NBC (which syndicated Kimba) orchestrated the accusations of copyright infringement against Disney.

Lots to think about in this retrospective by Denfaminico Gamer's editor. My favorite: "In the coming age of AI, what the media should aim for is not articles that will be spread widely, but articles that have value as original sources that will continue to be cited and referenced in the future."

For @icv2.com's manga week coverage this year, I explain the numbers behind Japan's shrinking domestic manga market, plus their implications on Japanese publishers' and U.S. comics retailers' businesses for the year ahead.

Japan's domestic manga market shrank by 1.7% in 2025, the first decline in eight years, amid stalling digital sales growth and an accelerating tumble in print sales. Full-year sales were estimated at ¥693 billion (US$4.4 billion). Read this and more headlines in this week's business briefing.

Can someone who is familiar with Chinese media tell me how often a Chinese animation title is adapted into a live-action production? Fuji TV co-produced a live-action drama adaptation of "Link Click" with Bilibili, airing in April on a regional affiliate.

All the discourse about Manga dominance of US/UK comic shelves seems to miss out survivorship bias. The Manga we get isn't randomly selected. The success isn't in the Manga formula (altho' much better digital presentation). It's cos we get the best of western friendly and don't see the worst.

IndieWire reports Sony's new exclusive first streaming window deal with Netflix doesn't include Crunchyroll movies (naturally). But it sounds like it might include Mamoru Hosoda's Scarlet, which isn't released by Crunchyroll.

This photo happened seven blocks from my house.

Hooooooooly fuck. Playmates has been a partner for TMNT since the VERY FIRST Ninja Turtles cartoon was airing. In season one. This is literally a 35-year history at this point. This would be like, say, Funimation/Crunchyroll losing the rights to Dragon Ball.

Warner Bros. has spent the last 20 years investing in anime, including leading production committees for "JoJo's Bizarre Adventure" and "Record of Ragnarok", but a possible sale of the company could impact its expansive anime portfolio. Read this and more headlines in this week's business briefing.

Hollywood producer discovers** women enjoy watching hot men romance each other **Discovers something that has been known for decades in Asia #BLDrama #HeatedRivalry www.teenvogue.com/story/inside...

pv youtu.be/MwP4gqRys4c

I reported this on @animenomics.com this morning: In May, the Azuki trademark used for manga publishing was reassigned by KiraKira Media to Azuki Labs as part of a settlement agreement between the two companies that took 18 months to negotiate. Neither company would comment on the settlement.

CyberAgent co-founder and CEO Susumu Fujita has named senior managing executive officer Takahiro Yamauchi as his successor. Yamauchi last year was selected to lead a new task force on IP creation as the company pivots from digital advertising to anime and content.

This is an example of why I think some business literacy for anime and manga fans and reporters is important because there are ways to distinguish the two. NFT Azuki can be identified by its corporate name Azuki Labs. Manga Azuki is a brand name of KiraKira Media. We need not rely on PR names.

The first thing that came to my mind was 重い (heavy) instead of 想い or 思い 🤦‍♂️

Studio Chizu president Yuichiro Saito has an ambitious goal for Mamoru Hosoda's upcoming film "Scarlet", which is to win an Academy Award, Nikkei Entertainment! magazine reports.

My anime viewing fell off a cliff in 2015/2016, but I'm now trying to revisit shows I never finished from that time. In the process, I noticed that Heavy Object is no longer available on SVOD. It was great to rewatch Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress though.

THE BEAT AND K-COMICSBEAT ARE HIRING: We are looking for a new person to fill the job of Managing Editor for KComicsbeat.com and manga/anime editor for The Beat. Knowledge of webtoon, manga and publishing business required. There is some pay as a PT position.

the newsletter i produce with @milesofficial.bsky.social, @chloecatoya.bsky.social and @malupki.bsky.social has reached 1000 SUBSCRIBERS! thank you all so much for reading! animebythenumbers.substack.com

Crunchyroll Manga app will not allow screenshots and screen recordings.

Sony Pictures previously said they are releasing Mamoru Hosoda's Scarlet in North America in December, but I just noticed they clarified this as being an Oscar-qualifiying run with a wider release in early 2026.

Animenomics will present a current overview of how the anime industry works this Saturday, September 13, as part of @animelockdown.bsky.social programming on twitch.tv/animelockdown. Join us to learn about anime studio financials, anime production committees, and more!

Talked to the folks at NAFCA about the English-language version of their animator skill test book for this piece.

Mini Rant: People say "manga" when they mean Shonen Jump People say "comics" when they mean Marvel/DC Those publishers are not monolithic, and are in fact unique in their industries. Not every manga artist is a Shonen Jump workhorse. Not ever comic suffers from retcons and reboots. Not even most

This whole misunderstanding is unfortunately caused by anime fans' tendency to fixate on the "studio" as the defining aspect of an anime production. It speaks to a lack of awareness that the western definition of "studio" doesn't correlate to how the anime industry works and thinks about studios.

I watched the 1954 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea film and ended up reading fascinating details about the origins of Captain Nemo's character in Verne's books and how early English language translations of Jules Verne's works butchered them. www.verniana.org/volumes/02/A...

TIL Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Deadline, Billboard, Rolling Stone, and IndieWire are all owned by the same company???

Chinese toymaker Pop Mart is opening a store in the largest shopping mall in the United States right in my metro area.

I talked to many amazing comics retailers about tariffs for @comicsjournal.bsky.social and mostly they are very tired (but still excited about comics). www.tcj.com/tariffs-are-...

I said this in an article I was interviewed for, but I think Japan-backed companies will lead the charge in AI-translation over American companies. Japan is less precious about the English adaptation, seeing it as a secondary or even tertiary product to the Japanese original. Quality matters less.

Light novel and manga publisher AlphaPolis has acquired anime studio White Fox. Readers of my newsletter would have seen this coming. I reported nearly 2 months ago that AlphaPolis said they were exploring anime M&A deals.

AI manga localization company Orange has received ¥2.5 billion (US$16.7 million) in loans from four Japanese banks to continue expanding its Emaqi manga platform in North America.

As mentioned in the article, Itch has an NSFW category as well as a tag. The category has nearly 6,000 games in it. Earlier this month, it showed 28,000

Last week there were more than 7,000 video games tagged NSFW on the online marketplace @itch.io Today, there are 2 For Game File, @nicolecarpenter.bsky.social writes about the mass de-indexing/listing of sex games, why it happened and the worry about what's next www.gamefile.news/p/itchio-ste...

Microsoft discontinuing the Movies & TV storefront means Girls Band Cry will forever be the only title that's in my library.

Toho announced 1Q FY26 earnings results last week, and the appendix of the presentation is twice as long as the actual financial results portion. Thanks to that, we were able to learn about some interesting things in Toho's business. 🧵

Demon Slayer is like the Yamanote Line: if you miss it, there’ll be another one in 5 minutes.

I recently spoke with Matt Schley and gave some predictions about how Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle will perform in the Japanese box office.