The Four Color Media Monitor

Reuters reports Sony corporation may end up buying the anime and manga publisher Kadokawa:

Sony is in talks to acquire Kadokawa the Japanese media powerhouse behind the “Elden Ring” game, two sources familiar with the matter said, as the technology giant looks to add to its entertainment portfolio.

The talks between the two sides are ongoing and, if successful, a deal could be signed in the coming weeks, the sources said. [...]

Kadokawa began as a publisher in 1945, but has expanded into games, anime, events and figures with franchises such as “Re:Zero”, in which a teenage boy is summoned to a fantasy world.

What's most surprising about this news, however, is any and all of the left-leaning news sites that're speaking agains this. For example, The Mary Sue:

If the entertainment industry should internalize one lesson, it’s that monopolies are bad. In the past five years, it’s become depressingly common for huge corporations to cannibalize each other.

The result is always mass layoffs and waves of cancellations of promising projects. The residual atmosphere in the aftermath always discourages risk, leading to a less colorful, less interesting media landscape. There’s less new IP, and more pummeling “tried and true” IP into the ground and milking them for all they’re worth. [...]

Buying Kadokawa not only erases a rival anime studio but also brings several zeitgeist anime directly under Sony’s control. Sony also owns Crunchyroll, the primary distributor and streamer for anime outside of Japan. Crunchyroll has already cannibalized its primary competitor, Funimation. Notably, Kadokawa’s three biggest series—Delicious in Dungeon, Oshi no Ko, and Chiikawa—are three of the incredibly few series that have exclusive contracts with other streamers (Netflix and HIDIVE, respectively). [...]

Even as they are right now, Kadokawa and Sony are already mind-numbingly massive companies with huge stakes in several pockets of the entertainment industry. Even before this possible merger, industry analysts were sounding the alarm that Sony was approaching a monopoly on the anime industry. The purchase of Kadokawa, one of the biggest publishers in the business, would put them much closer to that point. [...]

It’s hard to see how fans would win from Sony’s monopoly becoming this profound. They will try to spin it by promoting easy access to everyone’s favorite anime, games, and manga. In reality, Sony can drive prices up at our expense because layoffs and studio closures will not be enough to pay for whatever absurd price tag is involved in this merger. It means more cost-cutting and less risk-taking, all at the expense of the creatives who make the media we love.

Also, from Aftermath:

Mergers and acquisitions haven’t been so great for the people who make games in recent times – both in the increasingly un-hallowed halls of Sony’s rivals and specifically at Sony. This year alone, it laid off 900 people – or eight percent of its workforce – across beloved, successful studios like Insomniac, Naughty Dog, and Guerrilla. Bungie, a relatively recent addition to Sony’s portfolio, was also forced to lay off 220 people and beam up into the Sony mothership to churn out live service games. Most recently, Sony shut down Concord developer Firewalk Studios, another recent acquisition, after its costly debut game failed to gain immediate traction.

Sony’s reputation in the anime and manga space has also taken some recent hits. The Japanese giant owns Funimation, which acquired near-ubiquitous anime streaming service Crunchyroll in 2021, after which Funimation shut down its own streaming service, wiping users’ digital libraries and subjecting them to significant price hikes. Crunchyroll management has also recently come under fire for allegedly tampering with a voice actor’s private mail, causing the actor, David Wald, to drop his roles with the company. Other actors have accused Crunchyroll of anti-union behavior.

And also, ComicBook:

A new report has indicated that Sony is currently in talks to acquire Kadokawa, and if it goes through, it could lead to a troubling monopoly in the anime industry as Sony would then have a much greater stake in production and distribution down to even what could potentially be adapted or animated in the future. [...]

There’s also Sony’s stake in Crunchyroll, one of the major streaming platforms for anime. After fully acquiring Funimation with the merger completely taking effect earlier this Spring, Crunchyroll is now the exclusive home to many titles fans can’t get elsewhere. While this has changed slightly with some of the more blockbuster franchises being shared around like Dragon Ball Daima and Dandadan this Fall (for example), it’s still the home to the majority of new anime releases each new seasonal wave. If Sony indeed acquires Kadokawa, then it’s going to have a controlling stake in pretty much every aspect of the anime production pipeline. From the light novel titles that get published to the ones that get adapted, to finally the franchises that get released worldwide.

This could result in a more unified, global release for major series, which in turn could be good for anime fans. But at the same time, it also means that another major publication with its own voice and franchises would fold under Sony.

Now isn't that funny such sites are actually making the case against corporate buyouts after all these years. In the past decade or so, they didn't seem to have any opposition to these corporate takeovers, probably because, if you look under a microscope, you can see their staff really are very left-wing, and look how it affected Disney of recent with wokeness. I'm guessing that, following Donald Trump's landslide victory in the elections, they decided it may pay off better if they took a stance against this kind of corporatism, and in a way, Trump was running on a platform taking issue with bad forms of conglomeracy.

But not clearly stated in these articles is whether they believe this could lead to destruction of creative freedom, something they don't exactly uphold themselves, to be sure, and they're not exactly making the case for forming alternative distribution and broadcasting businesses either. Let's be clear. If anybody in Japan wants to, I'm sure they can establish new businesses for distribution and marketing overseas, whatever the product is, much like studio competition is very competitive there to boot. Why, I'm sure there already are other businesses dealing in anime and video game marketing there already, and neither Kadokawa nor Sony has ever been the only ones of their sort past and present. Also worth considering is that a rival business could always recruit the laid off employees from Sony, and then develop competition worth consideration. Has that ever occurred to the 3 highlighted news sites?

If a deal is made between Sony and Kadokawa, I don't support it, because of how bad corporatism's become, but I don't think the above news sites are being altruistic about this affair so much as they are being opportunistic. Where were they when creative freedom was under assault in the past decade? They certainly aren't fighting for the rights of conservatives, that's for sure. Chuck Dixon and Mike Baron, in example, have been marginalized for years already by the mainstream comics industry, and nobody in the MSM argued they shouldn't be kicked to the curb, or that Joe Quesada and Dan DiDio should resign over the damage they did to Marvel/DC. It's pretty clear these news sites wouldn't defend conservatives in manga and anime either, nor will they make a clear case against censorship. So what qualification do they have to deal with the topic of bad corporatism either?

Labels: Europe and Asia, libraries, manga and anime, msm propaganda, technology