Disney+ Expands Its Anime Catalog With New Partnership
Disney+ has doubled down on its attempts to increase its anime catalog with its latest strategic partnership. The Walt Disney Company Asia Pacific recently revealed an expansion of its long-standing 70-year collaboration with the Kodansha publishing house. The new deal will now include Japanese anime originals as well. Keep reading to find out more details about this new deal and what it would mean for anime fans!
Disney+’s New Partnership Includes Tokyo Revengers
This new Kodansha deal will start with the title Tokyo Revengers. As per ComicBook, Disney will get first dibs on all anime titles based on any Kodansha manga. This includes the second season of Tokyo Revengers. The anime will adapt the manga’s Christmas Showdown arc in 2023 and the series will premiere exclusively on Disney+ and Disney+ Hotstar in January.
[Source: YouTube]
Talking about the new collaboration, Carol Choi, Disney’s executive VP of original content strategy in APAC said, “We are thrilled to deepen our strategic collaboration with our long-standing partner Kodansha on such an exciting genre. Japanese anime fills the white space in our content development plans and we believe this expanded collaboration will be a game changer in Disney’s future animation strategy in Japan. We look forward to bringing the anime titles and prized IP by Kodansha to the world stage.”
Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War Was A Big Success For Disney+
This is one of Disney’s several moves to grab more anime subscribers and surpass other anime streamers like Netflix and Crunchyroll. Earlier this month, Studio Ghibli surprised its fans by launching a Star Wars short on Disney+. This comes after the network ordered an original anime anthology titled Star Wars: Visions. This fall, Disney also snagged a deal to stream Bleach’s latest season exclusively.
[Source: YouTube]
Given the success of Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War, it isn’t a surprise that Disney would want to bring in new and big names for its future anime deals. So, Kodansha was no doubt the perfect choice. Over the past year, the anime craze has taken over the globe and networks want to expand their catalog with new titles to get more subscribers. In a survey by Parrot Analytics, the global demand for anime rose by 118% over the last two years. This makes it the fastest-growing sector in the entertainment industry.
Disney’s-Kodansha Partnership Dates Back To 1950
With manga sales increasing internationally, anime titles are now taking over everything from movie theaters to cable. On Wednesday, during the Singapore event, the company also revealed that the total hours of locally-produced Asian content on its streamer is now eight times more than it was a year ago.
[Source: YouTube]
Kodansha is a globally popular licensor of some of the most iconic manga titles. This includes Attack On Titan, AKIRA, and Ghost In the Shell. Disney’s partnership with Kodansha dates back to the 1950s. This was when Kodansha first published manga art books with Pluto Pup, Seven Dwarfs, Mickey Mouse, and Donald Duck. They were all a part of Disney’s Manga Ehon series.
Do you think Disney+ will gain more anime subscribers now that it has Kodansha’s fresh content catalog? Share your thoughts in the comments!
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