Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why is Sony Offering to Buy Kadokawa?
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Riku157
Posts: 13 |
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This was informative. Did end up Wiking how many companies Kadokawa actually owns and can understand much better why Sony would want them. I know people keep focusing on the FromSoftware part, but they wouldn't go this far just for that one company.
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Joe Mello
 Posts: 2312 Location: Online Terminal |
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I think this reflects a larger trend of large businesses trying to create closed ecosystems. The less you have to outsource, the more money you can keep and the more control you can exert on the consumer.
When do we think someone makes a move to buy Naro? |
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Hopeless Weeb
Posts: 42 |
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No mention of South Korea's Kakao been on a bit of a expansion in their share-ownership in Kadokawa?
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RupanSansei
 Posts: 148 |
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i'm glad they did an answerman on this topic as they always tend to be solid explanation. However i have to admit as someone with autism & ADHD it still is a bit difficult for me to get used to the new guy as Justin Sevakis was always like a big brother to me.
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#ChewyBike
Posts: 11 |
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Somebody tell me why I'm supposed to be happy about smaller niche productions getting killed for the sake of boring mass appeal productions. And why does less competition now increase quality?
So not only do I have less anime to choose from, a chunk of what's left will just be American shows? Only on the verge of their death do I realise what Kadokawa was protecting me from. 
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WANNFH
 Posts: 1836 |
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Tenchi
 Posts: 4548 Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer. |
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To be honest, if Japan stopped producing single-cour late night shows (which perhaps get a second season a year or two down the line), I'd probably tune out of modern anime altogether. Obviously, from my user name, I was into some "franchise" anime when I was younger but I almost entirely prefer standalone productions with low episode counts these days. (Okay, I'd be interested in a new season of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya which is kind of a franchise since it does have spin-offs, but Haruhi Suzumiya is about the biggest franchise I'd still be interested in watching new productions of.)
I agree completely. My favourite anime this year was My Wife Has No Emotion which was so niche that it didn't even appear on this site's summer season weekly rankings. |
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kouga88
 Posts: 10 |
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Consolidation is never a good thing and never should be seen as a good thing. Killing off smaller production companies that make niche series may seem like it's good on paper for penny pushers, but for anime fans? It's going to ruin a lot of series. How many beloved niche series only managed to survive thanks to die hard fans that stuck with it or have had these series go on to be some of the most memorable of their season?
Killing off smaller studios only to put everything under Sony's umbrella is going to make things worse for everything. Plus, who is to say that Sony will actually put more effort into creating anime if they gain this near monopoly? Generally, a monopoly means that the company is going to make the bare minimum effort going forward rather than actually increasing the quality of their output or continuing series. I'd be glad to be proven wrong but I foresee a situation where Sony just cuts production to the cheapest levels possible since, what other anime would there be to watch besides theirs? Maybe we'll start seeing even more ambitious niche series taking the spotlight going forward if that's the case. |
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kgw
 Posts: 1189 Location: Spain, EU |
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If that means that Kadokawa will stop producing so many isekai animes, I totally agree.
Seriously, we have more isekais a year than Macross series in 40. |
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Greed1914
 Posts: 4640 |
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Could it help in terms of quality and overall production conditions? Conceivably. There are already so many shows made each season that it's more than anyone can hope to keep up with realistically. That said, I'm skeptical. I know that it's like anything else in entertainment where they want those mass-market appealing franchises that go on to sell and sell and sell. But, I've caught myself enjoying some niche show and thinking how great it is that somebody gave it the go ahead that it would never have elsewhere.
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WANNFH
Posts: 1836 |
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Shay Guy
 Posts: 2324 |
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I decided to run some numbers on this. AniList's "popularity" numbers are far from the best measurement of an IP's success, but they're at least a decent starting point. I decided to query their API for the most "popular" anime listed as "original" from the past 20 years, excluding movies (because Your Name and such don't exactly run on the same "franchise" rules as the industry at large). The query:
And here were the top 50 results (default page size), re-sorted in chronological order:
Which is, uh, a pretty low bar for the top 50 in a 20-year span. Code Geass and Madoka are big names, but there's nothing on the level of Eva or Gundam. And Death Parade? Sonny Boy? Tsukigakirei? There's only a few on this list that I think can really be classified as "a successful original anime IP". (Plus there's some pretty questionable inclusions w/r/t "original", like Isekai Quartet. And SSSS.Gridman was popular enough to get a spinoff/sequel and a movie eventually, but it's still derivative of an old tokusatsu IP.) |
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Sky Captain
 Posts: 28 |
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This is not good, and only serves to show people that trustbusting of large media conglomerates is needed.
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 6317 |
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I’ll keep in this mind that next time people complain about they’re being too many streaming services.
Isn’t one of the more prevalent complaints about modern anime how poor a given production is in addition to people wanting continuations of their favorite series with some eventually happening (Bleach) and others still left wanting (Hitman)? You don’t need a monopoly to achieve that. |
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NeoReaper82
Posts: 1 |
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"Bloomberg reports that both Kadokawa and Sony have been going back and forth for a number of years, with the former wanting Sony to make a full purchase whereas the latter was only interested in strategic investments in anime and video game IP.
Though Bloomberg’s report mentions that Microsoft, Tencent, and Kakao have all expressed an interest in Kadokawa, it stops short of confirming that Kadokawa wanted to fight off a foreign entity in favor of the local Sony Group." |
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