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NEWS: Kadokawa Acquires Anime Studio Doga Kobo


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omnistry



Joined: 03 Mar 2005
Posts: 1017
PostPosted: Thu Jul 11, 2024 3:34 am Reply with quote
Hoping this doesn’t affect the quality of their work. Doga Koba is one of my favorite studios, so it’s making me worried about their future output if they’re no longer calling their own shots.
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tfwnoymir



Joined: 03 Dec 2017
Posts: 321
Location: Hungary
PostPosted: Thu Jul 11, 2024 3:48 am Reply with quote
Predictable, but still disappointing. Lately Kadokawa was involved in literally all of their projects, so it's not all that surprising. But knowing what's happening at their own founded studio ENGI, I won't hold my breath. And to think that it's happening a year after their 50th anniversary...
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DamianSalazar



Joined: 25 Jul 2017
Posts: 744
PostPosted: Thu Jul 11, 2024 3:50 am Reply with quote
Seeing these large Japanese corpos acquire studios like Doga Kobo and Science Saru is making me nervous ngl. I mean Kadokawa has shares in Kinema Citrus and partially (with Sega Sammy) owns ENGI, why buy Doga Kobo outright?
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MiniMarps



Joined: 08 Mar 2022
Posts: 85
PostPosted: Thu Jul 11, 2024 3:51 am Reply with quote
You know how in the video game industry, everybody dreads EA, in part due to their reputation as an "evil empire" that buys up beloved smaller studios and systematically squeezes the life out of them?

I'm gonna miss Doga Kobo.
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Tenchi



Joined: 03 Jan 2002
Posts: 4496
Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer.
PostPosted: Thu Jul 11, 2024 4:38 am Reply with quote
Hmm... if Kadokawa now owns Doga Kobo directly, maybe now we'll finally get a second season of Gabriel DropOut (published by Kadokawa-owned ASCII MediaWorks).
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TCX



Joined: 30 Mar 2020
Posts: 9
PostPosted: Thu Jul 11, 2024 4:49 am Reply with quote
tfwnoymir wrote:
Predictable, but still disappointing. Lately Kadokawa was involved in literally all of their projects, so it's not all that surprising. But knowing what's happening at their own founded studio ENGI, I won't hold my breath. And to think that it's happening a year after their 50th anniversary...


Not really all, they just had Yorukura with King Records, Technoroid with Avex, Saint Cecilia with Aniplex..

Not a fan of this news, at all.
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L'Imperatore



Joined: 24 Mar 2014
Posts: 907
PostPosted: Thu Jul 11, 2024 6:27 am Reply with quote
Is this necessarily a bad thing though?

Doesn't this simply mean Kadokawa can order Doga Kobo to work on whatever project they want to produce? The only "bad" thing I can think of is, now other producers (Aniplex, Toho, etc) must go through Kadokawa if they want DK to animate their shows.
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TheSleepyMonkey



Joined: 11 Jul 2022
Posts: 937
PostPosted: Thu Jul 11, 2024 9:42 am Reply with quote
L'Imperatore wrote:
Is this necessarily a bad thing though?

Doesn't this simply mean Kadokawa can order Doga Kobo to work on whatever project they want to produce? The only "bad" thing I can think of is, now other producers (Aniplex, Toho, etc) must go through Kadokawa if they want DK to animate their shows.


The problem here is simple: these acquisitions are done so that Doga Kobo can be used as another way to produce as many shows as possible. They are already struggling with some of their series, and these kind of news do not help the case.
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Kougeru



Joined: 13 May 2008
Posts: 5548
PostPosted: Thu Jul 11, 2024 9:46 am Reply with quote
Awful news in every way.
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Angel M Cazares



Joined: 23 Sep 2010
Posts: 5481
Location: Iscandar
PostPosted: Thu Jul 11, 2024 11:31 am Reply with quote
I am looking at it in a different way. To me this means that Kadokawa wants Doga Kobo to focus on adapting all of Oshi no Ko. I honestly don't see a producer buying studios as a difference because Kadokawa, Toho, Aniplex and all the other big producers already control the vast majority of anime studios.
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WANNFH



Joined: 13 Mar 2011
Posts: 1741
PostPosted: Thu Jul 11, 2024 12:40 pm Reply with quote
L'Imperatore wrote:
Is this necessarily a bad thing though?

Doesn't this simply mean Kadokawa can order Doga Kobo to work on whatever project they want to produce?
And that is literally the worst thing that can happen - and if you want the real example of how far it can go wrong, just look at bottom tier of Kadokawa owned sweatshop - ENGI, which literally dropping the very same staff between the nearly equally mismanaged projects (Kantai Collection to Unnamed Memory), while even Doga Kobo itself got the Kadokawa produced project delayed to a whole season pretty recently with Roshidere - because it gone through the same pipeline as Oshi No Ko... which of course, also produced by Kadokawa.

Compared to acquirement of Science Saru by Toho - which honestly looks fine as Toho not really involved in much complete disaster of bad productions as Kadokawa or Aniplex - and Science Saru seems to have pretty reasonable timelines for their new projects, this can feel like a potential disaster.
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Heishi



Joined: 06 Mar 2016
Posts: 1338
PostPosted: Thu Jul 11, 2024 3:19 pm Reply with quote
Doga Kobo is really, for me,
the one anime studio out there notorious for making shows while animated really well, they tend to make me pull the hair outta my head and then slamming my head on the table or nearby wall multiple times in utter frustration, that new Alya romcom included.
Not all of them are like that, but still.


Having said that, I do worry about the future of the workers over there.
Hope they won't get worked too hard by their new corporate overlords and things will still be the same for them, workplace wise.

Maybe under Kadokawa, Doga Kobo will green lit more shows that won't irritate the heck outta me, maybe they won't, who knows.
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Ojamajo LimePie



Joined: 09 Nov 2007
Posts: 771
PostPosted: Thu Jul 11, 2024 5:22 pm Reply with quote
L'Imperatore wrote:
Is this necessarily a bad thing though?

Doesn't this simply mean Kadokawa can order Doga Kobo to work on whatever project they want to produce?


That's the bad thing. The best studios are the ones with the freedom to pursue projects that interest them creatively, such as KyoAni.
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MFrontier



Joined: 13 Apr 2014
Posts: 12625
PostPosted: Thu Jul 11, 2024 8:00 pm Reply with quote
I really hope Kadokawa doesn't run Doga Kobo into the ground.
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NebulousNeon



Joined: 06 Apr 2022
Posts: 29
PostPosted: Thu Jul 11, 2024 10:12 pm Reply with quote
Everyone's saying they hope they won't run Doga Kobo into the ground but let's be real for a second. It's probably gonna happen.

Kadokawa has been firing at all cylinders to get enough hands working on pumping out the insane amount of anime they want to produce. Doga Kobo is now the fifth anime studio they own and the sixth overall they've invested in.

The industry is quickly approaching a bubble and when it pops a lot of these small boutique and maybe a few fledgling medium size studios will die a very quick death. Either Kadokawa is planning ahead to account for this by acquiring Doga Kobo (a safe pick that would likely survive an industry crash) or they are still too blind to the fact that they themselves are one of the number one contributors to it.
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